Guo Xi

Early Spring

Autumn in the River Valley

Guo Xi (Chinese: 郭熙; pinyin: Guō Xī; Wade-Giles: Kuo Hsi) (c. 1020–c. 1090)^[1] Chinese landscape painter from Henan Province^[2] who lived during the Northern Song dynasty. One text entitled "The Lofty Message of Forest and Streams" (Linquan Gaozhi 林泉高致) is attributed to him. The work covers a variety of themes centered around the appropriate way of painting a landscape. He was a court professional, a literati, well-educated painter who developed an incredibly detailed system of idiomatic brushstrokes which became important for later painters. His most famous work is Early Spring, dated 1072. The work demonstrates his innovative techniques for producing multiple perspectives which he called "the angle of totality." This type of visual representation is also called "Floating Perspective," a technique which displaces the static eye of the viewer and highlights the differences between Chinese and Western modes of spatial representation.

The following is an excerpt from his treatise, "mountains and waters":

The clouds and the vapours of real landscapes are not the same at the four seasons. In spring they are light and diffused, in summer rich and dense, in autumn scattered and thin, in winter dark and solitary. When such effects can be seen in pictures, the clouds and vapours have an air of life. The mist around the mountains is not the same at the four seasons. The mountains in spring are light and seductive as if smiling: the mountains in summer have a blue-green colour which seems to be spread over them; the mountains in autumn are bright and tidy as if freshly painted; the mountains in winter are sad and tranquil as if sleeping. ^[3]

See also

• Culture of the Song Dynasty

Notes

References

• Barnhart, R. M. et al. (1997). Three thousand years of Chinese painting. New Haven, Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-07013-6
• Ci hai bian ji wei yuan hui (辞海编辑委员会）. Ci hai （辞海）. Shanghai: Shanghai ci shu chu ban she （上海辞书出版社）, 1979.
• Guo Xi's Early Spring

External links

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