Painters often express their beliefs and emotions by taking specific symbols, unique painting styles and calligraphic brushstrokes into paintings, among which Wang Meng of the Yuan Dynasty and Wen Zhengming of the Ming Dynasty, which have to be mentioned, are also among the leaders.
Yuan Wang Meng's "Su An Tu" axis
"Su An Tu" is a landscape painting by the famous painter Wang Meng at the end of the Yuan Dynasty. The works are 136cm longitudinal and 45cm horizontal, belonging to the paintings of Wang Meng Changsong Gaoling, which are slightly similar to the "Qingbian Hermitage Map", which is similar in size to the "Qingbian Hermitage Map".
At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the situation was turbulent, and most of the literati and scholars faded out of the secular life and retreated from the world in order to cultivate themselves. Wang Meng is good at the theme of mountain hermitage, and the characters and residences in the paintings are mostly fictional, not for the purpose of realism, aiming to express the inner world and ideals.
Wang Meng's su nunnery was a literati hermit, sitting in the front hall of the courtyard of a mountain village, although it was a thatched hut, it was a spacious hermitage. He was holding a sprig of Lingzhi Immortal Grass and waiting leisurely, and two deer were slowly approaching from the woods. A little boy in the courtyard embraces tender grass to feed cranes. Ganoderma lucidum, cranes, deer and other Taoist auspicious rui, simple and simple character shapes and courtyard structure, hidden in the shade of mountains and trees, like a dream wonderland, paradise.
In order to create this dream wonderland, Wang Meng borrowed a lot from the early Northern Song Dynasty landscape paintings. The mountain stones and trees are colored by fluttering rubbings, moss dots, smudges and bright mineral pigments, accompanied by a coherent calligraphy pen, making the picture more vivid and flexible than the traditional landscape. The flowing water between the mountains and the blank space of the courtyard building effectively regulate the dense mountain stones, so that the picture achieves a balance of yin and yang between compactness and emptiness, giving the work a stronger sense of vitality and existence. Surrounded by such a lush and prosperous atmosphere of slightly urgent oppression, it makes people feel that the creative potential of nature in the time-shifting changes also implies that the change of political power is actually the way of heaven, and retreating in this chaotic torrent is only hoping for more peace.
Wang Meng deliberately uses a simple and rough pen and an innocent romantic atmosphere to awaken himself and the viewer, and the paradise life accompanied by cranes and deer is an unreal illusion, and the ideal life of the hidden world is just an unattainable dream.
Ming Wen Ming "Lou Ju Tu" axis
"Lou Ju Tu" was composed by Wen Chengming for his friend Liu Lin. Liu Lin was seventy years old at the time, but after Zhi Shi retired, he did not even have a place to live in peace in his old age. In the painting, Wen Qiming shows an ideal retreat life: a simple courtyard surrounded by streams outside the walls to avoid the troubles of the world, a two-storey pavilion in the courtyard, standing proudly on a towering forest, and the two scribes sit next to the window and talk freely. There is a red lacquer case in the cabinet, on which is placed a bronze artifact, and several books are stacked next to it. Behind the screen, a corner of the bookshelf is revealed, on which books and scrolls are neatly stacked. A small waiter is carrying a tray into the high cabinet, ready to serve tea or wine to the two of them.
The hermitage of Liu Shangshu in the painting is not a village courtyard, but a two-story study, elegantly decorated, standing proudly among the ancient trees in a garden, which is undoubtedly an ideal retreat in a period of peace and stability.
The willow trees in the foreground of the painting are withered and barren, and the river and courtyard wall outside the courtyard surround this verdant hermitage of trees, separating it from the cold red dust world, while a wooden bridge and an open courtyard door on the river reveal the owner's welcome and expectation for the visit of fellow daoists.