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Most art historians like to point out past merits and demerits, but they have little to say about Song painting. The emphasis on lines has put Chinese painting on a completely different path from the West. The painting art of the Song Dynasty inherits the past and the future, and is the end point of the materialized art since the Warring States period, and also the starting point of the literati painting of later generations. The Song Dynasty lasted for more than three hundred years, and it was also the peak period of Chinese painting.
The artist seems to have been exposed to nature for the first time in his life
Where is Song painting good? Modern painter Huang Binhong once commented: "Tang paintings are like faces, Song paintings are like wine, Yuan paintings are below, gradually like wine adding water, after the times are over, adding more water, in recent days, there has been water without wine, can not be intoxicating, thin and tasteless." Writer Nishikawa said, "My love for Northern Song painting is even greater than song poetry." Look at the Song paintings and you will feel great. "It shows that Song painting is outstanding. People are obsessed with Song painting because of its uniqueness. The diversity and comprehensiveness of the painting themes of that era are unique to all generations. There are landscape paintings, flower and bird paintings, and Zen paintings in the front, and there are literati paintings, portrait paintings, and historical story paintings in the back. Among them, it is believed that the landscape painting that best reflects the style of Chinese painting was the most prosperous in the Song Dynasty. Landscape painting inherits the majestic style of Jing Hao and Guan Tong, and is inspired by Taoist thought, seeking "unity with nature", and later under the inheritance and development of Guo Xi, Dong Yuan, Li Cheng, and Fan Kuan, it becomes a grand view, and the warm tones and charming details of pre-Tang landscape paintings are swept away, turning into simplicity and solemnity in the majestic. Gao Juhan commented in Illustrated History of Chinese Painting: "In their works, nature and art have achieved a perfect balance. They use strange techniques to achieve the right painting effect, but they never touch people with pure magic; a classical self-control grasps the whole expression and cannot be indulged. The artist seems to have been exposed to nature for the first time in his life, responding to it with a sense of wonder and awe. The freshness of their horizons and the depth of their understanding are unparalleled in future generations. ”
"Xishan Travel Map", Northern Song Dynasty, Fan Kuan, silk color, 206.3cm×103.4cm, National Palace Museum, Taipei
Northern Song Dynasty Huang Juyu (biography) "Pear Blossom Spring Swallow Diagram" Private collection
From courtyard to literati: The art of painting in the Song Dynasty inherits the past and the future
As an outstanding painter of flowers and birds, Emperor Huizong of song guided the creative atmosphere to attach importance to accuracy and rigorous layout. The emperor's leisure and elegance and admiration were an important opportunity to promote the development of song dynasty courtyard painting. According to the "Pictorial Chronicle" and "Painting Succession", there are 386 Painters of the Northern Song Dynasty, and 96 painters of the Painting Academy recorded in the "Painting Catalogue of the Southern Song Dynasty". The art academy system not only contributed to the prosperity of flower and bird painting, but also advocated the creation of genre paintings. Zhang Zeduan's "Map of the Upper River of the Qingming Dynasty" is the most familiar one, in which the painter depicts the secular landscape with a thick brush stroke, while at the same time describing the satire of politics. Not only was it a creative achievement, but the Song Dynasty also made many achievements in the promotion and theory of the painting system. The Song Dynasty painting academy system was extremely prosperous, becoming a model for future generations, and it is also the earliest prototype of today's painting academy system. Different from the careful depiction of objects in the previous generation, the Song Dynasty painters had a high degree of theoretical self-consciousness. During the reign of Emperor Huizong, the official presidency included the works of painters of past generations into the Xuanhe Pictorial Notation, and the painter Guo Xi's "Lin Quan Gaozhi" is a theoretical work that is difficult to avoid when discussing ancient landscape painting.
Literati painting, which flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties, also began in the Song Dynasty. The change of painting carrier has brought about the transformation of Chinese painting. The transformation of walls into scrolls, scrolls, and volumes of paper silk contributed to the shift of painting from public art to private art. Different from the "creation of external teachers" advocated by the Northern School of landscape painting, literati paintings turned to "inner teachers and hearts", opening up a similar function of sending affection to painting. Use seemingly amateur techniques to deform the form. With Su Dongpo as the beginning, the father and son of Mi Fu (Mi Fu, Mi Youren) and Li Gonglin became later followers. Such a concept was still a precocious idea for the West, which was still in the stage of religious painting at that time, until the 19th century.
Northern Song Dynasty Xu Chongsi "Spring MingTu"
Southern Song Dynasty Song Dynasty Emperor Ningzong Yang Hou "Hanging Yang Fei Tu" Collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing
Lifelong researchers have never seen the entire extant Song painting
Today, there are about a thousand Surviving Song paintings. In the Yuan and Ming dynasties, the system was incomplete, resulting in extremely scattered official collections, until the Qianlong period, Song and Yuan paintings and works from the early Ming Dynasty were included in the palace. After the Qing Dynasty, the paintings in the court were partially scattered among the people. Part of Qianlong's old collection was taken to puppet Manchukuo by Puyi, 39 pieces are now in the Liaoning Provincial Museum, some are brought to Taiwan by the Kuomintang, and 943 pieces (420 pieces are said to be in the National Palace Museum in Taipei). In the 1960s and 1970s, the folk collection of Song paintings began to gather, 254 pieces in the Palace Museum, in addition to the Shanghai Museum (72 pieces), these four became the important towns of Song painting collection in China. Another collection of Song paintings is mainly overseas, and is now mainly in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (53 pieces), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (50 pieces) and the Tokyo National Museum (25 pieces) in Japan. The rarity of Song paintings and the longevity of them make the preservation of Song paintings more important and more difficult. In 2014, in order to compile the "Complete Collection of Song Paintings", the Zhejiang Cultural Relics Bureau contacted the collection through the Qingliang Temple in Kyoto, Japan, but it was rejected because the collection was "not external".
In China, even the experts of the Forbidden City, it is not easy to see the original work once. Wang Ximeng's work "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", the green and green color may peel off after opening, and Xiao Yanyi, the former vice president in charge of the Palace Museum, has only seen it once in more than ten years. "Qingming River Map" is exhibited every five years. Because the exhibition year has not yet arrived, the plan to exhibit the authentic works at the World Expo was finally replaced by a dynamic electronic version of the "Qingming Upper River Map". Even Ban Zonghua, a yale art historian who has studied Song painting all his life, and Shi Shouqian, former director of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, have never seen the entire extant Song painting.
Northern Song Dynasty Anon. "Peach Branch Perching Finch Diagram", Collection of cleveland Museum of Art, USA
Northern Song Dynasty Zhang Zeduan's "Qingming Upper River Map" part
Even experts are not sure enough about the truth or falsehood
Because of the "pole" and the "pseudo", imitation song painting became a popular fashion and a way to make money in the Ming and Qing dynasties. At the beginning of the 20th century, westerners had a strong demand for Song paintings, which accelerated the production of forgeries. Shanghai became the center of the counterfeiting industry, and the large number of counterfeits produced at this time caused Americans to pay a lot of tuition and had a disastrous impact on the history of Chinese art. Many Song Dynasty works handed down in later generations are not even grasped by experts. At the end of the last century, before the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York purchased Dong Yuan's "Creek Bank Map", it held an international academic symposium on whether this map was Dong Yuan's authentic handwriting. Until his death, Neither Gao Juhan nor Bai Zonghua could agree, believing that it was a forgery by Zhang Daqian, who believed that the Xi'an Tu was an ancient painting in the Style of Dong Yuan, or at least in the Style of the Northern Song Dynasty. After a thousand years, the examination of Song painting is difficult and uncertain, and the Chinese tradition represented by Song painting is getting farther and farther away from today's Chinese young people. In November 2014, Chen Danqing, who was displaying still-life oil paintings in Suzhou, also frankly told the surging news reporter: "As soon as I put the album of the Northern Song Dynasty in front of me, I knew that I would definitely not be able to paint it." ”
Northern Song Dynasty Zhao Chang "Sparrow Peach Blossom Diagram"
Northern Song Dynasty Li Cheng Qingluan Xiao Temple Figure Silk 56x111.8 Nelson Museum of Art, USA