This year's CCTV Spring Festival Evening, inspired by "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" and "Fuchun Mountain Residence", two world-famous ancient Chinese landscape paintings, "Only Blue and Green" and "Remembering the South of the Yangtze River", both became popular.
"A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" and "Fuchun Mountain Residence" are both hand scrolls with the most ethnic cultural characteristics in the Chinese painting system.
The form of hand scrolls just provides an excellent carrier for landscape paintings - landscapes are the great things in the universe, people can't see the full picture of landscapes when they travel between mountains, forests, hills, and valleys, and landscape paintings need to accommodate a thousand miles of scenery, only the form of hand scrolls can To be able to show the infinite vastness within the finite.
From the scrolls of landscape paintings, we read about endless scenery and profound culture.
--editor
Hand scrolls are the most characteristic of national culture in the Chinese painting system. They have unique means of expression, form and content, and size standards. Even the way of display and appreciation is different from painting forms such as vertical scrolls, albums, and strip screens.
In the era of no dynamic images, the author of the scrolls broke the fixed focus viewing mode in order to satisfy the viewer's psychological needs for dynamic images, and tried every means to extend the time and space of the images horizontally in a continuous manner in a two-dimensional plane, starting from the sunrise. Until sunset, from the warm spring to the cold winter, from the sky to the ground to the south of the Yangtze River and the north of the Yangtze River, what's more, the audience is pushed out of the real scene and pulled into the author's spiritual world.
As the hand scroll slowly opens horizontally from right to left, the scenery will make you surprise and look forward to it from time to time.
In ancient times, the appreciation of hand scrolls was not lying flat in a spacious and bright showcase, receiving the audience's review at a glance, but opening paragraph by paragraph like a scroll and reading paragraph by paragraph.
Dynamic reading is the ancient way to truly appreciate hand scrolls.
In addition to the painted core, the introduction and the inscription at the end of the scroll are important textual information carriers for supplementary images.
Here we only take landscape painting scrolls as an example, and select the scrolls from several small perspectives, so that people can glimpse the narrative, lyricism, memory and imagination in the scrolls, perceive the different life experiences of the artist, and deeply appreciate the cultural charm of ancient Chinese scrolls.
Graphical Narratives in Scrolls
The earliest landscape image to appear on the hand scroll may be the "Luo Shen Fu Tu" painted by Gu Kaizhi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. This scroll is 27.1 cm wide and 572.8 cm long, and is colored on silk.
The basic size of the hand scroll is about 30 cm wide and 100 cm long. Of course, there are also different sizes of mini and tall scrolls, all of which are determined according to different creative themes and intentions.
"Luo Shen Fu Tu" is based on Cao Zhi's famous piece "Luo Shen Fu".
Although the landscape images in the scroll are "people are bigger than mountains and water cannot be flooded", they already have the prototype of landscape painting in the early Jin and Tang Dynasties.
As the scroll unfolds from right to left, the four scenes of Cao Zhi and Luoshen's encounter, staring, farewell and return are shown in turn. Characters and landscapes blend together, time and space expand, and the still images have dynamic changes and The progression of the plot.
The rolling hills, the ganoderma-like trees, and the auspicious clouds and Luoshui drawn by the ancient gossamer lines in the painting are not the protagonists of the volume, but they come and go with the transition of the characters and scenes. Immortal energy, as well as the poignant and dreamy artistic conception are all brought out from this.
Gu Kaizhi's "Luo Shen Fu Tu" not only fully integrates the formal characteristics of the hand scroll with the development of the story, but also explains the transformation of space in the depiction of different natural landscapes such as slopes, plains, Luoshui, and auspicious clouds, allowing the appearance of characters. Natural coherence and style.
Since the birth of the "Luo Shen Fu Tu" scroll, it seems that many painters are keen to tell stories and interpret classic texts and famous works in this form.
During the Northern Song Dynasty, there was a painter Qiao Zhongchang who was rarely recorded in the history of painting.
In this hand scroll with a length of 566.2 cm and a width of 30.48 cm, the author carefully depicts the natural scene of Chibi in Fu with the technique of ink pen and line drawing, showing the process of Su Shi's night tour of Chibi.
The scroll is divided into 7 scenes according to the original content.
In the volume, the Fuwen is copied next to the painting, with pictures and texts.
At the beginning, the protagonist Su Shi, two guests and servants appeared. Behind the figures, the painter painted the shadows of the four people with light ink, which faithfully expressed the meaning of "the shadows are on the ground, and the bright moon is seen", and also used the shadows to point out the time. .
The "shadow" in this picture can be regarded as the first of its kind in ancient Chinese painting.
Go along the bridge and enter the "Lingao Pavilion" in the second scene, and see Su Shi holding fish in one hand and wine in the other.
Look to the left again: the host and the guest come to the Chibi Cliff Terrace, facing the river to drink and eat fish.
The fourth and fifth scenes depict Su Shi taking clothes and climbing a mountain. In this section of dense forest and rocks, Qiao Zhong’s very ordinary landscape painting skills can be shown: at the place of “distance tiger leopard and horned dragon”, extremely tenacious lines outline the rocks, jungles, and cliffs. The water lines below are drawn in a circle and agile.
Scenes 6 and 7 are rafting on the river, the solitary crane roars, and finally Su Shi returns to the "Lingao Pavilion", talks with a Taoist in a dream, and wakes up looking at the mountains in the distance.
The scroll takes the activities of the protagonist as a clue. With the passage of time and the changing of the scene, the scroll is like a movie film, coherently presenting a seemingly dynamic picture, transforming the narrative in the article into a continuous visual image.
At this time, the landscape paintings in the scrolls have a plot narrative and a visual extension.
Qiao Zhongchang inherited the literati painting language of Li Gonglin's plain brush and line drawing, and created the first "Dongpo Chibi" in the history of painting on the hand scroll, and also painted the first "shadow" in the history of painting, and made this picture truly become a painting. A trip to Chibi under the moonlight flowing on the hand scroll.
In addition to textual narration, the narration of specific events is also an important part of hand scroll painting. The most famous ones are Zhang Zeduan's "Along the River During Qingming Festival" in the Northern Song Dynasty, "Kangxi Southern Tour" painted by Wang Hui of the Qing Dynasty, and various elegant collection scrolls of past dynasties.
These picture scrolls are like today's film and television documentaries, which restore the real life scenes of that era for us.
Pursue the ultimate beauty
The narrative in landscape hand scrolls is often associated with texts and specific scenes.
Since the beginning of the Five Dynasties, landscape painting has gradually emerged from the background of characters and buildings. Since Jing Hao's "Kanglu Tu", many scrolls of landscape painting in the Five Dynasties and Song Dynasties have gradually taken natural landscapes as the theme, expressing the increasingly intimate connection between man and nature. .
The Northern Song Dynasty was the mature period of landscape painting. Whether it was rich in techniques, complete in framing and composition, it was able to integrate endless landscapes into the silk.
The painter uses the color of brush and ink to examine objects, to elucidate the rational order and the change of nature.
The landscape at this time is not only the incarnation of natural state and personality, but even an ideal symbol of home and country.
In 1100 AD, Zhao Ji ascended the throne at the age of 19, and the young Song Huizong opened a new era of art that belonged to him.
A large number of outstanding painters, such as Li Tang, Zhu Rui and Zhang Zeduan, gathered in the Hanlin Painting Academy, which Huizong cared about, among them Li Tang's "Small Scenery of the River and Mountains" and Zhang Zeduan's "Across the River During Qingming Festival" are all in the form of hand scrolls It depicts the prosperity from nature to the city. Such extreme gorgeousness is the main theme of the landscape painting scroll of the Song Dynasty.
The landscape scroll that best embodies the gorgeous beauty is from "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" painted by Wang Ximeng, an 18-year-old boy who had not yet entered the painting academy at that time, but was regarded by Huizong as "teachable about his nature" and "taught his own methods".
This scroll is 51.5 cm in length and 1191.5 cm in width. It can be described as a real long scroll. It depicts thousands of mountains and valleys, undulating peaks and mountains, vast and magnificent rivers and mists, and there are figures, flying springs, houses, buildings, trees, flowers and bamboos, fishing boats, The cruise ship, the islands in the distance are stacked, the Tingzhu stretches, the water and the sky meet, and it is an ideal, gorgeous and bright peaceful world.
Mountains and waters are the great things in the universe. People who travel between mountains, forests, hills and ravines cannot see the whole picture of mountains and rivers.
In landscape painting, the scenery of a thousand miles should be contained within a few inches of silk, and only the shape of the hand scroll can show the infinite vastness within the limit.
The magnificence of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" is first expressed in space. The "Three Distances Method", which was good at expressing in the vertical vertical axis, has now been moved to the horizontal scroll and superimposed successively: the painter seems to be taking aerial photography. Draw a high, far-reaching, flat and distant sense of space and integrate it coherently, so you will find that each section of space is a rich, independent and complete picture.
The whole volume is unfolded, and the mountains are floating in the blue waves, and it seems to be floating in the universe.
The second is the turquoise coloring. The expensive sapphire blue and azurite green milled by malachite are hung on the mountain with texture and shape, and they still show a dazzling luster after thousands of years.
The richness of color gradation and the delicacy of rendering make the blue and green beyond the flat effect of decoration in Jin and Tang Dynasties, and into the three-dimensional visual imagination.
Three years before the birth of this painting, Emperor Huizong finished painting the hand-painted hand-painted scroll of "Snow River Returning to the Boat". This scroll is an ink and silk scroll. Although it is less than 2 meters, the composition still has a broad perspective and is very attractive.
Huizong transformed the subtlety of coloring into ink-color rendering, showing off the brightness and splendor of a rich and snowy year.
Perhaps after that he was conceiving another more splendid imperial landscape scroll. The appearance of Wang Ximeng gave Huizong the impulse and possibility to realize this idea.
So "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", under the guidance of Huizong, borrowed the hand-painted hand of this talented young man to draw the ultimate gorgeousness and brightness that he longed for.
Innovate in reading and recalling
The turquoise splendor on the hand scroll has gradually faded since the Yuan Dynasty. This fading is the color that precipitated after washing away the lead. The splendor of the floating world is not seen, but the level of experience remains. This is the color of memory and the heart of the artist. Consciousness and Monologue.
Qian Xuan's "Dwelling in the Floating Jade Mountain" can be described as a classic work scroll of landscape painting in the Yuan Dynasty.
The hand scroll is 29.6 cm in length and 98.7 cm in width. There is no majestic momentum or gorgeous blue and green in the short scale, and even the way of framing and photographing of "Three Far" has been diluted.
The accumulation of three groups of mountains in the picture is flatly placed in the picture scroll to show that the author's secluded Fuyu Mountain is located in Bilang Lake.
Trees and stones use extremely fine brushstrokes and symbolic forms to construct a simple and subtle aesthetic temperament.
Such an expression is not only very different from objective reality, but also completely avoids the stunning portrait techniques of the Song Dynasty's landscape vision.
Qian Xuan's landscape scroll doesn't seem to need to impress you. It slowly tells about his reclusive living state in a way of memory.
The painter's brush and ink are extremely rational and cautious, carefully tracing the lingering ancient style.
The harmony of light color and ink is the condensed essence of Huacai after it has faded.
Such a picture scroll requires you to temporarily let go of the demands in your heart, get close to it, or even walk into it, to read the painter's spiritual monologue.
Zhao Mengfu, a leader in the Yuan Dynasty painting circle who was both a teacher and a friend of Qian Xuan, once asked Qian Xuan for the benefit of "what is a scholar's painting". Through chatting with each other, he realized the true meaning of the literati's landscape painting, which is "the best way to express the spirit with things".
In 1295, Zhao Mengfu, who returned to Wuxing from Dadu, created the landscape scroll "Autumn Colors of Magpies and Flowers" for his friend Zhou Mi, which stirred up the old friend's nostalgia for the scenery of his ancestral home in Jinan, Shandong.
On the right side of the scroll is Huabuzhu Mountain and on the left side is Magpie Mountain, both of which are famous scenic spots in Jinan. The paintings are based on real scenes but not pictures. The creation techniques are completely based on the experience of memory and reading.
As far as I know, the painter returned to his hometown in the south, and based on his memory, he conceived the two mountains on the same scroll and placed them on a beautiful river.
A closer look at the two mountains and forests, the lines of drape, lotus leaf and water, all adopt the method of Wang Wei of the Tang Dynasty and Dong Ju of the Five Dynasties.
According to historical records, Zhao Mengfu brought back a large number of famous paintings from the southern capital of Dadu, among them the landscape of Dong Yuan.
In his painting theory, he attaches great importance to the "ancient", that is, the inheritance and tribute to the excellent traditions of the previous generation.
Zhao Mengfu's brush, ink and coloring in this volume are all references and revisions to the painting styles of the Tang and Five Dynasties, as well as the blue-green coloring of Song paintings. He constructs his own works based on the experience and aesthetics of reading ancient paintings.
Dong Qichang, a calligrapher and painter in the Ming Dynasty, got a glimpse of its meaning and wrote in the inscription: "This picture of Wu Xing is also the two families of Youcheng and Beiyuan. The painting method has the style of the Tang Dynasty, without its finesse, with the hero of the Northern Song Dynasty, without its roughness..." Can be described as a word.
Zhao Mengfu's two other works: "Water Village" and "Shuangsong Pingyuan" are both simplified and simplified by means of memory and reading, creating a new realm of literati landscape paintings.
The literati's landscape scrolls reject the narration of grand and complicated scenes, and mostly lyricize in personal and private fields. Therefore, in terms of scale, there are few long scrolls and giant scrolls, but mostly short scrolls that can be grasped at the palm of your hand.
Traces of the texture of life
Landscape painting is a kind of traces of time and space in the scroll. Time and space are endlessly changing. If the scroll can be long enough, it may be possible to draw endlessly.
In the history of painting, there is a hand scroll that has been painted for three or four years and has not yet been completed. If it was not urged by the painter's "useless teacher", I do not know when the author would be able to close the brush. ”, the landscape scroll completed in nearly seven years is the “Fuchun Mountain Residence” by the Yuan Dynasty painter Huang Gongwang.
The painter takes a distant view at the foot of Fuchun Mountain as the starting point of the picture scroll, unfolds the picture scroll and then guides the viewer to the middle, front and back of the mountain, and looks for the traces of the woodcutter and the fishing boat on the river with the sight of a tourist.
Landscape brush and ink developed from the Song Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty’s freehand brushwork. Huang Gongwang used impromptu brushwork to point trees and outlines. All the scenes were not depicted, but were created by the brush and ink, so he established a set of light and dark, paint at any time, and at any time. The painting method of changing and growing constantly.
The traces of the brush and ink on the scroll are like the author's electrocardiogram, and the free growth of life can be seen in the fluctuation of the heart rhythm.
Therefore, not only the material form of Mount Fuchun, but also the changes in time and space, the picture scroll presents the dual life texture of the author and the work.
Huang Gongwang mentioned in "Writing Landscapes and Waters" that painting mountains should be "folded and transformed, and the mountains are smooth. This is a living method."
The word "living method" should be an important method to draw a landscape painting with a sense of life experience, perhaps it is the realization of Huang Gongwang, a Quanzhen believer, in his lifelong cultivation.
The brush and ink of "rich Huazi" in the long scroll is a kind of life texture that can be drawn forever.
At this point in the writing, I suddenly thought: Wang Ximeng spent half a year, overdrawn his great energy and physical strength, and completed the magnificent proposition of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" at the cost of his life.
If time and space are reversed, his teacher is not Zhao Ji but Huang Gongwang. The intelligent Wang Ximeng will surely realize that there is another painting skill that can reflect life in the world. Geniuses may not die prematurely. Perhaps "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" will show Another look.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, there were two painters who conveyed a strong life experience in the landscape hand scrolls with their unique brush and ink: Gong Xian and Shi Tao.
In the "Endless Landscape of Streams and Mountains" painted by Gong Xian in his 60s, which is now in the Palace Museum, the entire scroll is a close-up view of the hills and ravines, dense and closed. Quiet and lonely mood.
This is precisely related to his personality and life experience of "sex withdrawn and incompatible with others".
Such no-man's land is hardly seen in the previous paintings, only Ni Yunlin's empty pavilion echoes the distance and the distance.
It's a pity that we have never seen Ni Zan's hand scrolls of landscape paintings, and Gong Xian is the only one who created the No Man's Land.
Shi Tao, a new artist in the early Qing Dynasty, has a landscape scroll titled "Searching for Qifeng and Making Drafts". The hand scroll is not long but is one of the author's most well-known works. The reason is not only that the whole scroll vividly conveys the artist's artistic life, but also lies in the content of the scroll. The title of the painting and the postscript reveal the author's distinct painting concept.
As an important part of Chinese hand scrolls - inscriptions and postscripts, it is also an important part of the appreciation of hand scrolls.
At the top right of the front of this volume, the author inscribed in official script the words "Search all the peaks and make drafts", which clearly showed the creative concept that was different from the mainstream of the Four Kings copying the ancients at that time.
The postscript in regular script at the end of the volume, with Guo Xi's remarks that "you can visit and live" triggered the painter's need to feel the natural creation of "Jiangnan Jiangbei, Huqiao Broken Bank, Linluan Cuidi, Feiyan Falling to the Sun", which not only echoes the title of the painting but also Emphasizes the importance of travel experience.
Then, he noticed that he was addicted to "this certain brush and ink, this certain school of law", which led to the shortcomings of "the blind people show the blind, and the ugly women criticize the ugly women", which shows the artist's keen artistic intuition and criticality.
The mountains, cliffs, forests and strange rocks in the picture scroll are not the scenery of a certain time and place, but the lively mental image of swept away the habit of painting after returning from travel.
Shi Tao's brush and ink and Gong Xian are decidedly polar.
(Author: Shao Cheejiong is an associate professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai Normal University)