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Tonight I read The Art of Chinese Landscape Painting that I bought this weekend. The book is part of an "Art of the World" series from the 60's so was a little dated but nice nonetheless. I love Chinese landscape paintings and have been trying to find a book about them for the past few months. So I was very excited when I picked up this book, then I started to read closer I found it wasn't so much a book about landscape painting but was a look at landscape painting at the Dun Huang caves. The Dun Huang caves, over hundreds of them, have been a place for Buddhist art from the Han dynasty down through time. Dun Huang is in the North West of China and was one of the key stops on the silk road so shows clearly and interesting mixture of Chinese and foreign influences. A huge number of ancient manuscripts were also found hidden in one of the caves but that's another story.
The book ended up being half way between a history of landscape paintings and a look at the Dun Huang art. The history, dynasty by dynasty was a nice brief introduction to the development of landscape painting, what was used then. The author was also very good at introducing the philosophical and religious nature of the paintings and the ideas behind them.
The plates came mainly from the Dun Huang caves. Some were truly breathtaking and gorgeous. Each was also carefully analyzed for technique and content. Showing the development of different ideas and themes. The only problem was that some of the paintings, either due to degradation of the paintings themselves, or the poor quality of the pictures were a little hard to decipher. But overall very interesting. I'm guessing there's a more modern book out there with more complete pictures and greater descriptions but this was definitely a good book to have while I'm waiting for that.
The book ended up being half way between a history of landscape paintings and a look at the Dun Huang art. The history, dynasty by dynasty was a nice brief introduction to the development of landscape painting, what was used then. The author was also very good at introducing the philosophical and religious nature of the paintings and the ideas behind them.
The plates came mainly from the Dun Huang caves. Some were truly breathtaking and gorgeous. Each was also carefully analyzed for technique and content. Showing the development of different ideas and themes. The only problem was that some of the paintings, either due to degradation of the paintings themselves, or the poor quality of the pictures were a little hard to decipher. But overall very interesting. I'm guessing there's a more modern book out there with more complete pictures and greater descriptions but this was definitely a good book to have while I'm waiting for that.