"Spirit Rock, Sacred Mountain: A Chinese View of Nature" Exhibition
Baruch College/Sidney Mishkin Gallery
This event has ended.
Spirit Rock, Sacred Mountain: A Chinese View of Nature will be the first of its kind to highlight the relationship between the rock and the mountain and its importance in both traditional and contemporary landscape painting. While the representation of rocks and mountains forms a long tradition in Chinese art, landscape painting has developed into a more contemporary expression. In this exhibition, paintings by C.C. Wang are juxtaposed with the actual rocks he painted, now in the renowned collection of Kemin Hu, and contrasted with the work of Hai Tao, who employs the techniques of Chinese brush painting but dramatically transforms his mountains into modern fantasies.
Natural rocks with individually unique shapes, curves, holes, and twists, have amazed the Chinese since ancient time. They believed that rocks were the bones of the earth, the essence of Qi (energy, or universal life force) and regarded them as "spirit rocks". The fever continues today across China. This obsession not only made rocks collectable art objects, but also formed the foundation and model for Chinese landscape painting – a special tradition that distilled the essence of natural scenery to express the ideal world.
Media
Schedule
from February 25, 2011 to April 06, 2011
Opening Reception on 2011-02-24 from 18:00 to 20:00