Prosperity Xiudian: In 17 years, it was compiled into a major series of paintings of the past dynasties
Published in the 1066th issue of "China News Weekly" magazine on 2022.10.31
"China News Weekly" reporter Ni Wei
Standing in the hall of the National Museum and looking up, a huge poster of "Prosperity Xiudian" hangs on the entire wall on the third floor.
This is a large-scale exhibition with the theme of ancient Chinese paintings.
Some viewers who accidentally turned into the exhibition hall of "Prosperity Cultivation Canon" only realized after a long time that these are not genuine works.
These paintings are exquisitely beautiful from a distance, and their slenderness is visible. Only when you look closely can you find that the surfaces of the paintings are smooth and flat, and they are printed.
On September 29, the "Prosperous Age of Revisions - The Achievement Exhibition of 'Chinese Paintings of Past Dynasties'" opened at the National Museum of China.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Tian Yuhao
These exhibits are the proof draft files produced during the publication process of "Chinese Paintings of Past Dynasties" to determine the printing standards.
From the pre-Qin period to the Ming and Qing dynasties, the exhibits collect more than 1,700 pieces of the most classic paintings in ancient China, which can be called a three-dimensional history of Chinese painting.
From the famous paintings of the Song Dynasty such as "Across the River in Qingming", "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" and "Ban of the Stream", to the famous paintings of the four schools of the Ming Dynasty, the four schools of the Yuan Dynasty, and the "Four Kings" and "Four Monks" of the Qing Dynasty, the walls are full. , it feels luxurious.
On September 28, the day before the opening, Jin Xiaoming came to the National Expo and browsed all the exhibits again.
He is the deputy director of the Research Center of Ancient Chinese Calligraphy and Painting of Zhejiang University, and the deputy editor-in-chief of "Complete Works of Song Paintings" and "Complete Works of Yuan Dynasty Paintings". During the editing process, many of these sample manuscripts have passed through his hands, and some of these works are shot by him all over the world. back.
"Three lives are fortunate." He told China News Weekly in a southern accent. He has seen so many famous paintings with his own eyes, and he has rarely had such an opportunity since ancient times.
In 2005, Zhejiang University and Zhejiang Cultural Relics Bureau started the compilation of "Complete Collection of Song Dynasty Paintings", ambitiously hoping to collect the paintings of the Song Dynasty stored in public cultural and museum institutions around the world, and make them visible to the world in high-definition printing.
Later, his ambition became stronger and stronger, expanding from "Complete Works of Song Dynasty" to "Complete Works of Yuan Dynasty Paintings", "Complete Works of Ming Paintings", "Complete Works of Qing Dynasty Paintings" and "Complete Works of Pre-Qin, Han and Tang Dynasties", which were combined into "Chinese Paintings of Past Dynasties".
By this year, the project will be completed soon, and 226 volumes of 60 volumes in 5 episodes have been published, including 12,405 sets of Chinese paintings from 263 cultural and museum institutions at home and abroad.
The extremely fragile ancient calligraphy and painting, the contradiction between protection and utilization has always been insurmountable.
This act of photographing and publishing high-definition images of paintings of all dynasties has made paintings both famous and widely circulated.
"All Song Dynasty Paintings"
The largest exhibit in the National Museum's "Prosperity Cultivation Ceremony" exhibition is based on "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains".
The original painting is nearly 12 meters long, and the painting in the exhibition has doubled it to make a lighting effect map.
A small article is attached next to it, describing the experience of this painting entering the "Complete Works of Song Paintings".
As the institution with the largest collection of Song paintings in China, whether the Palace Museum supports the "Complete Works of Song Paintings" is a crucial first hurdle.
In 2005, as soon as The Complete Works of Song Dynasty was launched, the project team went to the Forbidden City and asked Zheng Xinmiao, then the director of the Palace Museum, for support.
Zheng Xinmiao readily agreed, and the Palace Museum then provided the editorial committee with photographs of the existing Song paintings in the collection.
However, the previous photos taken with 4×5-inch film, although the quality was already high, could not meet the image requirements of The Complete Works of Song Paintings.
In order to present the original appearance of the paintings in detail, the Complete Works of Song Paintings has set an unprecedented standard. Not only the Forbidden City, but also few collection institutions in the world can provide such high-definition photos.
The editorial committee of "Complete Works of Song Dynasty Paintings" proposed to the Forbidden City that it is possible to extract all Song paintings and shoot them once?
Based on the recognition of the academic significance of "Complete Works of Song Paintings", the Forbidden City has deployed a special team to complete the re-shooting of the collected Song paintings in more than two years.
Since 1992, "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" has not been opened for 17 years. After careful consideration, in 2009, the Forbidden City re-opened and filmed for "Complete Works of Song Dynasty Paintings".
The support of the Forbidden City acts as a weather vane.
"The attitude of the Forbidden City represents the attitude of the cultural relic community to a certain extent." said Bao Xianlun, deputy director of the Compilation Committee of the Chinese Painting Department and former director of the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics.
The Complete Works of Song Dynasty Paintings is divided into seven volumes. The first three volumes are collected by the Palace Museum, Shanghai Museum and Liaoning Museum, the last three volumes are collected by other cultural institutions in China, Europe, America and Japan, and the fourth volume is collected by the Taipei Palace Museum.
By 2011, the first three volumes and the last three volumes were all published, only the fourth volume in the middle was always absent, like a rift.
The communication with the National Palace Museum in Taipei was protracted and ups and downs.
Until 2021, when the major project is coming to an end, the "Complete Works of Song Paintings" volume from the National Palace Museum in Taipei will finally be published.
Some scholars once commented that after the large-scale classics such as "Quan Song Ci", "Quan Song Poetry" and "Quan Song Wen", the "Complete Works of Song Paintings" can be regarded as the "Quan Song Paintings" on a par with them.
At the same time as the collection of Song paintings, Tang paintings and Yuan paintings naturally entered the field of vision.
In the history of Chinese painting, Yuan painting and Song painting are two peaks that go hand in hand.
People in the Song Dynasty focused on objects and devoted themselves to depicting the reality of all things in the world. The academic painting achieved particularly high achievements; Yuan painting emphasized realm and brush and ink, which was the heyday of literati painting.
Tang paintings are even rarer. Xu Hongliu said that some of the surviving Tang paintings are actually copies of the Song Dynasty. When collecting materials for the "Complete Works of Song Paintings", some collection institutions were reluctant to "downgrade" them to be Song paintings.
In order to place the images of these famous paintings, the editorial team decided to start the Tang painting project. In the end, the result was far beyond the scope of the Tang Dynasty, forming the Complete Works of Pre-Qin, Han and Tang Paintings.
Due to the scarcity of paintings in the Yuan Dynasty and before, the editorial committee's goal is to "have one piece and one piece".
After entering the Ming and Qing dynasties, the number of works in existence has greatly increased, and the total number is tens of thousands, which has to be selected.
Jin Xiaoming said that there are generally three selection criteria, one is the classic works that have been constantly concerned and studied in the history of Chinese art; the other is the value of historical documents, including historical documents and painting history documents; the third is to reflect the originality of some painters and artistry, as well as works of research value for painters.
There are disputes over the chronology and authenticity of some paintings. Except for the "fake at a glance" works, those controversial works are also boldly selected if they meet the selection requirements.
Jin Xiaoming explained that because the primary position of the major department is to be an important image documentation database for art history research, the most important responsibility is to provide detailed information for scholars all over the world to study.
After the included works, the editorial team has sorted out the information of the works in detail, including academic disputes.
Each volume is accompanied by a detailed foreword by the editorial team.
In order to enhance the research value, the editing team also cut out the seals in each painting, made them clear through technology, and listed them in the appendix.
These seals are an important basis for identifying the authenticity of works and studying the clues of circulation.
Explore the world
This summer, the editorial team of Zhejiang University's Department of Contemporary Painting received an e-mail from the British Museum, with the "Pine, Bamboo and Stone Spring" by Zou Yigui, a painter in the Qing Dynasty.
This picture is at the end of Gu Kaizhi's famous work "The History of Women".
In the computer, the editor of the publishing house put together the "Pine, Bamboo and Stone Spring" and the first volume of "The History of Women".
So far, "Nv Shi Zhu Tu" has been connected end to end.
The original work of "Principles of Women's History" has been lost, and the British Museum collection is generally considered to be a copy of the Tang Dynasty 1400 years ago.
The painting was stolen by the British when the Eight-Power Allied Forces invaded Beijing in 1900 and sold to the British Museum for £25.
The original 12-segment pictures are now surviving in 9 segments, which are severely weathered and have been divided into three volumes by the museum for mounting.
In 2012, the Da Department team communicated with the British Museum, hoping to obtain Chinese painting images such as "Women's History" and other Chinese paintings to compile the Da Department.
It took ten years for the fractured "Women's History" to be restored, and the 9 surviving sections are presented in a complete form.
The large series contains more than 10,000 ancient paintings, many of which took years to collect, and there were many difficulties.
The "Chonglin in the Cold Forest", which is said to be made by Dong Yuan of the Five Dynasties, is also a painting that took a long time to collect.
This painting is collected in the Kurokawa Institute of Ancient Culture in Japan.
At first, the Kurokawa Institute only agreed to provide the 4×5-inch negatives shot in previous years; the second time, the department promised that the team could only use 8×10 film to take a full picture, not details.
In addition to taking the full picture, each painting included in the series also needs to take a few parts to show the most critical details. Otherwise, only the original picture negative can be used to enlarge the part, and the meaning of the detail picture will be lost.
They did not give up. After returning to Hangzhou, they continued to communicate with the Kurokawa Institute, and finally got their consent. They went to the Kurokawa Institute to shoot a part the following year.
Suzhou Lingyanshan Temple is a thousand-year-old temple that houses more than ten paintings of the "Four Monks" (Shi Tao, Bada Shanren, Shixi, Hongren) in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties.
At that time, the abbot of Lingyan Mountain Temple and Master Jingzong Taidou Mingxue rescued these famous paintings in a special era, and regarded them as treasures and did not want to show them easily.
The Da Department team visited the mountain several times, brought a full set of photographic equipment, and hired a bearer to carry it up the mountain. The first wait was three hours.
Master Mingxue was unmoved at first, but he was eventually influenced by them.
In a living room, the Da Department team pasted the white paper on the wall, and then held the painting in front of the white paper to avoid direct contact between the painting and the wall. It has been four years since I went up the mountain.
Xu Hongliu said that about 90% of Song paintings collected by institutions around the world have been included in the Complete Works of Song Paintings.
For the display of cultural relics, the vast majority of collection institutions remain open, and are willing to make the paintings in their collections more widely known through major departments.
Half of the overseas collections in The Complete Works of Song Dynasty are from Japan. At the beginning of the collection, Xu Hongliu went to Japan to search everywhere.
Communication with the Tokyo National Museum gave him a profound understanding of the complexity of this matter.
For three consecutive days, this matter was discussed at the Dongbo cadre meeting. After each meeting, the deputy curator Tomita Jun, who was then the director of the Dongbo Items Department, met with Xu Hongliu and told the museum's concerns.
Xu Hongliu wrote a reply letter at the hotel that night, faxed it to Tomita Jun, and asked him to help explain the next day.
Tomita Jun is the son-in-law of Zhejiang. He studied at the China Academy of Art and is very close to China.
Once, Tomita Jun hesitated to speak, Xu Hongliu asked him to speak directly, Tomita Jun just broke it, and the curator was worried about the quality of publishing in China.
Xu Hongliu said that the curator's concerns are understandable, but please rest assured that the complete works will be completed with high quality, "Unfortunately, I don't have any samples to show you now, but I have confidence." Three days later, the Japanese curator finally nodded and agreed. .
Xu Hongliu still remembers the anxiety of those days, "I don't know how tomorrow will be today, that feeling is very uncomfortable."
More overseas institutions have provided active support.
One summer vacation, the Princeton University Art Museum specially invited a photography team to photograph the ancient paintings in the collection according to the standards of the major department.
Xu Zhen, head of the Liaison Office of Zhejiang University in New York, went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. When the museum showed her to a studio, she told her that it was set aside for large-scale image shooting.
Xu Zhen, the current director of the Talent Office of Zhejiang University, was the only staff member of the Liaison Office of Zhejiang University in New York at that time. He was usually responsible for inter-school exchanges, talent introduction and alumni liaison. After the major department was launched, communication with overseas collection institutions became an important task. .
She is responsible for liaising with four institutions: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Princeton University Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
"The cooperation was very smooth at that time, and there was a relatively good opportunity for international cooperation." Xu Zhen recalled that the alumni in the eastern United States gave her the greatest support, "I am most anxious about the filming progress, not being rejected. "
Ferry with technology
How high-definition are these paintings in "Paintings of Past Dynasties"?
The partial picture will be enlarged to 1.5 times and 1.7 times of the original picture. If you hold it in front of your eyes for a close-up view, you can see the details that are difficult to see in the face of the original work.
Achieving this level of publication relies on high-definition photography and fine print.
There is only one person in the photography team of the major department, photographer Zhang Yilin, 40 years old this year.
Zhang Yilin's regular equipment is two huge black suitcases and a tripod bag, which contains cameras, film, photography lights, tripods and other equipment, weighing 150 pounds.
The film is 8 x 10 inches, with a length and width of 25.4 cm and 20.3 cm, which is only slightly smaller than a sheet of A4 paper.
The area of a sheet of 8×10 film is approximately equal to the sum of the areas of a roll of ordinary 135 film—the largest industrially produced photographic film.
The sharpness of the photo is inversely proportional to the magnification of the film, the lower the magnification, the higher the resolution.
Such a huge negative is even larger than some single-frame fans, so it is only necessary to wait for the big shot; the height of ordinary painting scrolls is generally no more than 50 to 60 cm, and the negative can be enlarged twice.
For larger-scale works, the 8×10 film magnification will not exceed four times.
Film has another irreplaceable advantage - color reproduction.
For so many years, the Da Department team has been tracking and comparing the most advanced photographic equipment. In the past ten years, the pixels of digital cameras have evolved from more than 30 million to 100 million and 150 million, but the color reproduction is still not as good as that of film.
"In terms of color reproduction, ink level, and the heaviness of the picture, film has an absolute advantage." Zhang Yilin said, "If you divide the shades of ink into layers, assuming that the film can restore ten levels, and the most advanced digital cameras only It can restore seven or eight layers.” Because digital cameras rely on the calculation of the chip to restore colors, when encountering very close colors, they may be processed into the same substitute color, and the lack of layers often makes digital photos reveal a “thin” feeling.
The principle of the film camera is optics, and it will restore all the colors that are ingested.
"For example, Chen Rong's "Ink Dragon Picture" in the Song Dynasty, the ink color gradually changes layer by layer, rendering the image of a dragon. There are also blue-green landscape paintings such as "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains". The azurite and stone green pigments vary with the water content. Showing layers of different turquoise. Only film can restore this rich sense of layers well." Zhang Yilin said.
When he set up this guy in a Japanese museum, some Japanese colleagues were surprised: do you need such a large negative?
This wooden-framed, bulky and mechanical camera resembles an old camera from a hundred years ago, and Zhang Yilin's posture when taking pictures of cultural relics also resembles a photographer from a hundred years ago.
He carried a black cloth with him to cover the camera, and got into the black cloth when shooting to avoid the influence of ambient light on visual judgment.
The difference is that when he pressed the shutter, there was no smoke coming out.
Photography is only an intermediate link, a ferryman who replicates paintings from ancient paper and silk to contemporary coated paper.
From paper to paper, it has to cross thousands of mountains and rivers.
From the original painting to the photographic film, it is distorted once; from the film to the computer, it is distorted again; from the computer to the printer, it is distorted again; from the printer to the paper, it is distorted again.
Every transfer of medium is a process of distortion.
It must be carefully calibrated to ensure maximum restoration of details and colors at every step, so that paintings printed on paper can vividly reproduce the charm of the original painting.
Correction is a delicate matter.
When printing, you should train your eyes like a high-definition camera to accurately sense the shades, color levels, and breath style of each painting.
The printing press is very sensitive, and factors such as temperature and humidity will affect its performance.
"If it rains at night and the humidity in the air increases, the colors printed the next day may be deviated." Xu Hongliu, executive editor of "Complete Works of Song Paintings" and deputy director of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, told China News Weekly.
In order to meet the unprecedented printing requirements of "Complete Works of Song Paintings", the printing factory that contracted it paid several million yuan from its own pocket and purchased specialized equipment from abroad.
In the printing industry, the "amplitude modulation screen" plate-making technology with a precision of 200 points is used to achieve the "photo quality" recognized in the industry, and the printed matter consists of 40,000 dots per square inch.
The 10-micron "FM network" technology used in "Complete Works of Song Paintings" has 360,000 dots per square inch, and the definition is increased by 9 times.
The paper is also customized from Germany, with very few pores on the surface, and each dot can "steadily" fall on the paper.
When printing "Complete Works of Song Paintings", Xu Hongliu required that the project team must have someone to follow the machine, work in three shifts in the printing workshop, try printing each version, and sign the machine before the official printing starts.
The next day, the pattern printed the day before was delivered to Xu Hongliu's desk. He approved it, and he passed the test.
Once he came back from a business trip, he ruthlessly killed all the patterns accumulated for many days, and the loss of paper cost alone was as much as more than 200,000 yuan.
Strict standards ensure the realistic reproduction of each painting.
Vladimir Terebenin, a photographer from the Hermitage Museum in Russia, took pictures of the Dunhuang painting collections in the museum. texture.
Legacy of the Great Department
Yu Hui, a researcher in the Painting and Calligraphy Department of the Palace Museum, once praised that with the painting department of the past dynasties, most of the time when doing research on paintings in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, you do not need to look at the original paintings.
Even if he is in the Forbidden City, the treasure house of calligraphy and painting, it is not easy to retrieve paintings from the cultural relics warehouse.
The Forbidden City has strict requirements on this. Every time precious ancient paintings are released from the library, they must go back to the library to "dormancy" for at least three years.
Cultural relics need to be protected and used, and the extremely fragile ancient paintings have created great obstacles to the use.
They rarely show up, and some authentic works are hard to see in a lifetime.
In the museum, bronzes from two thousand years ago can be displayed every day, but even calligraphy and paintings from 20 years ago cannot withstand long-term exposure.
Paintings of past dynasties reproduced Chinese paintings scattered in the warehouses of global collection institutions with the printing quality restored at the pixel level, which provides convenience for utilization and research.
"In the past decade or so, the academic circles have made more and more in-depth research on early ancient paintings, and there is no doubt that the painting department of the past dynasties has played a role in promoting it." Jin Xiaoming said.
For example, Chen Peiqiu, a famous calligraphy and painting appraiser in Shanghai, devoted himself to the research and appraisal of Song paintings after the publication of The Complete Works of Song Paintings, and wrote comments for many paintings.
It took 17 years to compile the major series, which has consumed many people's youthful years and prime years.
Jin Xiaoming has gray temples.
In the 1970s, when he was a teenager studying calligraphy and painting, it was difficult to find a model.
He remembered that the Shanghai Painting and Calligraphy Publishing House published a copybook of Mi Fu's "Hongxian Poems" in the Tokyo National Museum. .
As an art historian, he is more aware of what the publication of such a set of high-quality painting materials will mean to researchers, enthusiasts, and thousands of children who learn Chinese painting.
Having the opportunity to participate in such a project, he felt, "This lifetime is enough."
Zhang Yilin was a senior when he joined the department team, but he is no longer confused this year.
His career was rewritten by this project. He once wanted to do commercial photography, but he was trained to become a well-known cultural relic photographer with a unique vision. The project he is currently shooting is "The Complete Works of Liangzhu Jade Artifacts".
"There are very few opportunities to do one meaningful thing in my life." He said, "I devoted the best time of my life to this one thing, and I am very fortunate to persevere."
His set of "heavy equipment" is still in service. When shooting "The Complete Works of Li Keran" and other projects, the 8×10 film camera came back to the arena to take pictures of cultural relics according to the standards of the major department.
This is some kind of continuation of the big line.
"China News Weekly" Issue 40, 2022
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