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Chinese Landscape Painting
(Provide by http://www.cnartgallery.com/)
Chinese Landscape Painting (Shan shui)
Shan shui (Landscape. Chinese: 山水 lit. "mountain-water")
refers to a style of Chinese painting that involves or depicts
scenery or natural landscapes, using a brush and ink rather than
more conventional paints. Mountains, rivers and often waterfalls are prominent in this art form.
History
Shan shui painting first arose to prominence during the 5th
century, in the reign of the Liu Song Dynasty. It was later
characterized by a group of landscape painters such as Zhang
Zeduan, most of them already famous, who produced large-scale
landscape paintings. These landscape paintings usually centered
on mountains. Mountains had long been seen as sacred places
in China, which were viewed as the homes of immortals and thus,
close to the heavens. Philosophical interest in nature, or in
mystical connotations of naturalism, could also have contributed
to the rise of landscape painting. The art of shan shui, like many
other styles of Chinese painting has a strong reference to Taoist
(Daoist) imagery and motifs, as symbolisms of Taoism strongly
influenced "Chinese landscape painting". Some authors have suggested that Daoist stress on how
minor the human presence is in the vastness of the cosmos, or Neo-Confucian interest in the patterns or
principles that underlie all phenomena, natural and social lead to the highly structuralized nature of shan
shui.
Concepts

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Most dictionaries and definitions of shan shui assume that the term includes all ancient Chinese
paintings with mountain and water images. Contemporary Chinese painters, however, feel that only
paintings with mountain and water images that follow specific conventions of form, style and function
should be called "shan shui painting." When Chinese painters work on shan shui painting, they do not
try to present an image of what they have seen in the nature, but what they have thought about nature.
No one cares whether the painted colors and shapes look like the real object or not.
According to Ch'eng Hsi:
Shan shui painting is a kind of painting which goes against the common definition of what a painting is.
Shan shui painting refutes color, light and shadow and personal brush work. Shan shui painting is not an
open window for the viewer's eye, it is an object for the viewer's mind. Shan shui painting is more like a
vehicle of philosophy.
Compositions
 Shan shui paintings involve a complicated and rigorous set of almost mystical requirements for
balance, composition, and form. All shan shui paintings should have 3 basic components:
 Paths - Pathways should never be straight. They should meander like a stream. This helps
deepen the landscape by adding layers. The path can be the river, or a path along it, or the
tracing of the sun through the sky over the shoulder of the mountain.. The concept is to never
create inorganic patterns, but instead to mimic the patterns that nature creates.
 The Threshold - The path should lead to a threshold. The threshold is there to embrace you
and provide a special welcome. The threshold can be the mountain, or its shadow upon the
ground, or its cut into the sky. The concept is always that a mountain or its boundary must be
defined clearly.
 The Heart - The heart is the focal point of the painting and all elements should lead to it. The
heart defines the meaning of the painting. The concept should imply that each painting has a
single focal point, and that all the natural lines of the painting direct inwards to this point.
Elements and colors
Shan shui is painted and designed in accordance with Chinese elemental theory with five elements
representing various parts of the natural world, and thus has specific directions for colorations that
should be used in 'directions' of the painting, as to which should dominate.
Direction Element Colour
East Wood Green

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South Fire Red
NE / SW Earth Tan or Yellow
West / NW Metal White or gold
North Water Blue or Black
Positive interactions between the Elements are:
 Wood produces Fire
 Fire produces Earth
 Earth produces Metal
 Metal produces Water
 Water produces Wood
Elements that react positively should be used together. For
example, Water complements both Metal and Wood; therefore, a
painter would combine blue and green or blue and white. There
is a positive interaction between Earth and Fire, so a painter
would mix Yellow and Red.
Negative interactions between the Elements are:
 Wood uproots Earth
 Earth blocks Water
 Water douses Fire
 Fire melts Metal
 Metal chops Wood
Elements that interact negatively should never be used together. For example, Fire will not interact
positively with Water or Metal so a painter would not choose to mix red and blue, or red and white.
Connection to poetry
A certain movement in poetry, influenced by the shan shui style, came to be known as "shan shui
poetry". Sometimes, the poems were designed to be viewed with a particular work of art, others were
intended to be "textual art" that invoked an image inside a reader's mind.

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Influence
Animation and film
The art form of shan shui has been popular to the point where a Chinese animation from 1988 entitled
Feeling from Mountain and Water uses the same art style and even the term for the film's title.
Additionally, many recent movies and plays produced in China, specifically House of Flying Daggers
and Hero, use elements of the style itself in the sets, as well as the elemental aspects in providing
"balance".
Construction
The term shan shui is sometimes extended to include gardening and landscape design, particularly
within the context of feng shui.