In Chinese painting, landscape painting is not just a simple painting from the beginning, but often it appears as an important part of interior decoration (even now).
But how to appreciate Chinese landscape painting? How is Chinese landscape painting different from Western landscape painting? A lot of people don't know.
Of course, these two questions can not be answered in one short article, but a smile will open this door for you today, so that you can understand some basic knowledge -
An excellent tradition of Chinese landscape painting is to advocate the "creation of foreign teachers", advocating taking nature as a teacher, observing natural phenomena in depth and meticulously, and expressing nature on the basis of full understanding.
In the Northern Song Dynasty, there were new improvements in practice and theory. Guo Xi is a prominent representative.
In the previous article, YiXiao took everyone to appreciate Guo Xi's "Early Spring Map", and also read "Mountain Village Map", "Pingyuan Map of Qiaoshi", as well as "Guanshan Spring Snow Map", "Valley Map", "Ancient Wood Yaoshan Map" and other his heirloom works, I will not elaborate on them one by one - because today is mainly to introduce Guo Xi's achievements in art theory.
--As soon as they saw the word "theory", many people were "dissuaded", and they laughed and insisted on saying it because Guo Xi's theories were too important and played an important role in ordinary people's appreciation of landscape painting and study of landscape painting.
For example, the "Three Distant Method", if you don't know, you can't understand why Chinese landscape painting can perfectly combine the whole picture of the mountain with the local details - according to the Western perspective principle, many scenes are invisible to the painter, and the mountain behind will be blocked by the mountain in front. But why is it that the chinese painting of the mountains before and after the mountains are mixed together so confused perspective can still make people look very comfortable and feel very reasonable?
Previous painters may have painted in this way based on subjective impressions, and at most summed up a sentence of "looking at the distance to take its momentum, and looking closely to take its quality" (Fan Kuan). However, after thinking about it, Guo Xi distilled them into the "Three Distant Methods", which became the basic program for dealing with the composition of panoramic landscapes.
Let's first look at Guo Xi's original words: "The mountain has three distances: from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain, it is said to be high and far; From the front of the mountain to the back of the mountain, it is said to be far-reaching; From the near mountain to the far mountain, it is said to be peaceful and far. The color of the high and far is clear, the far-reaching color is obscure, and the color of the flat distance is far and obscure. The high and far-reaching momentum is abrupt, the far-reaching meaning overlaps, and the meaning of the flat-far-reaching is flushed and ethereal. Its characters are also in the three distances: the high and far-reaching are clear, the far-reaching are finely broken, and the flat-reaching are diluted... This three far away also. ”
How to understand it?
Simply put, it is to use different visual angles such as looking up, looking down, and looking up to depict the scene in the painting, rather than sticking to an observation point and using focus perspective to observe and depict the scene.
Let's make it clearer with examples.
《Xishan Travel Map》
Fan Kuan's "Journey to the Creek and Mountain" mainly uses the high and distant method - deliberately placing himself in a low place, using an upward viewing angle, while painting people, houses, and trees very small to highlight the height of the mountain peaks. You can also paint the high peaks out of the picture or hide the lower part of the mountain between the clouds, so that the audience can imagine how high the mountain is.
《窠石平遠圖》
Guo Xi's "Pingyuan Diagram of The Stone" mainly uses the Pingyuan method - this is similar to our daily observation method, that is, we normally glance at the past and see the appearance.
《Early Spring Picture》
Guo Xi's "Early Spring Map" mainly uses the far-reaching method - far-reaching is to draw a deep feeling from the front to the inside. In ancient times, this was mainly due to the painter seeing the scenery, having a complete impression, and then painting layer by layer. In modern times, some painters are lazy to use aerial photography or drones to shoot scenes, and combine them to obtain "far-reaching" pictures.
With this "three-distance method", painters can clearly coordinate the issue of business position in landscape creation.
—— This theory is recorded in the "Collection of Lin Quan Gaozhi". "Lin Quan Gao Zhi Collection" is Guo Xi's theoretical summary, compiled by his son Guo Si.
"Lin Quan Gao Zhi Collection"
The whole book of "Lin Quan Gao Zhi Collection" is divided into six parts: water training, painting intention, painting technique, painting title, painting grid collection, and painting notes.
The opening chapter talks about the significance of the existence of landscape painting at that time: so that otaku (literati, nobles) can "not go to the feast, sit in the poor springs", and meet their spiritual needs of "staying at home and traveling through thousands of mountains and rivers" by watching landscape paintings at home.
Then I said how to learn landscape painting. "The study of painting by man is no different from the study of books... I will have to look at it all, and I will discuss it widely, so that I can become a family of my own, and then I will get it. ”
It is also proposed that "the valley of the true landscape and water looks far away to take its momentum, and the close-up view takes its quality." "Mountains live by water, and water is beautiful with mountains." "Mountains without clouds are not beautiful, no water is not beautiful, no roads are not alive, and no trees are not born." "There is no distant mountain, no wave in the distant water, and no eyes in the distance." Non-nothing, such as no ears. " and other experiences. (These are easy to understand and do not translate)
For those who study Chinese painting, there are also many practical experience techniques in "Lin Quan Gao Zhi Collection". For example, "light ink overlaps and swirls and takes the so-called dry, light with sharp pen lying horizontally to provoke trouble, rubbing with ink repeatedly and dripping is called the brush", "the stone color is taken with green dai and ink and light and deep, the waterfall is taken with the natural color of the silk, but the scorched ink is used next to it to get it" and so on.
As for the fact that the painter must be "good in god, proficient in diligence, full of food and sight", "Spring Mountain is light and smiling, Summer Mountain is green and like drops, Autumn Mountain is clear and clean like makeup, Winter Mountain is bleak and sleepy" and so on are very wonderful expositions, and now regular students of Chinese painting will talk about it.
Even writing essays you can get material from this book. For example, writing about wind and rain and water stones "fierce winds, heavy rain tilting, waterfalls flying in the air, turbulent shooting stones, spraying jade splashing jade, splashing each other, not knowing the distance of its source stream"; writing early spring smoke "the sun is steaming, the morning light is moving, the mountains are like green, the smoke is green, the mountains are like green, the smoke is green, the combination is suddenly separated, or gathered or scattered, perverted, fluttering between the jungle valleys, once unknown to its end. ”......
In short, the emergence of "Lin Quan Gao Zhi Collection", an important painting treatise in ancient mainland China, marks that the theory of landscape painting has entered a mature stage.
Through the "Lin Quan Gao Zhi Collection", we can not only deepen our understanding of traditional landscape painting, but also understand the meaning, function and expression of landscape and enhance our artistic accomplishment. Especially "celebrities" and "successful people", you need to look at this knowledge, so as not to expose your ignorance and taste in high-level occasions such as galleries.
This article is a companion article to "Fun talk about the history of Chinese characters/calligraphy" and a series of articles on the history of Chinese art (tentative name). Every minute, harvest a lifetime of knowledge, you deserve it! Pay attention to the previous article, and prompt the update in time. Please indicate the source of the reprint, welcome to the publisher to contact me.