Produced by Xinmin Evening News "Shanghai Moment"
From a distance to see the Shanghai Museum located in the People's Square, its unique figure, like an ancient Chinese bronze, thick and elegant, into its heart, it is like a glimpse embedded in the city center of the cultural heat source, let us start from cultural relics, look back at history. As an important collection town of ancient Chinese art, one of the treasures of the town museum is the "Liantang Milk Duck Diagram" by a Southern Song Dynasty artist who conquered the world with his unique skill of silk reeling, and this "Journey to Find the Song Dynasty" starts from the beauty of the Song Dynasty collected by the museum.
Photo: Shanghai Museum Xinmin Evening News reporter Guo Xinyang photo
The "Strangeness" of the Song People
Jiangnan can pick lotus, lotus leaf He Tiantian. Early summer, the best season in Jiangnan Water Town. The two ducks float among the grasses, the milk ducks follow each other, the egrets on the side, the kingfishers and dragonflies dotted among them, and the white lotus, red fern and grass are surrounded, and the water ripples. This scene is also frozen in this huge silk painting "Lotus Pond Milk Duck Diagram". This huge silk painting, the whole width is woven with colored silk threads, all the flowers, insects and birds in the picture are sketched in real scenes, and the waterfowl, mountain stones, and flowers in the picture, each size, height, length and width, are woven in full proportion. There is no place to make up the pen in the work, and all the backwires are hidden. Due to the triangular shape of the fiber cross-section of the silk thread, the color will change slightly after light transmission, resulting in a natural atmosphere. Therefore, compared with traditional calligraphy and painting, exquisite silk paintings appear more vivid. "Lotus Pond Milk Duck Diagram" is written by Zhu Kerou, a strange woman of the Southern Song Dynasty, who was famous for weaving silk during the song Huizong to Emperor Gaozong, and was also good at painting, but her life is still a mystery. Only those heirlooms tell her past. This "Lotus Pond Milk Duck Diagram" is her painstaking work.
Pictured: "Lotus Pond Milk Duck Diagram" Courtesy of Bo
Hundreds of years after the birth of the work, this silk treasure never entered the court collection system, but was secretly treasured by the people. Until 1952, Pang Bingli, a descendant of pang Laichen, a collector of modern times, donated it to the Shanghai Museum. "This work may have been born in the Matsue area. It is likely that it has never left its hometown. Liang Wenyue of the Ministry of Education of shanghai museum introduced.
The "Ya" of the Song Dynasty
Jiangnan was stable, rich, developed and prosperous, and the elegant and exquisite aesthetic style represented the height of Chinese art and culture at that time. "Burning incense and ordering tea, hanging paintings and flower arrangements, four kinds of idle things, it is not appropriate to tire the family." Tea and hops have their own special utensils in the Song Dynasty, and the utensils have become another Song Dynasty label that has been passed down to the world.
The whole bottle of Shangbozang Longquan Kiln is rectangular and columnar, and the ends are round, resembling the ancient jade, so it is named "Zhen-style bottle". The jade is an important ceremonial instrument used for sacrifice in ancient China. In the Song Dynasty, the vase should be used as a decoration vessel and can be used as a flower vessel. In the Ming Dynasty, from a large number of paintings and prints, it can be seen that on the desks of the literati, a vase with flowers is often placed.
Pictured: Longquan kiln-style bottle Xinmin Evening News chief reporter Xiao Junwei photo
Burning incense was the norm in song life. The Southern Song Dynasty poet Yang Wanli once depicted the glaze color of the incense burner with "porcelain made of dingbi in water", which is a true and vivid portrayal of longquan kiln products. The blue glazed bristle furnace of the Longquan kiln in the Collection of the Shangbo Museum is dignified and simple, the color is elegant, and the ornamentation is simple, giving people a solid and powerful feeling, which fully reflects the superb porcelain-making skills of the Longquan kiln of the Southern Song Dynasty.
At the end of the Song Dynasty, the drinking method of tea reached its peak, according to the Song Huizong's "Great View of Tea", the tea color "takes pure white as the truth". Therefore, the tea cups of the Song Dynasty were expensive in black, and the wood leaf pattern tea cups of the Shangbozang Jizhou kiln met this standard with black glaze as the background color.
Pictured: Jizhou kiln wood leaf pattern tea cup Xinmin Evening News chief reporter Xiao Junwei photo
The "custom" of the Song people
In addition to pushing the simple and natural "elegance" to the peak, the aesthetics of the Song Dynasty also have a lively and lively "vulgar" side. In the "Tokyo Dream Record", it is recorded that the Northern Song Dynasty's Beijing "night market did not reopen until the end of the three more, and then the fifth day reopened." If you want to make trouble, you know everything", and the prosperity of the city further promotes the secularization of society.
Song Dynasty jade has a strong secular tendency and a strong atmosphere of life, and the Shangbo Tibetan Lotus Jade Boy is a representative artifact of the Song Dynasty. As a popular theme in the Two Song Dynasties, according to the customs of the time, every Tanabata children would pick a lotus flower and carry it on their shoulders. The image of the boy is innocent, fresh and lively. This shape and auspicious meaning have won the favor of the emperor down to the people. "Such an accessory, worn by children, means healthy growth; worn by adults, it is the meaning of having a noble child and having many children and many blessings." Liang Wenyue introduced.
Pictured: Holding a lotus boy jade as Xiao Junwei, chief reporter of Xinmin Evening News, took a photo
The Song Dynasty's Goulan Tiles and the activity of the art of hundred operas produced a series of new art forms, such as drum words, palace tones, history telling, scripture telling, miscellaneous dramas, southern opera, scripts, genre paintings, etc. Shangbozang's "Song Picture Scroll" depicts the scenes of the Southern Song Dynasty song and music girls playing and rehearsing. In the picture, nine female servants are slender, wearing red narrow sleeves and backs, and the high bun is decorated with horn-like accessories; the male music officer wears the head of the heavens, and the girl wears the hairpin flower head. Technically, the color is delicate and bright, the clothing pattern is smooth, the bamboo leaves are strong, and the trees and stones are heavy, realistic and interesting. The works with the theme of singing female tricks are extremely rare in the Southern Song Dynasty character paintings, and the musical instruments on the figure, in addition to the gongs and drums, the clapping board, and the flutes, flutes and pipa, are related to the characteristics of the character costumes, which should be the expression of the Northern Qu miscellaneous drama.
The "Friendship" of the Song People
The Song Dynasty was literary and artistic, and the Song people were also the most creative. Calligraphy is the most concentrated expression of the aesthetics of the Song Dynasty, its beauty is like the lines in calligraphy, walking between the landscapes and rivers of the Song Dynasty, pure and ethereal, plain and innocent, liberated from the strict era.
In the "Four Houses of the Song Dynasty", Su Shi's calligraphy should be unique, he is good at writing and calligraphy, he said: "I can't make a book, dot painting is annoying to ask for", he advocates the way of creation of the hand, coupled with the cultivation of literature, in order to finally form a distinct style that means pure antiquity, thick pen strength and true and natural. Shangbozang's "Reply to the Minshi's Essays and Posters" is Su Shi's talk about his views on literary words, and also expounds the law of artistic dissemination: "Words are not written, then deeds are not far away", etc. The book and the text reflect each other, which is particularly rare.
Pictured: "Yanjiang Stacked Mountains Map" (Partial) Courtesy of Shangbo
"There are thousands of mountains on the river, and the floating sky is as green as clouds." The mountain is far away, and the smoke and clouds are still scattered. The scene in the painting depicted by Su Shi in the poem is exactly the turquoise landscape painting "Yanjiang Stacked Mountains" by Wang Yi of the Northern Song Dynasty. This picture is also one of the precious collections of Shangbo. Wang Yi is a descendant of Wang Quanbin, the founding general of the Song Dynasty, who is good at calligraphy, painting and literature, and often holds West Garden collections in his garden mansion. His regular customers in the family include Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, Li Gonglin, Mi Fu and other famous calligraphers and painters, and can be called the circle of friends of the top literati of the Northern Song Dynasty. Wang Yi was removed from his post after being implicated in Su Shi's "Wutai Poetry Case". Four years later, Wang Yi returned to the capital to resume his post, and completed the "Yanjiang Stacked Mountains Map", the landscape in the picture is mysterious and dreamy, like a sea fairy mountain, when Su Shi saw the picture at a friend's place, he was stimulated by Wang Yi's painting achievements to stimulate the rush of inspiration, sprinkled with foreign and poems, Wang Yi and this inscription poem, and made an ink book to Su Shi, and Su Shi immediately reconciled another one, wang Yi sang and poems again. Such poetry, calligraphy and painting are extremely precious. The harmony poems of the two men thus became the best song in the history of poetry and painting in the Northern Song Dynasty. (Xinmin Evening News reporter Xu Yisheng)
The journalist's note | the aesthetics of life
Mr. Chen Yinke said that "the civilization of China has evolved over thousands of years and was created by the Zhao and Song dynasties." Flowers, incense, paintings, tea, porcelain, of course, are not the creation of the Song people, but the Song people gave the quality of elegance.
Today's connection point with the Song Dynasty happens to be an "aesthetic of life". Song's elegant and concise style can be in line with the spirit of contemporary art. Playing the piano, mixing incense, enjoying flowers, viewing paintings, playing chess, cooking tea, listening to the wind, drinking, watching waterfalls, picking chrysanthemums, poetry, painting... "beauty" was an indispensable ordinary thing in the life of the literati of the Song Dynasty. Beauty is also our pursuit today.
Tracing back to the source, in China's local ideological tradition, art and life, creation and appreciation have always been intrinsically integrated, in a certain sense, Chinese classical aesthetics is a living "life aesthetics".
Today, what we can learn from the Song Dynasty may not only be the aesthetics of the Song Dynasty that "appreciates the common sense of elegance and customs", nor is it a unique poetic aesthetic concept, but how to integrate "beauty" into life and create its own "life aesthetics". (Xu Yisheng)