Contrast Between Monet's Work And Chinese Paintings example essay topic

Contextual Study Essay: Chinese Landscape My study had been based on Chinese landscape. I chose to research on this particular subject because I have an interest in it as it reflected who I am and my culture. I already know some things about Chinese painting but I had more to explore and discover underneath my knowledge. I looked at Chinese landscape painting in general, exploring the different styles that have been used in traditional and modern paintings. I also explored landscape painting by several western artists. I researched on Sch witters, Samuel Palmer and Claude Monet.

As a response to my study I produced a display work that showed the contrast between Chinese landscape painting and Claude Monet. I wanted to combine the two together and then compare them. During my research into Chinese landscape, I started to look at Japanese art. They are two different types of art but are very similar in style.

Landscape painting has traditionally been China's favourite theme as they show the wonder of nature. The Chinese characters for landscape mean mountain and water. Almost all landscape painting illustrate mountains and water. The paintings often have a symbolic meaning to them.

For example, the mountains represent long life and the water represents happiness. Eastern style paintings are generally very stylized and elegant. They are often paintings related to nature consisting of mountains, water, birds and fishes. There are 2 different types of Chinese paintings: traditional and modern. The traditional black and white paintings are usually flat with little use of perspective. Lines played an important role in the formation of images.

They were simplified pictures of either people, animals, plants or landscape and sometimes contained large empty spaces around the picture. Traditional paintings were not always in black and white. Some paintings consisted of a variety of colours but the style was kept the same as the black and white paintings. Faint washes of colour were used to sometimes fill the background or a certain space in the picture. Modern paintings also capture some of the traditional look but they have a brighter and a more realistic look to it as well. The paintings are more detailed and various types of colours were used.

The pictures were painted using the same brush as the one used for writing calligraphy, therefore you had to know how to hold and control the brush properly when you change from painting to writing calligraphy. The technique of traditional painting is divided into two major styles: meticulous and freehand. Meticulous requires care and grace into the painting while freehand forms shapes and shows the brushwork and ink technique. Freehand is much easier to use because it allows you to paint in the way you want the picture to be. It's almost like you " re letting the hand do the painting but you have to pay attention to how you " re holding the brush. This was also the same for writing calligraphy.

If you didn't know how to hold and control the brush then the calligraphy wouldn't be correctly written. Knowing how to write calligraphy was just as important as how to paint. Calligraphy was almost always used on paintings, which were written downwards that read from right to left. I selected Monet's work because I have an interest in the pictures that he paints and his style of painting. Claude Monet is generally thought to be the most outstanding figure among the Impressionists. The term Impressionism comes from his picture Impression: Sunrise.

A title was needed in a hurry for the catalogue of the exhibition in 1874. Monet suggested simply Impression, and the catalogue editor, Renoir's brother Edouard, added an explanatory Sunrise. Monet's painting style is all about light and colour and brush strokes. Monet discovered that when working from nature, even the darkest shadows and the gloomiest days had a vast variety of colours. He slowly learned that to show the light and colour in his paintings he had to paint quickly and to use short brushstrokes.

In all of his paintings, his brush strokes are very visible. He paints stroke by stroke that separate the colors whereas some artists make the colours blend in together. Monet's paintings mostly consist of landscape. His famous Japanese bridge painting was inspired by Japanese art and is known to the public worldwide. What I found interesting about this was that there was a connection between Monet's work and Chinese landscape paintings. Japanese art is very similar to Chinese art and this had a big influence on Monet's landscape paintings.

My research in Chinese landscape allowed me to explore some of what I hadn't known about before. There was indeed a contrast between Monet's work and Chinese paintings. Monet's paintings are about light and colour and Chinese paintings are about simplifying and brushstrokes. I discovered that there were also similarities between them as well. Landscape paintings are the main area of interest for both Monet and Chinese art. The direction of brushstrokes is almost alike between them both because line played a vital part in their paintings.

My research in Chinese landscape was interesting for me and it helped to understand a bit more about the paintings of my culture.