WINTER
The taste of traditional Chinese art
Text/Zhu Liangzhi
[Qing] Bada Shanren "Chicken Chick Diagram" Ink on paper
37.8cm×31.5cm collection of Shanghai Museum
In 1695, the Qing Dynasty painter Bada Shanren painted a "Picture of Chicken Chicks", which had an inscription on the painting: "Chickens talk about tigers, and Deda is eating cattle." Mustard Yu summoned servants and placed them on the south mountain. These four verses speak of four different attitudes towards life.
"Chicken talks about tigers also talks" is a satire of the Qing talk of the Wei and Jin dynasties, taoist philosophy in addition to knowledge, the pursuit of an expression of inner life, which is an important traditional tendency of Chinese thought.
People can't live without knowledge, we are all curious, but in today's era of information explosion and rapid accumulation of knowledge, we sometimes find that the search for knowledge is inversely proportional to our life dependence, and we have accumulated a lot of things that are contrary to our life pursuit. "De Da Nai eats cattle" means that countless standards govern people's lives, and people only have to follow the fate.
After the five generations of the Northern Song Dynasty, Zen thought and Taoist philosophy converged, bringing about important changes, and the pursuit of life consciousness became an important direction of literati art. "Mustard feathers summon servants", from the ancient habit of cockfighting, says that fighting destroys human nature, and in a world of bustling coming, rushing away, and competing for interests, it is difficult for people to obtain a balance of mind. "Putting back the south mountain" means a calm, comfortable life, self-sufficiency of life.
This little poem of the Bada Shanren is to transcend the way of existence that competes for interests, is entangled in knowledge, and crawls in the shadow of others, or it is a way of independent life display that is comfortable, and pursues the perfection of inner life, which is exactly where the Chinese interest lies. This can be said to be a microcosm of the taste of traditional Chinese art.
Clumsy – clumsy
Tao Yuanming's "Returning to the Garden and Rural Residence" has: "Open up the wilderness in the south, guard the humble return to the garden field", "Humble" is the soul of Chinese art.
It can be said that in China, if you don't know how to be "clumsy", you don't know how to do architecture, gardening, engraving seals, writing calligraphy, drawing pictures, and tasting opera, which is a fundamental interest in art. Clumsiness and cleverness are opposite, Lao Tzu said "great coincidence is clumsy", great coincidence is the highest coincidence, clumsiness is not coincidental, the highest coincidence is not coincidental, his meaning is not to pursue coincidence, Lao Tzu's fundamental idea is to transcend the knowledge opposition between coincidence and clumsiness.
Generally speaking, people always like to pursue clever things, and do not like bad things. For example, craftsmanship is the process of pursuing ingenuity, but there is a saying in ancient times called "the master does not cut", which means that the most capable craftsman has no trace of carving, and Chinese art contains profound wisdom in clever thinking.
Jin Nong, one of the Eight Monsters of Yangzhou, was a famous calligrapher and painter during the Kangxi to Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, who pushed the ancient Chinese tradition to a very high level.
He once used his unique ancient inscription on a plum blossom map with seven big characters: "Loss and loss of jade spirit", "jade" is plum blossom, "loss and loss" comes from Lao Tzu: "For the sake of learning day by day, for the Tao day by day, loss and loss, so that there is no action", Lao Tzu's Tao is "loss" Tao. "Loss for the Tao" is a law of Chinese art, it is to move from the surface world to the real world, to pursue the inner things, "loss" is not to do subtraction, "loss" is the way is clumsy.
Chinese art, such as the problem of black and white, is a kind of "loss" Tao, there is a saying called "great white as black" - the brightest thing does not look bright, it must go beyond the external light and the hidden knowledge contrast, so that the inner world of life bright.
Chinese particularly like stones, and "stones" also present a kind of clumsiness.
Lao Tzu said, "Don't want to be like jade, but like a stone." "Lao Tzu did not want to be a piece of beautiful jade, although it had a name, but after countless polishing of scraping and polishing, it became the object of shaping, so that it was promising, deviating from the will of nature." He preferred to be "as bright as a stone" – to be a hard, uncarved stone. Taoist Zen philosophy believes that "both carving and craftsmanship, returning to simplicity", it attaches importance to the original, original reality of life.
Confucian good jade, Taoist Zen good stone, two different ideological orientations, just reflect the different views on order, but also reflect different personality orientation.
A society without reason is a chaotic society, and a life without etiquette is a vulgar life, but when knowledge, reason, and etiquette develop to the contrary to man's true pursuit of life, it becomes a negative force for man's life.
It is in this sense that both ideas are valuable and complement each other to become the grand concept of traditional Chinese thought.
Literati art has a preference for rockeries, and it has a special beauty. There are generally sculptures in front of Western architecture, mostly images of people related to religion; while Chinese buildings do not have such things, but generally there are rockeries, and rockeries are sculptures in front of Chinese architecture.
According to the shape of a garden, Mo Ruo Mountain. If there is no mountain, it is not a garden. Dieshan manages water, of which Dieshan occupies an important position. The water system is easy to form, and the mountains are difficult to stand. If the mountain is standing, the scenery of a garden is probably already there. The rockery is the use of stone "stacked" and "thrown" to make a landscape and also interpret a piece of the creator's spiritual heart.
The real stone stacker is not a simple "stonemason", but a solo artist, a chaotic stone, stacked with beautiful scenery, with bright flowers and sparse trees, extended to Pituo Pinggang, led by a waterfall clear spring, the curtain with vine love banana shadow, supplemented by blue sky and white clouds, willow branches on the moon, its cold wind god, love people. Therefore, it should be known that if you don't go to the garden, you know that the spring color is as promised; the garden has no rockery, how to cure the disease of smoke and xia!
Predecessors summarized the beauty of the rockery with four words: thin, wrinkled, transparent, and leaky, and the core meaning of these four words is "clumsy". "Clumsiness" means to get rid of clever things, to remove purposeful things, to be ingenious. I like a sentence written in the Ming Dynasty: "Although it is made by man, it is like opening from heaven." He stressed that all art is made by man; it is done as if it has not been done; it is done as if it were a work of heaven. He highlighted a basic idea of Chinese art, that all art should avoid artificial order under the principle of following nature. This reflects a spirit of pursuing "clumsiness" - heavenly fun.
So, coincidence is not a stupid philosophy, but a decision to let you abandon the grasp of external purposefulness and pursue the experience of inner truth.
Ancient fun - beyond time
Speaking of antiquity, we generally think of retro, which is a compliance with the French style of the past, but guqu is not retro.
The real ancient fun is beyond time, and the ancient fun is to invite the "ancient" to the present and compare it with the "present". Just like Matsuo Basho haiku said: "The frog jumps in the ancient pond, and the silence is clear." The frog jumped into the ancient pool of a thousand years, and suddenly there was a faint sound. A vivid life of the present suddenly melts into the depths of the past.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, someone inscribed two poems painted by Ni Zhan: "The moss on the thousand-year-old stone is cracked, and the sunset stream returns to the deep shadow of the tree." "On the stone of a thousand years, the moss marks the calendar, at dusk, people come to the mountain forest, the sunset afterglow falls on the moss marks of the calendar, the shadows are enough, the moment of the moment and the past, these two comments are to highlight the extraordinary sense of eternity of the Yunlin painting." This pursuit of eternity, this feeling of high antiquity, is one of the lofty realms of Chinese artistic pursuit.
Chinese art always seems to exist for this eternity.
When you enter its world, it seems that you are withdrawn from the time and space of reality, away from the infinite chicken feathers, placed in a lonely realm, and suddenly feel so lonely, the cold moon hangs high, and eternity is in the heart. The years are like a stream, life is not eternal, we grasp a very short moment, but even if there is a brilliant display, it is temporary.
Beyond time, behind time, behind the apparent world of flowers and flowers, behind the rhythm of material change that generates change, to trace the true manifestation of life. This is something very subtle in Chinese art.
The Song Dynasty Luo Dajing wrote: "Tang Zi Xiyun: 'The mountains are as quiet as the ancients, and the days are as long as the small years.' In Tang Zixi's poems, he recognized the charm of life and experienced a unique sense of life. Time is really a feeling, in the state of mind of no dispute, no fight, indifference, nature, peace, it seems that everything is silent, two days a day, or even a moment of ten thousand years of feeling can come out. It is the so-called "lazy out of the house to disappear forever, flowers blossom and fall do not know the year."
Chen Hongshou, a famous painter in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, always insisted on his characteristics with the smell of high antiquity, and he was an artist with excellent modeling ability, especially the analysis of color revealed a genius endowment. But his paintings often have a deformed presentation.
[Ming] Chen Hongshou "Banana Forest Drinking Wine Map" Silk color
156.2cm×107cm collection of Tianjin Art Museum
His "Banana Forest Drinking Wine Map", a tall banana forest, next to a strange rockery, there is a long stone case in front of the rockery, and a Coat holding a cup in his right hand on the side of the stone case, holding it high, staring into the distance, thoughtful. On the left side of the picture, there are teapots on the root tea table, and two women are drawn on the front side, picking chrysanthemums to cook wine. The whole picture is extremely tense, showing the longevity of time, through time, beyond life, this painting is highly ancient, but also an affirmation of the eternal silence of the soul.
A small poem by Bai Juyi: "Green ants new wine, red clay small stove." Late to the day want snow, can you drink a cup of nothing? "Just brewed good wine, the stove has been built, the fire is raging, the weather is gloomy, it is going to snow, so can we drink a little?" The words are extremely elegant, it is going to snow, and it is necessary to drink wine to warm up. It contains what Zen buddhism calls "red furnace light snow", a raging fire, drifting into the snowflakes, and suddenly melting. This is the lofty realm of Chinese art, a realm of thorough understanding. Ancient is to invite the eternal to dialogue with the present, measure the value of the present, and seek the inner charm of art beyond the appearance to the real world.
Fun - the air rhymes
Chinese art is full of fun, and the spirit of inner mobility, that kind of flying fish leaping is very touching. China's gardens pay attention to vitality, "the great virtue of heaven and earth is born, and the birth is easy", and it is necessary to pursue both form and god, flowing with charm, and lively rhyme. Chinese art is to let people join the world, to feel this liveliness, the so-called "flowing water goes indifferently, the lonely boat returns at will", and in this atmosphere, people and the world go back together.
The secularization of Chinese culture is very important, it is our inexhaustible wealth, and it is the foundation for our nation to maintain its vitality forever. Because we can experience that kind of liveliness in secularization, although secular, we are not vulgar. We yearn for a quiet life, but against the Qinggao style, we want our inner character identity, but do not pursue the atmosphere of nobility. Therefore, Chinese art is like the flowers and trees in the mountains and forests, and the birds in the forest, easy-going, calm and lively. This is a special philosophical spirit.
The pavilion of the Chinese garden is a fixed form, an important setting in the garden, "when the moon reaches the center of heaven, when the wind comes to the water". Like the Lotus Wind Pavilion in the Humble Administrator's Garden, the pavilion is a place of rest, the pavilion is also a point in the aura, people sit on it, occasionally look into the distance, and pull the distant scenery to the front of the eyes, so this is shu roll freely, pushing and pulling, but there is nothing in its chest, sitting and watching the scenery of heaven and earth, "the infinite scenery of the country and the mountains, all take a pavilion." It seems to be sitting in a floating aura, joining the torrent of the world, so the setting of the pavilion is always in a very important place, it can give people breathing, let people lean freely, swallow the wilderness, melt into the world.
Chinese're obsessed with philosophy in this area. Jinnong has a painting about a man sleeping on a lotus flower, "dissolving the world of white lotuses, the wind comes to lie on all sides", the clear river pond, the lotus wind is everywhere, in this wandering world, people also join the whirlwind, and suddenly the human figure joins in the middle of a lofty universe, and everything is in me, with heaven and earth.
[Southern Song Dynasty] Ma Yuan "Hanjiang Solo Fishing Diagram" Ink on silk
26.7cm×50.6cm Collection of the Tokyo National Museum
Ma Yuan, a great painter of the Southern Song Dynasty, wrote "Fishing Alone in the Han River", which is now in the Tokyo National Museum and has been exhibited at the Shanghai Museum. In the middle of the faint light and shadow under the moonlight, a person sat in a small boat, a focused look, the boat tilted forward, the angler and the moon, bathing in the night, it was really "a thousand mountain birds flying, ten thousand paths of people disappeared." Lonely boat, fishing alone in the snow of the cold river". This quiet, independent, and the spirit of people and the world is touching.
[Yuan] Ni Zhan "Rong Knee Zhai Tu" Ink on paper
74.7cm×35.5cm, 1372, National Palace Museum, Taipei
Ni Zhan's later work "Rong Knee Zhai Tu", now in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, should be his masterpiece in the world. This painting has a very high artistic standard, the picture is very simple, a desolate pavilion, there are some small stones next to the pavilion, in the middle of the pavilion is a bay of thin water, in the distance is a trace of distant mountains. A distant mountain, a bay of thin water, a small pavilion, and a few dead trees constitute the main body of this painting. The pavilion is empty, symbolizing people's residence, life is like a send, in the middle of the vast sky, in the vast river of history, the space occupied by people is such a small, a small pavilion, a knee-dwelling, can only accommodate a knee dwelling. He talked about the finiteness of human beings, "always have a limited body in the past years", time is so short, life is so fragile.
Life is finite, but Chinese philosophy tells us that when you transcend this finiteness, get rid of the finite and infinite limitations, and integrate into the world, you will feel a big world, which is really "half in a small building, full of inspiration." The inner greatness and inner fullness of man is not the richness of knowledge or the accumulation of wealth, but the spiritual stillness of the human heart, "the fullness is beautiful, and the fullness and brilliance is great." A person who is full of harmony, he will affect people, there is light in his life, and this light will shine on the world. Therefore, everything is built in the middle of one's own inner circle, which is an inner transcendence, not an external acquisition.
Why does Chinese art have a lot of deep mountains and old forests, dead woods and cold forests, and a lot of lifeless breath and vitality? This is because its liveliness is not external, but internal, which is the inner spirit of Chinese art. In Buddhism, it is said that "Dharma is solid and silent", and the loneliest place is the most lively place, that is, to release the soul, to break free from the shackles of the world, and to return to its own inner full of harmonious life and freedom.
(The author is a professor at Peking University, this article is reproduced from the public account "Qianyuan Guoxue" article on March 5, 2018)
Zheng Weibin, editor-in-chief of Chinese Painting Weekly
This article is selected from the T04 edition of Culture and Art Newspaper on December 18, 2021