The Tao of Chinese Landscape Painting: Principles and Methods

by Wucius Wong

Using philosophical concepts derived from ancient Taoist and Confucian thought, Wucius Wong explains the Chinese landscape painting tradition, its materials, and its brush-and-ink techniques. Bridging cultural gaps between East and West, he provides an introduction to Chinese aesthetics before delving into specific methods of understanding nature and of depicting its forms. The author's drawings and paintings illustrate that Chinese landscape painting is more than a means of representing the world, it is a way of seeing.

144 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1990

About the author

Born 1936 in Guangdong Province. Studied art and design in the United States from 1961 to 1965. Awarded study grant by the John D. Rockefeller III Fund in 1971, Emeritus Fellowship by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council in 1998, and Bronze Bauhinia Star Medal by the SAR Government in 2007. Worked as Excutive Assistant of the Extramural Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Assistant Curator of the City Museum and Art Gallery, and Principal Lecturer of the School of Design of the Hong Kong Polytechnic. Participated in the Sao Paulo Biennial of Brazil in 1961, the Shanghai Biennial in 1998, and the “China: 5,000 Years” presented by the Guggenheim Museum at New York in 1998 and at Bilbao in 1999. Retrospective exhibition presented by the Hong Kong Museum of Art in 2006, and by the Macao Government in 2010. Work featured in the collections of the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Shanghai Art Museum, Changzhou Art Museum, British Museum, Ashmolean Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, Minnesota Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Cleveland Museum of Art, Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, Sackler Museum of the Harvard University, Museum fur Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin, and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. Authored many books on art and design published in different languages in Hong Kong, Taipei, New York, Barcelona, and Indonesia. Now Adjunct Professor of the Fine Arts Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Honorary Museum Expert Adviser to the Leisure and Culture Department of the Hong Kong Government.