Landscape painting as a critical cross-cultural art practice:exploring how the theories and methodologies in ancient Chinese painting can be fused into contemporary landscape art practice to expand existing artistic formats

摘要

This thesis is part of a practice-based Ph.D. study that investigates the genre of landscape painting through a cross-cultural perspective and method of practice. It attempts to link and step across the fields of ancient Chinese and contemporary Western art, with a focus on how to critically understand and use Chinese aesthetic traditions to make a contribution to contemporary landscape painting practice. This study argues that ancient Chinese art theory can provide unique insights and ways of thought, as a different interpretive strategy from the Western art tradition; and the traditional Chinese pictorial methodology is able to integrate into contemporary landscape painting practice and, as a result, expand existing artistic formats. This study aims to provide a cross-cultural perspective on thinking and the methods of analysis, broadening the cultural boundary of landscape painting and enriching the current understanding in the field. The theoretical section aims to provide the direction and systematic inquiry to develop a critical awareness and the appropriate methodology of studio practice. Studio practice, in the study, seeks the possibilities to create new forms of contemporary landscape painting as well as the new methods of making it, which include diverse aesthetic traditions and cultural understandings.