Let+the+Hills+be+Hills+and+the+Rivers+be+Rivers...--Yong+Liangyang


 * Shan Shui Environmental Art**

Title(s): Let the Hills be Hills and the Rivers be Rivers, Leave Nature Alone, Don't Let Nature Come to an End. Artist: Yong Liangyang. Date: 2009 Country of Origin: China Medium: Advertisement, commercial.
 * Artwork Identification**

In response to the rising pollution in China, the China Environment Protection Foundation decided to use a traditional style of art to appeal to the people of China. Using the Shan Shui style, artist Yong Liang Yang morphed images of cars, buildings, factories, electrical towers, and other images of modernization into a traditional landscape-style image. This series of three paintings were printed up and hung in high-traffic areas of China, including subways, to show Chinese people how erosion and pollution were affecting their once-beautiful mountains and valleys. This painting, with the subtitle, "Don't Let Nature Come to an End," looks like a typical Chinese landscape painting at first glance. Upon further examination, the electrical towers, smog, factories, and crowded buildings come into view.
 * Introduction**

“Yang Yongliang is a young artist from Shanghai who studied traditional Chinese art such as shui mo painting and calligraphy from his early age. His teacher was Yang Yang who is the professor of traditional art at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Yang Yongliang cleverly recreated "Cun", the main representation of Chinese Shanshui paintings by using a camera, the contemporary visual device, to express his creativity for the subjects he is concerned with. He combined the traditional Chinese paintings with the modern Shanghai city life and the details reveal current urban culture. The scenes of construction sites, large cranes, traffic signs and fly-overs those all Shanghai citizens are familiar with and all have become critical elements in his artworks. These common objects can be found everywhere in Shanghai, Yang Yongliang has arranged them to fit into the traditional Chinese Paintings' composition. When watching the photographic works at a distance, they are dreamlike Shanshui paintings. On the contrary when looking at them closely, they become shockingly modern city views. He perfectly handles the contradictions between ephemeral and solid, vigor and gentle, sparse and bold, beauty and ugly so as to make the entire picture poetically harmonious, but the details are 'blots on the landscape'. He successfully achieves a perfect balance between fragility and danger, beauty and cruelty. He brings the viewers not only visual enjoyment, but also the contemplation and self-examination of the various social and cultural concerns.”

Shan Shui literally means mountains and rivers.

There was also a commercial to accompany the printed ads.

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 * Descriptive Analysis**

In each of the paintings done by Liangyong he uses traditional style of Chinese painting, yet when they are looked at closer you can see that what look like mountains, trees, and rivers are actually cars, electrical towers, buildings and factories. All are done in black and white, and smog is intensified in the background. There are also inscriptions and stamps on them that make them look even more authentic. I think that these ads are brilliantly done to convey the message. They are done to look like traditional paintings of a place that is so beautiful, yet it shows what it will look like if people don't start taking responsibility for their actions. The message in the final piece "Don't Let Nature Come to an End" is really powerful.
 * Personal Interpretation**

The Inspiration Room. []** http://limnartgallery.com/section/64875_Yang_Yongliang.html
 * References