The Chinese landscape as one of the ways of spiritual and visual comprehension of the incomprehensible Tao

The purpose of this study is to identify a causal relationship between the formation of the phenomenon of Chinese landscape as an independent painting genre during the reign of the Tang and Song dynasties of the 6th and 13th centuries and the influence of traditional ways of spiritual and visual comprehension of Tao through religious and philosophical practices on it. The article analyzes the influence of the syncretism of the Chinese religious and philosophical worldview on the ideological and artistic programs of landscape painting as a meditative way of comprehending Tao in the period of the 6th and 13th centuries. In the course of the study, the authors prove that the traditional Chinese landscape cannot be considered only from an artistic and aesthetic point of view, only as a separate work of art in isolation from its religious and philosophical content, since the Chinese landscape is a religious and philosophical meditative practice of spiritual and visual comprehension of the incomprehensible Tao, which is the scientific novelty of this study. As a result, the authors conclude that the traditional Chinese landscape, reflecting in colors the practice of spiritual and visual comprehension of the incomprehensible Tao, should be perceived by analogy with the isography (iconographic tradition) of “Eastern Orthodox theology”.