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Arts inception occurred the instant man was able to think for himself. This fact, uttered by its anonymous speaker, holds true because artistic expression is what allows a persons thoughts, feelings, and points of view to be represented. Art knows no limits, and has no boundaries. For example, humans today are able to decipher and understand relics of art from million-year-old societies, even though we no longer know their language or customs.
Presently, a favorite genre of art to study by art enthusiasts is Chinese painting and sculpture. This is because although hundreds of years separate them, ancient and modern Chinese works of art share many similar characteristics. An example of this parallel can be found in the early painting known as The Great Wave and the contemporary piece known as Untitled, more commonly referred to as Ahead. The Great Wave, painted by Katsushika Hokusai, is one of the most famous pieces of art found in Chinese culture. Its origin dates back to around 1831, during the Edo Period. The painting is part of a series of masterpieces entitled Thirty-Six Views of Fuji.
The painting is mostly dominated by three main colors: white, blue, and brown. Hokusai most likely chose these colors because of their association with the harmony of nature; brown for earth, white for air, and blue for water. The painting itself depicts a torrent seascape with Mt. Fuji looming in the background. In this work, he depicted the darkened curves of the foam of the waves as claws that seem to reach for the fishermen. The forthcoming smash of water delivers tension and suspense to the scene.
On an interesting compositional note, the largest wave is said to form a massive yin to complement the yang of void space below. In the foreground, a small peaked upsurge forms a miniature Mt. Fuji, which is echoed hundreds of miles away in the real Mt. Fuji. Due to Hokusai's use of perspective, the wavelet appears larger than the massive mountain. Interestingly for a print of this time, tiny fishermen huddled into their sleek crafts can be seen, instead of shoguns and nobility riding gallantly on horseback.
The fishermen appear to slide in and out of the seamounts, diving straight into the large wave in order to make it to the other side. In a stark contrast, the viewer is able to see the yin violence of nature dismissed by the yang confidence of expert trawlers. Untitled, painted by Hai Ying Wang, is a very new piece of art. It was painted in mid- 1993. As previously stated, the oil painting is also called Ahead, presumable because of the cheetahs eager stare at the great metropolis that lies in front of them. The work can be divided into three sections: the natural foreground, the chaotic middle ground, and the futuristic background.
In the front of the work, four cheetahs dominate a small cluster of land that looks too small for them to live comfortably in. It can be assumed that the animals are in this claustrophobic state because humanity (which has built the future they stare at, ) has pushed them out of their native territory and into an isolated space. In the middle, a busy system of roadways forms a blur of light. To add to the entwined disarray of brightness, a lone space ship is seen blasting away from earth and flying in outer space. The heat released from the launch blurs the viewers observation of the grand city in the background, perhaps suggesting that the technology is overtaking the municipality. In addition, the towers of the background seem to level off with the height of the sky.
Wang may be foreshadowing to the future downfall of the society, for when the Tower of Babel reached the height of the heavens in the Bible, God destroyed it and scattered humankind. At first, these two works of art may seem radically different from each other, but the two pieces surprisingly share many elements in common. Hokusai's The Great Wave and Hai Ying Wang's Ahead both compare the progression of man with eternal nature. In The Great Wave, fishermen are seen charging through massive whitecaps; in Ahead, people have exiled the animals to a remote location far from humanity. In addition, both pieces contrast the bluntness of manmade objects to the curvature of nature.
In the contemporary piece, the rectangular shape of the skyscrapers sharply contrast with the smooth curve of the cheetahs lanky bodies. In the older print, the blade-like shapes of the boats differ form the rolling bends the waves and Mt. Fuji form. The two works of art are different in a wide variety of ways as well. An obvious difference is the use of color in the pieces; The Great Wave utilizes only the most basic of colors, while Ahead manipulates extremely vibrant colors. In addition, the older pieces scene is timeless, where as the modern work of art can take place only in the future.
One final difference is that The Great Wave utilizes mainly the foreground for action to take place, while Ahead depicts motion in each section of the landscape. As one can easily see, the two works of Chinese art entitled The Great Wave, by Katsushika Hokusai, and Ahead, by Hai Ying Wang, are similar and different in many ways. The chief similarity between the two involves the balance of people and nature, while the differences mainly concern subject matter and composition. However, both pieces effortlessly demonstrate one important idea: the art of the Chinese is a form that has been mastered through time, and is one that will undoubtedly expand into the future.
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Research essay sample on Hai Ying Wang Great Wave Utilizes Art
