Shen Zhou's, Poet on a Mountaintop

Question 1: Chinese Painting

In many cultures, the artwork within does not vary much during the same time period. In the Chinese culture, there are two types of paintings; the Chinese court paintings and the Chinese literati paintings. While these two types of paintings have some similarities they also have many differences. Two paintings that are very diverse but were done during the same time period are Shen Zhou's, Poet on a Mountaintop and Yin Hong's, Hundreds of Birds Admire the Peacocks. These two paintings contrast in visual appearances, meaning, and how they were produced.

Shen Zhou's painting is an example of Chinese literati art. The basic elements of literati art are that they usually have a blank area on the piece of art and are not cluttered. Also they are fairly simple in detail and tend to lack color and usually appear monochromatic. On the other hand, Yin Hong's, Hundreds of Birds Admire the Peacocks is an example of a Chinese court painting. Chinese court paintings tend to be very colorful and contain a lot of detail. A common trend in Chinese court paintings are the appearance of flowers and birds in the painting.

Shen Zhou's Poet on a Mountaintop differs from that of Yin Hong's, Hundreds of Birds Admire the Peacocks in many ways. Shen Zhou's painting is very simple with very little detail. His painting is predominantly of the landscape with a person located on the top of the mountain. This is contrast to Yin Hong's painting where there are no people in the whole painting. Yin Hong's painting is also very detailed with many birds and trees, which is a characteristic of Chinese court paintings. On the contrary, Shen Zhou also only uses one color in his painting. It appears he uses grays, but this is created from washes, meaning watered down black in spread across the painting to make it appear as if it were a gray. This color difference is arguably the major visual variation between Shen Zhou's and Yin Hong's paintings. Another visual difference is that the literati painting done by Shen Zhou contains blank space all over the painting. Yin Hong's Hundreds of Birds Admire the Peacocks contains very little blank space, contrasting with the literati characteristic.

The meanings of the two paintings differ as well. Shen Zhou's painting most likely represents a feeling of a time that Shen Zhou once remembers.