About the Trinity: Painting, Calligraphy and Poetry in China. The Symbolism of Clouds in Chinese Painting Cover Image

За триединството: живопис, калиграфия и поезия в Китай. Символизмът на облаците в китайската живопис
About the Trinity: Painting, Calligraphy and Poetry in China. The Symbolism of Clouds in Chinese Painting

Author(s): Viara Popova
Subject(s): Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Visual Arts, History of Art
Published by: Великотърновски университет „Св. св. Кирил и Методий”
Keywords: Alfred Stiglitz’s “Equivalents”; perspective (linear) and pictorial tradition; symbol – sign; ideogram –pictogram – hieroglyph; image – word; clouds as a cultural metaphor; Maya; All the same;

Summary/Abstract: The text is based on Hubert Damish’s thesis in „A theory of (cloud): toward a history of painting“(2002), where the cloud is interpreted as non-inclusive, not participating in the perspective model as a painting system. Respectively, the cloud as an anachronism of the picturesque as opposed to a linear (perspective) dominant Western norm (in Damish terminology) is traced as functioning in Eastern, Chinese painting itself as a kind of cultural and historical rudiment. And it is through the synthesis of painting and word in Chinese painting:1 / it is demonstrated in contrast to Foucault’s thesis in “This is not a pipe“ how it is possible for a verbal sign and visual representation to be given simultaneously; 2) the historical origin of the letter is displayed as a sign from the image as a hieroglyphic symbol; 3) demonstrates how the third dimension is constructed not in perspective,but in a meaningful depth, and precisely through the clouds as a metaphor for the Maya (illusion) of the visible and all-in-one nature of things; 4) so summarizing: the cloud rises from scenic scope and instrument to the level of universal cultural metaphor.

  • Issue Year: 4/2020
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 49-59
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Bulgarian
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