This study has researched the aesthetic awareness and the expression method of the landscape painting that is described in 『Limjeongochi (林泉高致)』 of Kwakhi, based on the philosophical contemplation of Rihak (Neo-Confucianism) of the Northern Song Dynasty. Landscape paintings were flourished especially in the Song Age. The emergence of this background can result from several factors. Above all, this mirrors the epochal art tendency and view of aesthetics in contrast to those in the previous times, which has something close to do with the spirit of the age when literary paintings came to the fore and Rihak (Neo-Confucianism) of the Song Dynast was deeply embedded in society. The highly learned Kwakhi, a painter in painting art academy, made an exchange with many literary men, thus, being influenced by Rihak (Neo-Confucianism) in reflection of the sprit of the age that epochal intellectuals held. The aesthetic awareness of landscape in 『Limjeongochi (林泉高致)』, was described not as a realistic painting that recreates nature by the means of visual and sensory elements but as the best good (善) and the best providence (天理) interpreted as universal unity (天一合一) in harmony with reason and emotion. This reflects the aesthetic awareness that cognizes universalism (宇宙論) as the essence of human character, and ultimately the moral principle emphasizing investigation of things (格物致知) and discipline, thereby providing the momentum to highly appreciate the landscape painting. A characteristic of landscape painting is that this painting expresses the beauty of landscape in a vivid way, regarding transcendental contemplation or nature as the circulating organism that contains poetic implication. This pursues the method of understanding the power (power of mountain) and attribute (essence of mountain) by observing landscape, at close or far distance and looking into all over the three surfaces of the mountain (high, deep, and plain surfaces) for spatial expansion, in order to overcome the problem focusing on a single object, bring a dynamic change in an object so that it could move to and fro with full vigor, and to embody it into a living thing, as if it were actually described in landscape. It can be said that energy that figure paintings put weight on is included in landscape painting, also. In this regard, the fundamental principle of stroke and ink has played the inter-complementary role to vitalize literary paintings, and furthermore expand the natural beauty of vigor from landscape painting into flower bird paintings.
soon-seob kim (Sat,) studied this question.