The Linguistic Shaping of Landscape Painting Styles by Traditional Philosophies

Beginning with the relationship between traditional philosophy and landscape painting styles, this study systematicallydemonstrates how the three major philosophical traditions—Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism—have shaped theartistic language of landscape painting. The research finds that traditional philosophy primarily influences landscapepainting styles through three dimensions: compositional language, brush-ink language, and conceptual language. Incompositional language, the shaping is achieved through two core mechanisms: “the interplay between emptiness andsolidity” and “the unity of heaven and humanity,” where Taoist yin-yang dialectical thinking dominated the treatment ofempty-solid relationships, while Confucian unity of heaven and humanity influenced the overall composition; in brush-inklanguage, this is reflected in two aspects: “simplified and implicit” brushwork characteristics and profound ink-washartistic conception, with Taoist “quiet non-action” thought directly influencing the artistic pursuit of “one stroke serving asten”; in conceptual language, influence is primarily generated through the handling of subject-object relationships and thepursuit of transcendent realms. This shaping mechanism, characterized by its multi-layered and systematic nature, hasnot only influenced artistic creation itself but also had inevitable impacts on art and cultural inheritance. In the contextof contemporary artistic creation, this shaping mechanism still holds significant inspirational value, providing importantintellectual resources for addressing the relationships between tradition and innovation, and between local and internationalperspectives.