A Study of ZHANG Da-qian's Views of the Chinese and Western Arts

When comparing Chinese art with its Western counterpart, ZHANG Da-qian was obviously confronted with contradiction. On the one hand, he attempted to improve the weak status of Chinese art when it is faced with the Western one through the consistency of the two in aspects of “artistic conception, grounding and technique.” Meanwhile, he stressed the priority of the non-realistic tradition of Chinese paintings over the Western stiff copy of the reality. Such contradiction is also shown in his argument concerning the scientificity of Chinese painting. Such attitude that one intends to reject something but has to accept it showed ZHANG's contradiction when he faced the evolutionary evaluation system popular in the circle of Chinese paintings. This is also the typical characteristics among the traditional painters during the transitional period.