Language Debate

Author: Qi Haiping / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-07-01
Features: The concepts elaborated by the author of this book, to some extent, reflect the formalist art history perspective since Wolfflin, focusing on the evolution of painting language and the exploration of its different forms and styles. Unlike Wolfflin's stylistics, the author emphasizes the pure form of painting language itself and classifies different systems of Western painting language from the perspective of language expression. In the author's view, Western painting language can be divided into two forms—pencilless painting and pencil painting—based on the spiritual temperament conveyed by shapes and the brushwork methods and attitudes. Due to the obvious regional and cultural differences between these two forms, the author considers them divisible into Florentine style and Venetian style, which has some similarities to Wolfflin's binary opposition of "linear" and "painterly." The author believes that Western painting language is built upon the opposition of these two language types and has evolved and developed within this binary structure, with Western modern painting language merely being one link in its aesthetic logic chain. The author also examines the relationship between artistic language and social trends, as well as their interaction, using this as a basis to provide unique descriptions and interpretations of artistic phenomena after Impressionism. The summary of painting language is the core part of this book. The author, in a uniquely ambiguous way characteristic of aesthetics, dialectically divides painting language into "external form" and "internal form," and systematically discusses the relationship between the two. In this book, the author not only narrates the different types and developmental history of Western painting language but also, from a theoretical perspective, provides an in-depth discussion and interpretation of its formation and origins.