山水画

indy · 发表于 2020-9-3 11:24:45

About a thousand years ago in a time of tremendous political upheaval a few painters in China came up with a form of painting with very simple elements. Just like a French baguette, which is supposed to contain only water, flour, butter and salt, the new form of painting is supposed to contain only four elements: mountains, water, houses, people. Now there are a few rules: the mountains must preferably be a karst cragged peak; the water has to be a lake or a stream, the houses must not be too fancy and preferably open to the air, and most importantly the human figures must be small. And like with the French baguette the four elements or ingredients combine into perfection. So much so that the form has not varied for a thousand years. The appeal of the form is immediate, maybe because the viewer unconsciously identify with the human figures, being literally absorbed into the painting. The houses are impossibly appealing structures open to nature, a kind of Fallingwater. And the stream or lake and the mountains together form a kind of idyllic out-of-this world reality. The viewer is in an eden, and part of it. Maybe it isan appeal to the “in everyone there is a Shangri-La” need of humans; perhaps it is the evocation of Daoism, of the Dao and Zhuangzi that are everpresent in the Chinese (and everyone?) psyche. Whatever it is, shanshui the Chinese landscape painting is one of the supreme creations of the human mind and the human hand. Oh, and only black ink allowed. Li Cheng (919-967) Solitary Temple Amid Clearing Peaks, Nelson-Alkins Museum