Xinhua News Agency, Nanchang, January 24 (Reporter Yuan Huijing) Rabbits often give people the impression of roundness and cuteness, but have you ever seen a "square" rabbit?
There is one in the "Geshan Miscellaneous Picture Album" by Zhu Da, a painter of the "Bada Shanren" in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. With a few strokes, it looks like a child's stick figure. The outline and eyes of the rabbit are square.
""Geshan Miscellaneous Painting Album" is a nine-page album, ink on paper, concise and simple in brush and ink, vivid and exaggerated in shape, among which the 'Fang' rabbit is the most peculiar. The inscription shows that Zhu Da was created in the Jiazi Year of Kangxi (1684). Tong Yanfang, vice president of Xiling Yinshe, introduced that this is the first known work with the seal of "Bada Shanren". In 2008, it set the highest auction record of Xiling Yinshe at that time.
This rabbit is in the shape of a squatting front and an arched back. It is drawn with a single line, and the square brush is turned. The eyes are quite vivid and deformed into a slightly square shape; the two ears are contrasted with one thick and one thin, which is natural and agile; the tail is only painted with thick ink Formed, full and vivid.
"The 'square brush' used at this time means the transformation of Zhu Da's flower-and-bird painting style." Tong Yanfang believes that this laid the foundation for his mature brushwork deformation and exaggeration of certain spaces.
Zhu Da was a descendant of the royal family of the Ming Dynasty. He was good at painting landscapes, flowers and birds, bamboo and wood. In his later years, he used the title of "Bada Shanren" until his death.
He experienced ups and downs, and once escaped into Buddhism, and was called one of the "four eminent monks in the early Qing Dynasty" by later generations.
The academic circles generally believe that in order not to be persecuted by the Qing government, Zhu Da completed his return to vulgarity by pretending to be crazy, and this album was created after he returned to vulgarity.
Xiao Hongming, a member of the Chinese Artists Association who has studied the "Bada Shanren" for a long time, said that based on historical records and the title of the album, it can be known that the album was made by Zhu Da in an elegant collection and presented to friends.
"At the time, 59-year-old Zhu Da was a survivor of the former dynasty, and selling calligraphy and paintings became the main means of making a living. He also wanted to marry a wife and have children, so he was asking friends to help him find matches. This album is just as a reward for matchmaking."
The title of the painting is "There is Liu Fun in the next place, but there is no offering to catch the moon. I want to fly to the west, parrot Qinzhou Long. A mountain", and the seal is "Bada Shanren".
"The paintings of flowers and birds in the Ming Dynasty were good at using metaphors. Here, Zhu Da learned from Su Shi's 'asking the wine to the blue sky' and Li Bai's 'asking the wine to the moon', drawing rabbits to describe the moon, and asking when friends can introduce marriage to themselves again. The first two sentences use allusions' "Liu Fen" uses Liu Fun's lack of salary to tease himself that he failed to marry a wife. The second half of the sentence uses the "parrot rubbing its back and is dumb" in the classic "Qiu Jing", implying that a friend is as useless as a parrot when it comes to matchmaking. Clear feedback." Xiao Hongming said that the titles on the pages of birds, fish, flowers, etc. in this book all have similar metaphors.
Zhou Xiaojian, curator of the "Bada Shanren" Memorial Hall in Nanchang, said that after the age of 70, Zhu Da's brushwork gradually became more round and introverted, reaching the peak of his artistic career.
At this stage before that, Zhu Da mostly used "square brushes" in his flower-and-bird paintings and calligraphy, because he had just returned from vulgarity and was in the transitional period of artistic creation to maturity.
It can be noticed that the calligraphy of the inscriptions in the painting is also open and closed, and the font size is intricate, which is also a sign that Zhu Da's creation is gradually becoming mature.
From 65 to 70 years old, Zhu Da's style basically stabilized, becoming more casual and "spicy".