Skiff on the ocean of Painting.
Beautiful Letters| N° d'inventaire | 22897 |
| Format | 12.5 x 19 |
| Détails | 456 p., 11 B/W ill., paperback with flaps. |
| Publication | Paris, 2019 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782251449470 |
Shen Zongqian's Skiff on the Ocean of Painting (1781) is a treatise on painting for practitioners and connoisseurs, making Chinese painting accessible to all. This is certainly the main reason for its success among 20th-century Chinese artists and theoreticians. Halfway between The Manual of the Garden as Big as a Mustard Seed and Shitao's Treatise on Painting by the Monk Bitter Pumpkin, Shen Zongqian's text is striking in its practical and concrete side combined with in-depth theoretical reasoning. The first two chapters focus on the painting of mountains and waters (shanshui), that is, the pictorial and literary landscape. Chapter three is dedicated to the "transmission of the spirit," in other words, the portrait, while chapter four conceives of figure painting as the union of shanshui and the portrait. The Skiff on the Ocean of Painting, referring to its famous predecessors, develops and explains a number of technical, philosophical and aesthetic notions used in calligraphy and painting, in a clear and concrete manner. A product of "orthodoxy", it also raises its contradictions and proposes solutions. Previously unpublished in Western languages, The Skiff is a precious testimony to the place and the social, historical, aesthetic, technical and ideological role of literate painting in the 18th century.
Shen Zongqian's Skiff on the Ocean of Painting (1781) is a treatise on painting for practitioners and connoisseurs, making Chinese painting accessible to all. This is certainly the main reason for its success among 20th-century Chinese artists and theoreticians. Halfway between The Manual of the Garden as Big as a Mustard Seed and Shitao's Treatise on Painting by the Monk Bitter Pumpkin, Shen Zongqian's text is striking in its practical and concrete side combined with in-depth theoretical reasoning. The first two chapters focus on the painting of mountains and waters (shanshui), that is, the pictorial and literary landscape. Chapter three is dedicated to the "transmission of the spirit," in other words, the portrait, while chapter four conceives of figure painting as the union of shanshui and the portrait. The Skiff on the Ocean of Painting, referring to its famous predecessors, develops and explains a number of technical, philosophical and aesthetic notions used in calligraphy and painting, in a clear and concrete manner. A product of "orthodoxy", it also raises its contradictions and proposes solutions. Previously unpublished in Western languages, The Skiff is a precious testimony to the place and the social, historical, aesthetic, technical and ideological role of literate painting in the 18th century.