Paradigm Shift in Chinese Landscape Representation

Abstract

Studying Chinese landscape painting of the Southern Song period, I propose a semiotic paradigm to examine its artistic change from realist representation to self-expression. This conception is inspired by the Morrisian hypothesis about the pragmatical dimension of semiosis. In this light, I discuss the paradigm shift at two levels, the formal level of visuality and the conceptual level of ideology. Accordingly, I observe that the paradigm shift decisively redirected the course of the mainstream in Chinese landscape painting from being external sensitive to more internal sensitive, and thus a new paradigm has been set up in Southern Song.