Li Song (1166-1243), Painter of the Southern Song Dynasty, a native of Hangzhou, Zhejiang. When he was a teenager, he worked as a carpenter, and later became the adopted son of Li Congxun, a painter of the Academy of Paintings, who was taught by him personally, and was good at figures and Taoist interpretations, especially proficient in boundary painting, and was a master of painting academies during the guangzong, Ningzong, and Lizong periods.
He painted many genre paintings that expressed the life of the lower classes and scenes showing the working life of the peasants.
Li Song has many talents, especially good at expressing his feelings and attitudes towards life through painting, and his "Skeleton Illusion" has left a mystery of Chinese art history with its profound meaning that is not easy to be understood.
1． "Ming Emperor Cockfighting"
▲ "Ming Emperor Cockfighting Diagram" 23.5 cm in length and 21.0 cm in width
Ming Emperor Fighting depicts the scene of Tang Ming Emperor stationed on horseback to watch cockfighting. In the painting, Emperor Tang Ming is leisurely and leisurely, and the instrument is extraordinary; the fights the neck and closes its wings, bends its feet and raises its tail, and the fight is about to erupt. The whole picture not only depicts the song and dance of the Sheng Tang Dynasty, but also hides the fishing yang drum among the clouds and the pearls, and hides the chaos of tianbao. The painting takes history as a mirror and conveys a simple truth to the emperors at that time and in later generations: Yiyu can die, and only by thinking of danger in peace and making great efforts to govern can he get guotai and people's peace.
2． "Moonlit Night Looking at the Tide"
The painting depicts the situation of watching the sea tide at night in Lin'an Mid-Autumn Festival during the Southern Song Dynasty, and meticulously depicts the sparkling river of the Qiantang River and the joy of watching the tide in Hangzhou, which can be called an outstanding work of guanchao calligraphy and painting.
3． 《Cargo Lang Tu》
▲ "Cargo Lang Diagram" is 25.5 cm long and 70.4 cm wide
"Cargo Lang Tu" is a silhouette of the daily streets and alleys of the Song Dynasty, in which the simple cargo lang, the serene woman, and the lively children have different looks and complement each other. This role is fine in penmanship, light in color, and the overall meaning is simple and calm, showing the painter's solid realism skills, showing the stable and peaceful life picture of the mountain and countryside of the Song Dynasty.
4． 《Flower Basket Diagram》
▲ "Flower Basket Diagram" 19.1 cm in length and 26.5 cm in width
"Flower Basket Diagram" depicts a "Longsheng Basket", which is full of gardenias, hollyhocks, pomegranates, grasses, and nocturnal flowers. In traditional culture, hollyhocks are often associated with the Dragon Boat Festival because of their five colors, symbolizing the five elements; pomegranate flowers and gardenia flowers are flowers used to drive away evil spirits in the Dragon Boat Festival; xuancao and night flowers are also often associated with the Dragon Boat Festival. It can be seen that this "Flower Basket Diagram" may be a work to celebrate Duanyang, expressing the vitality and spiritual characteristics of life and vitality of prosperity and fullness.
5． 《Water Temple Beckoning Cool Map》
▲ "Water Temple Zhao Liang Map" 24.5 cm in length and 25.4 cm in width
The ancient roof image and detail decoration are very rich, this picture is the top of the heavy eaves cross ridge, the eaves are slightly upturned at both ends, several high roof ridges have the end of the animal head of the bundle member, the front of the vertical ridge is decorated with immortals and squat beasts. The roof tiles and tiles, rafters, and animal painting methods are extremely delicate, and the roof mountain flower surface is quite wide, with hanging fish placed in the middle, and grass decoration along the edges.
In the picture, the eaves of the eaves are laid on the forehead, and two flowers are used in the heart, one in the second room, which is fully in line with the technical rules of the Song Dynasty carpenter's house building, and the water hall is built at the water's edge or next to the flowers, and the structure is flexible and diverse.
There is a sluice gate that diverts the water from the lake into the channel and flows into the palace garden. The roof covered bridge built on the pond swamp, the lower ground, the row of fork columns, the upper frame of the column, and the beam between the foreheads, are valuable materials for the study of bridges and sluice gates in the Song Dynasty.
6． "Skeleton Illusion"
▲ "Skeleton Illusion" is 27 cm long and 26.3 cm wide
This painting looks terrible, but in fact, the whole picture is very peaceful and joyful, without any horror, and should be a performance of a mobile puppet (puppet) artist with a family and mouth, mainly depicting a joyful scene of women and children's lives.
During the Song and Yuan dynasties, the skeleton was a habitual humorous metaphor for people, but with the passage of time, its figurative meaning has gradually been forgotten, which is the fundamental reason why people are shocked by this diagram today. Taoist Qi Wu and Happy Death, Buddhist Silence and Nirvana are the ideological origins of the skeleton illusion, and the painting shows Li Song's personal humorous and interesting style, and embodies this ideological origin.