Dong Qichang: White Clouds Over Rivers and Trees
Chinese painter and calligrapher Dong Qichang(1555-1636) in Ming Dynasty, promoted the use of color and none-liner techniques in Chinese landscape paintings, which has a profound influence on Chinese paintings as artists start to focus on the use of color. In his piece White Clouds over Rivers and Trees after Zhang Sengyou, Dong forms several pairs of visual contrast that bring life to this autumn landscape. Dong didn’t fully abandon the heritage of drawing the outlines from previous masters. Yet, there are evidences that suggest his tendency to remove from this ancient tradition of flat, monochrome Chinese ink painting. The jumping colors indeed open up more possibilities to fill in more emotions …show more content…
Dong’s canny arrangement of these subjects creates a tight relationship that let them communicate with one another and makes the plcture plane stands as a whole. Beyond the peaceful unity of mountains, cloud and trees, Dong spices up the picture plane through juxtaposing the macro against the micro, the warm against the cold, the vague against the finest. To understand Dong’s art legacy through analyzing the visual components of Dong’s White Clouds over Rivers and Trees after Zhang Sengyou can help to eagage with this piece in a spiritual way and to actually participate in the scenery. In a word, Dong’s technique of reduction of the black outlines and the sophisticated use of contrast in construction and color brought life to the painting. Meanwhile, Dong still held a sense of distancy and ambiguity of the content that …show more content…
The giant mountains represents the macro nature and the human village is placed right at the foot of the mountains. This contrast in size stresses the power of the macro that is against the vulnerability of human-belings. But Dong’s mountains are not aggresive and overwhelming. He intionally veiled some details of the mountains. Trees, for example, are not fully revealed in the middle of the mountains. Dong executed proficient skills when rendering the details of the trees. The trees hidden under the cloud are painted in only one layer of color. Comparing to multiple layers of colors that Dong applied to the mountain, this reduction of color intensity adds more folds to the picture without drawing black ink outlines. Again, Dong leaves many spaces in the picture hidden or blank to fill the painting with the audience’s imagination. He didn’t paint color to the river and the mountain in the far background. It’s even differcult to recognize the river without color, but Dong gave us a hint. He drew a bridge across the river (Pic.2), and this contrast of the clear outlined bridge in the front and the indistinct rolling mountains in the back expand the depth of the picture space. The distancy not only exists in the physical space of the painting, but also in the spirital realm. For exmple, the white cloud surrounds at the weist of mountain as if the
Chinese painter and calligrapher Dong Qichang(1555-1636) in Ming Dynasty, promoted the use of color and none-liner techniques in Chinese landscape paintings, which has a profound influence on Chinese paintings as artists start to focus on the use of color. In his piece White Clouds over Rivers and Trees after Zhang Sengyou, Dong forms several pairs of visual contrast that bring life to this autumn landscape. Dong didn’t fully abandon the heritage of drawing the outlines from previous masters. Yet, there are evidences that suggest his tendency to remove from this ancient tradition of flat, monochrome Chinese ink painting. The jumping colors indeed open up more possibilities to fill in more emotions …show more content…
Dong’s canny arrangement of these subjects creates a tight relationship that let them communicate with one another and makes the plcture plane stands as a whole. Beyond the peaceful unity of mountains, cloud and trees, Dong spices up the picture plane through juxtaposing the macro against the micro, the warm against the cold, the vague against the finest. To understand Dong’s art legacy through analyzing the visual components of Dong’s White Clouds over Rivers and Trees after Zhang Sengyou can help to eagage with this piece in a spiritual way and to actually participate in the scenery. In a word, Dong’s technique of reduction of the black outlines and the sophisticated use of contrast in construction and color brought life to the painting. Meanwhile, Dong still held a sense of distancy and ambiguity of the content that …show more content…
The giant mountains represents the macro nature and the human village is placed right at the foot of the mountains. This contrast in size stresses the power of the macro that is against the vulnerability of human-belings. But Dong’s mountains are not aggresive and overwhelming. He intionally veiled some details of the mountains. Trees, for example, are not fully revealed in the middle of the mountains. Dong executed proficient skills when rendering the details of the trees. The trees hidden under the cloud are painted in only one layer of color. Comparing to multiple layers of colors that Dong applied to the mountain, this reduction of color intensity adds more folds to the picture without drawing black ink outlines. Again, Dong leaves many spaces in the picture hidden or blank to fill the painting with the audience’s imagination. He didn’t paint color to the river and the mountain in the far background. It’s even differcult to recognize the river without color, but Dong gave us a hint. He drew a bridge across the river (Pic.2), and this contrast of the clear outlined bridge in the front and the indistinct rolling mountains in the back expand the depth of the picture space. The distancy not only exists in the physical space of the painting, but also in the spirital realm. For exmple, the white cloud surrounds at the weist of mountain as if the