Sui Dynasty (589-618) and Tang Dynasty (618-906)

 Style:

It was during the Tang dynasty that the greatest Chinese Poetry was composed, and, in the categories of religious and secular figure composition and portraits, the greatest pictures painted. Artists from the mid-Tang period onward came to rely even less than before on color, more on the descriptive and expressive power of brushline alone.

 Tang painters, like Tang sculptors, were occupied with the rendering of volume and movement, besides applying themselves to the special pictorial concern of group composition in space.

 By the late eighth century, more progressive painters were exploring the advantages of broader kinds of brushwork in place of the fine-line drawing, and of the reduction or complete exclusion of color. Several innovations include the po-mo or ”broken ink” method, a means of “breaking” by deeper-toned accents that flatness which can easily afflicted ink-wash painting, and the use of tsun, or texture strokes; both techniques were essential to the later evolution of the ink monochrome landscape.

 The mastery of arranging forms on a surface, and the unfailing sense of correct proportion in laying out the space around and between them, is the heritage of Tang painting.

 Artists:

Wang Wei

Wu Tao-tsu

Chang Hsuan

Chou Fang