Of course, we can't make a general comparison between Chinese and western art. Here, we take China ancient landscape painting and western landscape painting as representatives to make a preliminary analysis and comparison between Chinese and western art, so that we can have a further understanding of these two art forms.
First, the characteristics and artistic spirit of China ancient landscape painting and western landscape painting.
The difference between China's ancient landscape painting and western landscape painting lies in its freehand brushwork, which is also the most fundamental feature of China's painting art. The so-called freehand brushwork emphasizes the expression of meaning and interest, not sticking to the appearance of the essence of objective things, but emphasizing the integration of creative subjective feelings. Or emphasize the appearance of philosophy, or attach importance to lyric expression, but this lyric expression is not without source, not arbitrary, but completed on the basis of observing objective objects. Of course, China's paintings emphasize the expression of subjective feelings and freehand brushwork, which is closely related to China's cultural tradition, philosophy and cosmology. Because China believed in Taoism in ancient times, the philosophical thought of Taoism, which is slightly more important than things, laid an aesthetic foundation for the re-expression of China's ancient landscape paintings and even the whole art in China. Therefore, a landscape painter in China must have the spirit of accommodating all things in the world, so as to be able to express the artistic conception of detached and indifferent landscape painting freely.
Western art, influenced by Christianity, believes that artists' accurate and perfect expression of external beauty is to be close to God and to contribute to God. Therefore, western painters attach great importance to the realism of painting. Realism and freehand brushwork are relative. The so-called realism, as the name implies, is that the painter focuses on objectively describing the external characteristics of the object and portrays the color, appearance and light-shadow relationship of the objective object as truly as possible. Western artists and China artists pay attention to different aspects of the content, mainly because they imitate the reproduced object realistically, rather than emphasizing the artist's subjective feelings and experiences. Therefore, what western landscape painters pursue is to reproduce nature as much as possible, depict natural scenery in different ways, and even find scientific methods to try to express nature more vividly and directly. This performance is based on their meticulous observation of nature.
Second, China's landscape painting and western landscape painting are different in expression.
Because Chinese painting uses the most elastic brush and Xuan paper, and is most sensitive to brush strokes and moisture changes, it has formed the characteristics that Chinese painting is not easy to form and brush strokes are not studied. At the same time, China landscape painting mainly relies on ink painting and brush line modeling, and uses various rubs of lines and brush to shape the characteristics of various rocks and flowing water. Therefore, line is a very important element in China's landscape painting. The application of line shape directly affects the success of a landscape work. Therefore, painting a good Chinese painting is not a day's work. It takes a lot of time to explore and practice pen and ink and lines, so that you can be very skilled and draw good pictures with ease. Because every painter's understanding of life is different, China painters infiltrated this understanding and sentiment of life into lines and brushwork, and finally formed their own unique painting style.
Western painting uses oil painting pens, oily pigments and canvases that are completely different from Chinese painting. Due to the difference of tools and expression media, it will inevitably lead to the difference of expression techniques between Chinese and western paintings. As mentioned above, western art emphasizes realism and real imitation of objects, while painting is a two-dimensional space art. If you want to create a three-dimensional space in a two-dimensional space, you must express objects with blocks and light and shade. Therefore, western landscape painting is different from the lines of China landscape painting. It uses oil painting pens and pigments to express the block surface and light and shade of the body, and takes color as the main modeling means. Western artists believe that only through small pieces can we create objects that are close to reality and have a three-dimensional sense. Therefore, the lakes and mountains in western landscape paintings are all composed of faces, and light, shadow and color are added to enhance the sense of volume and realism of the picture. Therefore, the western landscape paintings we see are closer to the natural landscape in real life than those of China.
Thirdly, China landscape painting and western landscape painting have different spatial concepts.
We compared two Chinese and western works: The Mountain Sitting in the Rain by Huang and the Watergate of Woz by Daubigny. Thus, China's landscape painting "Sitting in the Rain" is a free-flowing spatial concept, which is not limited by time and space and has no fixed viewpoint. Objects observed from different viewpoints can be combined in a frame at the same time. As Guo said in Song Dynasty, this mountain is three miles away, and it is high from bottom to top. Looking at the back of the mountain in front is profound; The distance near the mountain is called the plain. It can be seen that this concept of space in Chinese painting is not a general concept of physical space, but a very free and flexible spatial expression between heaven and earth. Therefore, most of the ancient landscape paintings in China were hidden in the mountains, and travelers strolled by Xiqiao Lake. The painting is full of poetry and painting, and it is not bound by the real space environment. This reflects the special perspective in China's paintings-scattered perspective.
Let's take a look at the masterpiece of western landscape painting-Daubigny's The Sluice of Haupt Woz. The painter tries to create a three-dimensional sense on the plane and vividly reproduce the spatial environment in which the object is located. He only acted as a carrier in the spatial transformation between nature and landscape painting. He used the focus perspective method with rational scientific analysis, and his concept of space was established under the guidance of his scientific rational thought, and expressed through light and shade and perspective. Therefore, western artists' understanding of the concept of space is a real understanding of nature, and they can't be divorced from the constraints of real nature like China painters.
Chinese and western art are indeed two different art forms, with great differences in aesthetic concepts and expression methods. However, as the expression of human artistic spirit, they have similarities and can learn from each other and develop harmoniously in innovation.