Snow paintings written by famous artists throughout the ages are not uncommon, or snow landscapes, or ink snow maps. Wang Wei, a Poet of the Tang Dynasty who is known as "painting in poetry and poetry in painting", has a unique "snow painting" that has been unique throughout the ages. However, when it comes to ice and snow competition maps, there are few masterpieces that have been handed down. Today, the earliest time to find is the "Ice Painting" hidden in the Palace Museum in Beijing, which depicts the Qianlong Emperor watching the ice movement. After that, until the Republic of China period, ice and snow competitions became a fashion sport, and they were repeatedly seen in pen and ink. Now, taking the opportunity of the Winter Olympics, let us see the true face of them that are "raised in the deep and unknown".
Zong Qixiang, "Ice Fighting in the North Sea" (1956)
The earliest records of skiing in ancient China are found in the Sui Shu BeiDi Biography Of the Beimu Wei people "have a lot of snow on the ground, fear of sinking pits and traps, and ride on wood"; the record of skating is found in the "New Book of Tang and Uighur Legends" in which the Trojan Turks "ride on the ice on wooden horses, ride on the foot with a board, bend the armpits, take a hundred steps, and the momentum is rapid", and the "History of Song" also contains the royal "ice frolic" activities.
Because skiing and ice skating, as a mode of transportation or entertainment, were mainly found in the northern ethnic minority settlements during the cold winter period, or were only found in the royal forest gardens, there are few works depicting skiing and skating in the history of Chinese painting, but paintings depicting snow scenes are very popular. Wang Wei, who is known as the first painter in the history of Chinese painting to take snowscapes as the main object of expression, was very fond of painting snow in his life, and his snowscapes are only found in the catalogue of the Song Huizong Dynasty's Xuanhe Painting Spectrum, there are 26 paintings. In addition, during the Five Dynasties period, there were Zhao Gan's "Map of the First Snow of the River", fan Kuan's "Map of the Snow Scene and Cold Forest" in the Song Dynasty, Wang Yi's "Small Snow Map of the Fishing Village", Zhao Yao's "Map of the Return of the Snow River", Xia Gui's "Map of the Guest Talk of the Snow Hall", zhao Mengfu's "Map of the Nine Peaks of Snow Ji" in the Yuan Dynasty, and in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were countless paintings on the "Snow Scene Map".
Regarding the paintings on the subject of skating, the two hand scrolls collected by the Palace Museum in Beijing today are both composed by Qing Dynasty court painters: one is the "Ice Painting" jointly painted by Jin Kun, Cheng Zhidao and Fu Long'an, and the other is the "Ice Painting" jointly painted by Zhang Weibang and Yao Wenhan, who is slightly later. Both works were painted by court painters and offered to the emperor for use, documenting the scene of soldiers who were "good at walking on ice" during the mid-winter waxing moon, dressed in ice in the Royal West Garden (now Beihai Park and Zhongnanhai Waters). Influenced by the royal and bureaucratic classes, the Qing Dynasty Beijing folk, "walking on the ice" is also a popular winter entertainment activity. Historical photographs taken by British photographer Thomas Child in the 1870s show that ordinary people in Beijing at that time spent most of their winter skating on the moat.
In August 1925, after the Qing Dynasty Emperor Puyi left the imperial palace, Beihai was opened to the public, and it can be seen from the photo of the famous physicist Wang Dezhao and his lover Li Huinian skating in Beihai Park in 1927, which has a special skating rink in winter. At the same time, because European and American countries have opened many church universities such as Yenching University in Beijing, ice sports such as ice hockey and figure skating have been introduced to Beijing and become fashionable. A group of old photos that are widely circulated on the Internet today, that is, in 1946, when the photographer of life magazine in the United States passed through Beihai Park, he took a 66-year-old skater who had performed skating techniques at the Qing court, Wu Tongxuan, and the series of difficult skating actions he showed in the photos showed showed that skating as a winter entertainment or sport has a deep foundation among the people of Beijing. In the old photos taken from the 1930s to the 1940s, many enthusiasts can always be seen leaving their own footprints on the North Sea ice rink. During this period, the most famous skater was Xiao Shufang, the wife of wu Zuoren, an artist who had studied in France and Belgium.
In January 1935, shanghai Liangyou Pictorial (No. 101) published a group of "Ice Light Shadows" taken by photographer Wei Shouzhong, recording a series of difficult movements performed by beijing skaters in Beihai, Xia Chengyao, Xia Chenglin brothers, Xiao Shufang, Xiao Shuxi sisters, and 62-year-old Qi Zilin. The brothers Xia Chengyao and Xia Chenglin performed tango and solo dances, Qi Zilin performed Taibai drunkenness, etc., while 4 photos of Xiao Shufang skating performed the one-foot "left foot outer blade forward, graceful posture, like Lingbo fairy", "right foot outer blade, step obliquely, and like a drunken fairy driving in the clouds", "right foot inner blade forward, there is a stunning beauty" and so on. And Xiao Shufang not only has a very high talent for painting, but also likes to skate, ride a horse, swim, play tennis, "I naturally like the beauty of the world", all the fashionable sports she tried, in the large number of photos she left when she was young, she showed her "Republic of China style".
Ai Zhongxin, "Skating" (1946)
In 1946, Wu Zuo and Xiao Shufang's friend Ai Zhongxin, who co-taught at the Peking National Art College (the predecessor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts), created the oil painting "Skating", which depicts Xiao Shufang, dressed in blue, teaching her daughter to skate in the North Sea. This painting is intended to depict the momentum and speed of the skater, so the figure is not carefully crafted, but sketches the posture of the figure, forming a visual meaning of Impressionist painting. The most characteristic feature of the picture is the large brushstrokes depicting the ice surface, which echo the dynamics of the skaters and enhance the momentum of the picture.
In 1947, Sun Zongwei, another artist who also taught at the Peking National Art College, created the night painting "Ice Rink", which seems to show the scene of people skating and playing after "splashing water for ice" on the flat ground. In the picture, Xiao Shufang, a blue-clad skater in Ai Zhongxin's oil painting "Skating", also appears, and she is not skating at the moment, but chatting with another woman standing outside the guardrail. This work shows that skating, as a fashionable sport at that time, was so popular in Beijing in winter that there were even special skating rinks open at night. In terms of creative awareness, Sun Zongwei and Ai Zhongxin both depict and express a scene of the daily life of ordinary citizens in Beijing, and these two vivid pictures should come from the creation after sketching, simple and strong modeling and color language, presenting a sincere emotion for real life.
After the founding of New China in 1949, Beihai, Shichahai and the Summer Palace are all good places for the broad masses of people to skate in winter, especially in Shichahai, and a "people's ice rink" has been specially set up, with a 400-meter running track, ice rink and practice area. On the second day of the Spring Festival in 1952, Beijing held a grand ice sports meeting in Shichahai, organizing more than 3,000 workers, students, cadres and citizens to participate, including not only figure skating, ice hockey, middle and long distance racing, but also the skating test of "winter physical exercise standards". According to the "People's Pictorial" in 1952, the second issue reported that at that time, the major factories and schools in Beijing created their own skating conditions, such as the People's Printing Factory, Chinese University, Beijing Normal University, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Yenching University, etc., all built ice rinks in their own units, which greatly promoted the development of ice sports in Beijing. The "Winter Physical Exercise Standards" issued to universities and middle schools and set into the Patriotic Pact make it clear that skating exercise is to "strengthen national defense forces", such as Beijing Yuying Middle School and youth associations, etc., have set up their own ice hockey teams to participate in this competition.
Winter in the North Sea (1954)
Works that reflect the ice movement in the early days of New China include the oil painting "North Sea Skating" created by Xiao Shufang in 1954, the print "Winter in the North Sea" created by Gu Yuan, and the color ink painting "Ice Fighting in the North Sea" created by Zong Qixiang in 1956. All three artists, who taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, were influenced by the idea of literature and art serving the people and expressing real life, and their works presented the people's side of the ice movement, depicting the former Royal Forest Garden, which is now a visual situation of the people's park. Xiao Shufang's oil painting depicts many scenes of teenagers skating, and the ice knives on the dark ice surface leave an arc marking the trajectory of the slide, coupled with the reflection of the ice surface, making the picture very dreamy. In the close-up, a pair of elementary school girls wearing red scarves around their necks and short skirts are holding hands and quickly skimming in front of them, and the white scarves are dancing, pleasing to the eye. As a good skater, Xiao Shufang depicts a variety of characters in the skating rink, including pushers and skaters, single, double, and row skaters, beginners wrestling on their backs, professional practitioners who seem to be wearing dance costumes, and even a row of spectators who look outside the fence and enjoy watching.
Sun Zongwei, "Ice Rink" (1947)
Gu Yuan takes a heads-up perspective on the picture to show the bustling skaters on the Beihai Ice Rink, depicting what appears to be the daily scenes of workers, students and citizens in Beijing on weekends leisure and entertainment on the ice. Zong Qixiang uses loose ink spots to properly spot the skaters chasing the frolicks in the distant scene, and compared with the meticulous portrayal in Xiao Shufang's works, his picture wins with atmosphere, so that the viewer seems to be able to faintly hear the noise of the crowd in the distance.
Dai Ze, "The Lake Behind the Summer Palace" (1979)
In 1979, Dai Ze, who taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, created an oil painting "Summer Palace Back Lake", which is similar to Zong Qixiang in terms of composition, and the skaters in the distant view are also based on dot brushstrokes, but the picture pursues a kind of large brushstroke performance, especially the ice surface of the close-up scene, which is very formal. The oil painting "Shichahai Winter", created by Li Ruinian, an oil painter who taught at Beijing Normal College in Beijing Normal University and studied in Belgium and France, is more like a response to Gu Yuan. In this work, Li Ruinian depicts the crowd playing on the ice or skating or playing ice ball through the gap between the 9 trees in the close-up, and it is interesting that these point-and-view figures depict clothes and pants in brighter colors, which are particularly vivid and lively, so that the picture is haunted by the joyful atmosphere of ushering in the new era of reform and opening up.
Dawn Rise (1990)
In addition to skating on ice rinks such as Beijing's Beihai, there have been very few works since the 1990s that depict mountaineering and skiing, and three of them are very exciting.
In 1990, Li Ming, a sculptor at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, created a stainless steel sculpture "Rise" based on the scene of the Chinese, Japanese and Nepalese mountaineering teams jointly climbing the world's highest mountain, Mount Everest, in May 1988 to achieve the double cross-division of the north and south. Influenced by the modernist language style since the 1980s, the sculpture is based on the gesture of three climbers holding their hands high to celebrate, forming a mountain character, symbolizing the fearless spirit of human solidarity and overcoming difficulties. In 1996, Wu Weishan, a professor at Nanjing Normal University who advocated the theory of "freehand sculpture", created a small sculpture "Balance - Skier", which emphasizes the touch of the hand and emphasizes the artist's imagery of the skier's body posture compared with the symbolism and monumental sense of "Rise".
In 2014, Yang Gang, a painter from the Beijing Academy of Painting, created a sketch-style stick figure painting "Ski Jumping" with ink, and the artist vividly and accurately represented the orthodontic shadow of the ski jumper flying in the air with a very general brushstroke, so that the work has a wonderful form that is both realistic and freehand. Compared with the melodious and gentle meaning of Wu Weishan's sculpture modeling, Yang Gang emphasizes the single knife straight into the shape and the taste of raw punching straight.
(The author is an associate research librarian at the National Art Museum of China)
(Original title: Ice and Snow World Art Illustrated)
Source: Beijing Daily by Wei Xiangqi
Process Edit: u010