The Art of Painting Landscape

The synthetic beauty of landscape painting is derived from the organic combination of four interrelated forms of art including painting, calligraphy, poetry, and seal cutting. It plays an active role in human living, especially in the case of scholars in Chinese history. The art of painting landscape is not technique-oriented alone. It is also about how to enjoy, evaluate, and appreciate what is expressed in the painting. In order to illustrate this point, some selected methods and theories are introduced and explicated in this chapter. Moreover, a discussion of three levels of aesthetic experience is briefed with reference to landscape, culturescape, and literati painting.