Collage design project: Landscape on the Wall
Design Brief
One of my major inspirations for this project is the piece on the right, a piece by collage artist Jesse Treece.
What I like about this piece is the artist uses vintage textures that put old forms into something new. I also like that he uses elements from nature, and associated them with the vintage image of a human. Even though these images are really different, they look very harmonious, as is the color palette of this collage. To me, this showcases an interesting balance between humans and nature.
My other inspiration comes from this landscape design by architect I. M. Pei. This picture was taken by me at the Suzhou Museum last fall.
From my perspective, Suzhou gardens are fascinating because its designers take different elements from the wild, and delicately reorganize them as an expression of a certain culture. With that being said, these gardens also own an interesting balance between humans and nature.
I think this design on the right is also a collage because it combines different forms and puts them into something new — a design that extracts the elements from traditional Chinese culture, yet also being a very modern landscape because of its simplicity.
I also look forward to creating something like this in this project, something that is both vintage and modern.
I’ve summed up the main goals for my design into the following points:
- Communication between time and space — past meets present; east meets west
- To blend the elements of traditional Chinese culture into modern design
- The balance between humans or man-made things and nature
Research
The major questions I want to look into are about the “elements of traditional arts“ and the examples of “modern design“, as well as the examples that bring those two together. I have looked through many good examples, and here are some of the selected topics that bring out my interest.
Abstract Paintings
Abstract paintings, as is shown above, convey concepts that you won’t find in visual or physical reality, and the meaning is up to the viewer’s interpretation. To me, these paintings are interesting because they make me think about traditional Chinese landscape paintings. Many Chinese landscape paintings also don’t capture every little detail of visual reality. What matters more is whether they convey the “vibes and feels“ at the moment. I think I observe an interesting balance between east and west, past and present in these abstract paintings.
Elements of Jiangnan Architecture
The things that I’m focusing on while researching Chinese architecture are the roof design, patterns, and color palette. The pictures above are some sample images that inspired me. Most of the pictures I selected are the “Jiangnan“ style architectures, and they have very strong common characteristics — white walls, bricks on the roof with a dark bluish-grey color, et cetera.
Paper-cutting Art
I think paper cutting arts are very inspiring to look at because it is the combination of different forms — paper, and the things you see in physical reality like trees and flowers.
Other Inspirations
Analysis of Eastern & Western Landscape Painting
As is mentioned in my design brief, I’m interested in artistic communication when east meets west, and past meets present. Landscape painting would be a great place to start my observation. I put two iconic landscape paintings in here so that we can make better comparisons and discover their similarities and differences.
For the western side, I choose to analyze impressionism paintings. In these works of art, the painters focus more on the momentary change of light and colors. For the eastern side, my selection is the Chinese landscape painting. This is a very famous art genre in Chinese culture, where the painters focus on drawing the mountain and water.
From my perspective, the similarities between impressionism and Chinese landscape paintings are very clear: instead of spending time on the accurate physical details, the artists focus more on the vibes and how to feel about the environment. In other words, when you look at paintings like these, you think about how you feel when you are actually there, experiencing the scenery.
On the other hand, the differences between these two types of artworks are also very obvious. To start with, impressionism artists use a variety of different colors to capture the light changes, while traditional Chinese painters prefer to use a more calm, muted palette. In addition, Chinese artists still pay a lot of attention to the details. Even though the shape and the bottom of the mountains are rather blurry, the trees, rocks and humans in the painting on the left are very delicately illustrated.
My Design
The main idea of this design is “landscape on the wall“. The major thought is to put landscape illustrations of different forms on the wall of a traditional Chinese Jiangnan garden.
Just like the Suzhou gardens, Chinese people have always been putting “mini landscape“ on their household, and I’m interested to explore the different forms of landscape expression from past to present, and from east to west. In addition, I think the combination between the wall and the landscape is an interesting intersection between the human world and nature.
In this piece, the roof and the blue mountains are actual photographs. The BW illustrations are taken from traditional Chinese landscape paintings. I also include elements from paper cutting are and different stone textures. The background between the landscape and the roof is an abstract painting. Even though this piece is probably a bit too harmonious compared to some other collages, I think it showcases the similarities between different forms of art, and how well can different things blend in together.
In terms of the balance between color and detail, I intentionally select the blue picture and the green background which acts as sky because they create an interesting contrast to the conventional blue skies and green mountains, and also add to the color diversity of the entire piece. The thin line that connects the shape of mountains of different textures, as well as the little trees on the center of the mountains, are all details I decide to keep in order to maintain this balance.
