The Image of the City in Chinese Cultural Tradition and Visual Practice: from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period

Abstract

The article examines the problem of the artistic evolution of the image of the city in Chinese fine art. The focus of the authors’ attention is the study of the main stages of the development of the urban landscape genre. The purpose of the article is the analysis of the main stages of the development of the urban landscape genre in Chinese art, as well as the study of its structural formalization and the formation of the repertoire from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. The subject of the research is Chinese art history discourse. The works of Chinese fine art of historical periods were used. The authors found out that the development of the urban landscape genre is connected with the general evolution of the Chinese cultural tradition and its visual forms. They are a constant factor influencing the formation of visual tradition. The article defines two stages of development of the urban landscape genre paradigm. The first continues from the time of the emergence of permanent pictorial forms (X century). Later, during the period of the Song dynasty (XII–XIII centuries) and the period of the Ming dynasty (XIV–XVII centuries), visual culture involved the urban landscape and urban everyday practices in the general artistic space of painting. In the context of the evolution of art during the Qing dynasty (XVII–XIX centuries), the urban landscape is represented for the first time with the help of genre features. According to the authors, these signs should be presented in the form of a combination of three components: 1) urban architectural landscape; 2) representations of typical models of urban life; 3) reproduction of typical city "cultural heroes". The authors prove that the evolution of the urban landscape genre at various stages of development is connected with the processes of self-awareness of Chinese art and the determination of the forms of its identity.