Between Brush-and-Ink and Line: A Comparative Study of Aesthetic Philosophy in Chinese Ink Painting and Western Drawing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64504/artsappreciation.v1i1.887Keywords:
ink painting aesthetics, western drawing, comparative aesthetics, bimo philosophy, intertextual brushstrokeAbstract
Brush-and-ink (bimo) and line, as the respective central mediating substances of Chinese ink painting and Western drawing, are not merely physical instruments of mark-making: they are embodied expressions of two civilizations' fundamental understandings of space, time, being, and beauty. This paper undertakes a comparative aesthetic analysis — with philosophical examination as its primary axis and art history and iconography as auxiliary frameworks — to systematically explore the deep similarities and differences between the Chinese ink painting aesthetic tradition (with "spirit resonance," "ink-and-brush must follow the age," and the theory of the "single brushstroke" as key theoretical nodes) and the Western drawing aesthetic tradition (with linear perspective, disegno theory, and formalist criticism as key theoretical nodes) across six core dimensions: (i) ontological foundations — the divergence between a cosmological-organic worldview and a geometric-rationalist one; (ii) the philosophical status of line — differing roles as "trace of life" versus "armature of form"; (iii) spatial treatment — the epistemological difference between mobile perspective and fixed-point perspective; (iv) temporality — the opposition of process aesthetics and completion aesthetics; (v) bodily engagement — the perceptual difference between the writing body and the observing body; (vi) void and fullness — the cultural contrast between an aesthetics of emptiness and horror vacui. Through comparative analysis, the paper proposes the concept of the "intertextual brushstroke" to describe the mutual interpenetration generated by contact between the two traditions since the twentieth century, illustrated by the cross-cultural practices of Zao Wou-Ki and Chu Teh-Chun. The study demonstrates that the philosophical differences between ink painting and drawing are neither reducible to technical questions nor constitutive of incommensurable cultural barriers, but are rather two beautiful forms grown from the same human impulse — to capture time and being through the trace — in the soil of different civilizations.
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