China News Service, Beijing, March 9 (Reporter Ying Ni) The "realism" of flower and bird paintings in the Song Dynasty is unique in the history of Chinese painting, but how realistic are they?
Without analyzing it from the perspective of modern ornithological science, it would be difficult to imagine that the natural history achievements of the Song Dynasty had become so advanced.
Zhejiang Ancient Books Publishing House recently launched "Both Form and Theory: Birds in Song Paintings", which takes readers back to thousands of years ago, breaks the barriers between science and art, and provides a microscopic view of the natural history of the Song Dynasty from Song flower and bird paintings.
Book cover of "Both Form and Theory: Birds in Song Paintings".
Photo courtesy of Zhejiang Ancient Books Publishing House
This book is the latest popular book created by Chen Shuihua, a doctor of ornithology from Beijing Normal University, the country's chief scientific communication expert on bird diversity conservation and ecological civilization, and director of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum.
In the book, the author uses scientific research methods to observe Song paintings from the perspective of evolutionary aesthetic theory and Western art history. He not only details the historical background of each Song Dynasty painter and the creation of each Song Dynasty flower-and-bird painting, but also provides a detailed understanding of the Song Dynasty paintings. The birds painted have undergone exhaustive statistics, category identification, and size measurement, unifying the birds in the painting with the environment and seasons, and truly restoring the ecological environment of birds in the Song Dynasty.
With popular and vivid language and exquisite and informative pictures, it opens the door to the art of flower and bird paintings in the Song Dynasty for readers.
This book is not only an art appreciation book, but also a popular science book on bird knowledge.
The book provides first-hand information on field trips for experienced birdwatchers, including 101 bird photography of 75 species of birds. It also explains the morphology, living habits, and distribution areas of different birds; from wetlands, plains, mountains to forests, Birds in modern photographers' cameras mirror those in classical paintings.
At the same time, the book contains a total of 174 flower-and-bird paintings of the Song Dynasty, covering almost all known flower-and-bird paintings of the Song Dynasty.
The author conducted an exhaustive statistics on these 174 Song Dynasty paintings. Among them, specific species can be identified in 88% of them, including 67 species of birds.
In the Song Dynasty, when there were no modern scientific bird-watching methods, it is amazing to be able to leave such a wide variety of flower and bird works with such precise depictions.
Among them, there are not only familiar ones such as sparrows, mandarin ducks, starlings, dark green eyed birds, red-crowned cranes, etc., but also a large number of birds that accidentally enter the field of view, such as white-fronted goose, wedge-tailed shrike, silken starling, blue-crowned starling, etc. Noisy Babbler, Yellow-browed Flycatcher, Black-headed Grosbeak, etc.
It is worth mentioning that the author also carefully selected 68 of them for in-depth interpretation, and also made novel discoveries.
For example, sparrows are the birds that appear most frequently in Song paintings. Huizong's "Auspicious Crane Picture" painted the red-crowned crane's secondary flight feathers in the wrong color. Quails became a common flower and bird theme in Song paintings because they are related to traditional Chinese auspicious culture.
The author also studied the flower-and-bird paintings of the Song Dynasty as a scientist. Based on the information provided in the paintings, he spread it to plants, environment, and climate, showing the face of natural history in the Song Dynasty.
For example, the golden pheasant in Song Huizong's "Golden Pheasant in Furong" is a hybrid of the red-bellied Golden Pheasant and the white-bellied Golden Pheasant. Contemporary scholars in China and the United States have demonstrated this, and this "Furong Golden Pheasant" provides a glimpse into the history of the Golden Pheasant more than 900 years ago. Hybridization records.
Gao Shiming, president of the China Academy of Art, believes that the book is an ornithologist's systematic interpretation of Song Dynasty paintings, and it is also a unique mutual learning between contemporary natural history and Chinese painting.
While readers can fully appreciate the exquisite beauty, freshness and agility of flower and bird paintings of the Song Dynasty, they are also amazed by the ancients' subtle observation and profound observation of all things in nature.
"Behind this art of 'both form and theory' is the sincerity of the painters of the Song and Song Dynasties to the world, and it is also the great tradition of famous objects, museums and objects in the Chinese art world." (End)