Select two art works from Japanese culture and explain several ...

[crobinson2013]

Select two art works from Japanese culture and explain several ways in which these works illustrate Japanese tastes for simple forms and natural materials.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Discuss the formal innovations of Song landscape painting.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[owenfalvey]

Answer to Question 1

Responses will vary depending on the selection of artwork. Japanese culture comes into clearer focus during the first centuries of our era. Cylindrically shaped terra-cotta figures, called haniwa, embody the taste for simple forms and natural material. Housed in a structure made of raised wooden piles and a thatched roof, the shrines are left unpainted as the haniwa were left unglazed.

Answer to Question 2

Song painters cast their own long shadow over the future with a focus on the landscape. The Song style of monumental landscape was largely the creation of Li Cheng. In his hands, the elementsmobile mid-air perspective, monochrome ink, vertical format, flowing water, shrouding mists, and a buildup of forms culminating in towering mountainswere gathered into a newly harmonious and spacious whole.