CHINESISCHE LANDSCHAFTSMALEREI UND DEUTSCHE ROMANTIK

Abstract

In the first instance, the theoretical principles of Chinese landscape painting are disclosed regarding to a philosophical undertone of the human-nature relationship. In Europe, the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich are compared equivalent referring to the writings of the painter and writers of the German Romanticism. Behind the contrast of rather graphic ink drawing there and picturesque colour painting here there are similarities in style and meaning: for instance, Caspar David Friedrich’s theoretical focus on the All and his aesthetic concept to symbolize and poetize the nature, these and the Taoism seem to be similar philosophy and cosmology. In the meanwhile, there is a fundamental difference between those two concepts, which influences the composition of the painter profoundly: In Taoism the nature embodies the All, for the German romantics the nature is an integral part, together with the human they can approach the All – the transcendental overarching deity.