Wonders of the World
Process
Northern Song landscape painting elevates the viewer spiritually. Guo Xi was a famous artist that transported bureaucrats from their mundane life to a place of sightseeing and thinking. His method of painting different sides of a landscape and putting them into one composition creates a spatial narrative journey. This is an adaption of Guo Xi’s style of painting with new content of famous monuments.
History
Guo Xi paints literary style called Wren. The type of landscape scenes are imaginary compositions based on elements seen in real life and romanticizing them. Landscape paintings do not provide easy narratives like portraits, but they open up possibilities. Landscape painting during the Northern Song Dynasty was ideal for increasing literacy, as people can interoperate what they see for themselves.
There are many ways to interoperate paintings. In Confucianism, mountains represent the emperor as the trees represent his officials. For the Taoist, their emphasis is in what is not painted or being shown.
