Shen Zhou’s, Poet on a Mountaintop
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Question 1: Chinese Painting
In many cultures, the artwork within does not vary much during the same time period. In the Chinese culture, there are two types of paintings; the Chinese court paintings and the Chinese literati paintings. While these two types of paintings have some similarities they also have many differences. Two paintings that are very diverse but were done during the same time period are Shen Zhous, Poet on a Mountaintop and Yin Hongs, Hundreds of Birds Admire the Peacocks. These two paintings contrast in visual appearances, meaning, and how they were produced.
Shen Zhous painting is an example of Chinese literati art. The basic elements of literati art are that they usually have a blank area on the piece of art and are not cluttered. Also they are fairly simple in detail and tend to lack color and usually appear monochromatic. On the other hand, Yin Hongs, Hundreds of Birds Admire the Peacocks is an example of a Chinese court painting. Chinese court paintings tend to be very colorful and contain a lot of detail. A common trend in Chinese court paintings are the appearance of flowers and birds in the painting.
Shen Zhous Poet on a Mountaintop differs from that of Yin Hongs, Hundreds of Birds Admire the Peacocks in many ways. Shen Zhous painting is very simple with very little detail. His painting is predominantly of the landscape with a person located on the top of the mountain. This is contrast to Yin Hongs painting where there are no people in the whole painting. Yin Hongs painting is also very detailed with many birds and trees, which is a characteristic of Chinese court paintings. On the contrary, Shen Zhou also only uses one color in his painting. It appears he uses grays, but this is created from washes, meaning watered down black in spread across the painting to make it appear as if it were a gray. This color difference is arguably the major visual variation between Shen Zhous and Yin Hongs paintings. Another visual difference is that the literati painting done by Shen Zhou contains blank space all over the painting. Yin Hongs Hundreds of Birds Admire the Peacocks contains very little blank space, contrasting