Taoism and Chinese Landscape Painting

This essay deals with the Taoist (Daoist) aesthetics and its specificities. It is hypothesized that knowing Taoism will help us understand Chinese landscape painting. The present essay attempts therefore to show that Taoism has founded the theoretical basis of the aesthetics of Chinese landscape painting. According to Taoist teachings, painting, in its best, should be the medium of the Tao. That’s why it is aimed to clarify the fact that the painting is the adequate medium to»express» the Tao. The texts of Taoism tell us that the Tao cannot be communicated in language, yet Taoists saw in painting a powerful medium to convey the Taoist wisdom. An analysis of the composition of landscape painting shows us how the pictorial image could represent this wisdom adequately. Finally, it is concluded that the application of light and diffused colors, the ubiquitous vacuum and emptiness, and the absence of linear perspectives in Chinese landscape paintings indicate the influence of the Taoism in the Chinese artistic creation.