Emperor Huizong of the Northern Song Dynasty was the eleventh son of Emperor Shenzong of Song and the younger brother of Emperor Zhezong of Song, and was successively named King of Suining and King Duan. His brother Song Zhezong died childless in the first month of 1100 AD, and Empress Xiang made him emperor in the same month, and listened to the government for one year, and changed the era name to "Jianzhong Jingguo" the following year. During the Huizong Dynasty, political corruption, the people did not have a good life, and many popular uprisings such as the SongJiang Uprising and the Fang La Uprising broke out. In the first year of Jing Kang (1126), Jin Bingbing was under the city, Zen was located under the crown prince Qinzong, and in the second year of the death of the state, he was captured and went north, and jin Tianhui died of illness in the thirteenth year (1135) of the Five Kingdoms City, at the age of 54.
Many people have a very bad first impression of Emperor Huizong of Song, because he not only died in the Northern Song Dynasty, but also had a temperamental nature and loved beauty, and only lived for fifty-four years, but gave birth to sixty-six children. According to the Kaifeng Fu zhi, at the time of Jing Kang's disaster, There were 143 concubines of Emperor Huizong, and as many as 504 female officials and palace women. Folk also spread that Song Huizong was very fond of Li Shishi, a woman in the Qinglou. Master Li was a famous geisha in Tokyo during the Northern Song Dynasty, who was proficient in both color and art, poetry and song, sheng pipe flute and flute, and after Emperor Huizong of Song learned of it, he ignored the dignity of the Ninth Five-Year Plan and went to the Qinglou several times to meet With Master Li. Later, a tunnel was dug between the imperial palace and the brothel to facilitate meeting with Li Shishi, and now a trace of this mysterious tunnel can still be seen in the ruins of the Song City in Kaifeng. Emperor Huizong of Song also fought with The famous poet Zhou Bangyan, who was good friends with Master Li in the old days, and was jealous of the wind, and soon it spread throughout the city of Tokyo.
Song Huizong can be said to be an out-and-out rotten emperor, but history is always multifaceted, although he is politically incompetent, but in terms of art, he is the most artistic and talented emperor in ancient China. His contributions to art even influenced China a thousand years later. If the artistic taste of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty is fifty points, then Song Huizong must be ten thousand points. The reason why I say this is because Song Huizong has extensively dabbled in piano, chess, calligraphy, poetry and song, especially in calligraphy. He has three major achievements in art: one is to create a thin gold body; the other is to include art painting in the imperial examination; and the third is to develop Ru porcelain.
Sharp and thin gold body
I believe that many readers have painful memories of being forced by their parents to learn calligraphy, and the author is the same. At that time, the calligraphy teacher always said, "Oh, the sharp edge is exposed!" Calligraphy emphasizes the collection of sharp edges without showing sharpness, low-key and introverted, Taoguang and obscurity, and rewrites me with a piece of paper. ”
"Feng" and "Mang" are taboos in classical aesthetics, and Chinese calligraphy speaks of "Hidden Feng", which simply means that there is no cutting edge. The mainstream tradition of Confucianism does not encourage "sharp edges", but contains buds to be released, and ambiguous contains light, and "sharp edges" have become a symbol of no one in sight, and they are to be condemned by heaven. At that time, I really always thought that the calligraphy teacher's orthodox calligraphy and calligraphy font were the real art, but I didn't know that the really powerful people did not imitate other people's fonts, but created a trend on their own.
The calligraphy of Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty is the representative of the Northern Song Dynasty font, he regards himself as "the next person in the world", refuses to live in the ancient tradition of Tibetan Feng introverted, and deliberately preserves the traces of Tibetan Feng, Lu Feng, and Running Teton, forming a horizontal painting with a hook, a vertical painting with a dot and other characteristics. In the end, he created a set of calligraphic fonts that had never been seen before, never came after, and were famous all over the world, and the slander was followed by thin gold body.
The reason why it is called "thin gold body" is not to ridicule the thin and weak meaning of the enemy country Jin Dynasty (impolite, people are super strong). "Thin" means that the pen and ink are tight and thin, floating like a willow tree. And "gold" is metal, it is bronze, and it is also gold. "Gold" is the opposite of the former's "thin", rock solid and dazzling.
The pre-Qin process popularized "wrong gold", in the bronze pre-engraved picture, before the melting gold and silver into the depression, so that the dark color of the bronze more shiny carved decoration, showing the beauty of "wrong gold". Connecting "thin" and "gold", that is, the lines are thin and ethereal, gorgeous and noble and stiff, the two seem to be completely different, but Song Huizong can fuse them into a white and flawless, which is the mystery of calligraphy.
The skinny gold body is like a forbidden romance on the verge of danger, which fascinates people and makes people retreat. Collected in the National Palace museum in Taipei, "秾依翠萼, huan in a court", every word is shining brightly. Emperor Huizong of Song made the Chinese character lines sharp and very personal. Second-rate scholars like the author and I sometimes can't distinguish between Yan Zhenqing's Yan body and Liu Zongyuan's willow body, but when they see Song Huizong's thin gold body, they can recognize it at a glance, which shows that its recognition is so high that it can be called the proud work of Song Huizong.
The ultimate simplicity of Ru porcelain
The definition of taste seems very complicated, like a person who likes to tie, wear a suit, comb his hair, and drive a penns, you can say that he is very tasteful, but if you find a person who wears a simple T-shirt but likes to read poetry in his free time, how do you evaluate whether he has taste? In fact, they all have tastes, and in the seemingly non-common point, they all have one common point: they know how to enjoy, but they will not be attached to the worldly trend.
Song Huizong not only did not adhere to the trend, but also created a set of macro simple art trends. We all know that the Tang Dynasty was beautiful for luxury and complexity, but Song Huizong did not love this taste, he picked out all the seasonings, leaving only the original taste of the object. In the art of simplicity, the most classic is Ru porcelain.
It is said that there were five famous kilns in the Song Dynasty (汝, 官, ge, Jun, and Ding), and among all the kilns, the ru kiln is the most rare. Shiren said it well: "Even if you have a family fortune, it is not as good as a piece of Ru porcelain." A folk saying that speaks to its preciousness.
In fact, Ru porcelain looks mediocre, and if you don't read a few books, you may confuse him with the cheap porcelain plates of the hypermarket, but ru porcelain contains more complicated things behind it, such as his ideological concepts and manufacturing process. If readers have a chance to visit Taipei, they may wish to go to the National Palace Museum to find Ru porcelain, which is a light blue porcelain urn, which is the color of the rainy and sunny days in the Song Dynasty. Emperor Huizong of Song condensed the color of the sky at that time onto an artifact, so that when we look at Ru porcelain, we can also recall the colors of the sky of the Song Dynasty for thousands of years.
Song Huizong once had a dream, after a rainy day, Song Huizong opened the gate, walking slowly through the rain, when looking at the sky outside the city wall, he was very shocked, the distant sky was mixed with the dark clouds that had been rampant for a while, and the blue sky that had rained over the sky, the two met in a line, forming a mysterious azure color, which was particularly fascinating. After waking up, Song Huizong wrote a poem: "The rain passes through the sky and the clouds break", and gave it to the craftsmen for reference, so that they could burn this color.
For a time, I don't know how many craftsmen have been difficult to burn, this glaze color is very difficult to fire, the location, temperature, humidity, slightly inappropriate, will affect the color of the final product, with modern people, to burn Ru porcelain, in addition to the need for uniform heating, the temperature in the kiln must continue to maintain at twelve hundred Celsius, if slightly over, the color will turn from blue to light green, the value is gone, there was no thermometer at that time, only visual observation of the fire, the process can be described as dangerous and difficult.
The kiln workers painstakingly produced dozens to hundreds of blue sky blue porcelain, and could only select a few satisfactory porcelain urns to hand over to the imperial court, while Song Huizong faced several strictly screened Ru porcelain, and even more stringent requirements, only a few dozen Ru porcelain, slightly flawed in color, were smashed into pieces by Song Huizong's big hand, and finally only a few were left in the palace.
So strictly screened, the Ru porcelain left behind is naturally washed like gelatin, azure and green, ice cracks are clear, and the shape of the instrument is exquisite and elegant. Today, there are only more than sixty pieces of Ru porcelain left (one says more than 80 pieces), because of the scarcity of the quantity and the complexity of the workmanship, making the Ru porcelain a rare treasure, you may ask: "How expensive is it?" ”
In 2017, Sotheby's Hong Kong exhibited Ru porcelain at the auction and finally bought it for HK$260 million, setting a record for the highest auction of ancient Chinese porcelain. No wonder Qianlong searched for the world's rare treasures when he was in power, and the most precious thing was the pots and pans that ate and drank Lasa in the song Huizong era.
When we go to the Forbidden City today to see Ru porcelain, we can see that his edges are still glowing with a faint purple light, some people say that agate is added to it, and some people say that it is added with crystals, and people have debated this matter for thousands of years, but there is no conclusion, because his skills have been lost with the fall of Beijing.
Founded the Royal Academy of Fine Arts to promote the arts
Huizong not only created a large number of fine works of calligraphy and painting, but also the primary promoter of the cultural and artistic development of the Northern Song Dynasty. Among them, it is commendable for the importance attached to the Hanlin Calligraphy and Painting Academy. It is said that the Hanlin Academy of Calligraphy and Painting was not created by Emperor Huizong of Song, but it was established in the early Song Dynasty, but Emperor Huizong of Song brought it to the peak.
Since the beginning of the Song Dynasty, the status of painters, regardless of their skills, has always been extremely poor, and even the status of the royal painter is much worse than that of other similar departments (the color of the clothes is still different!). It's a third-rate unpopular official. However, after The turn of Emperor Huizong of Song came to power, he not only raised the political status of painters, but also actively promoted art, and incorporated the painting examination into the ranks of the imperial examination.
Song Huizong put a lot of thought on the painting academy, designed a full set of curriculum plans and teaching methods, as well as admissions and examination systems, which is simply an ancient version of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Moreover, it also imitates the Jinshike to take the problem and test the painters with beautiful poems as the painting title, on the one hand, to promote them to attach importance to and strengthen the literary literacy of personal inscription poems, on the other hand, it is also to intentionally promote the integration of "poetry and painting", so that the painters' painting situation can be upgraded to a higher level.
As the highest-level art academy in the Northern Song Dynasty, the Hanlin Academy of Calligraphy and Painting is equivalent to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and the people who come out of it are all first-class talents, such as Zhang Zeduan of "Qingming on the River Map" and Wang Ximeng of "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" are all talents cultivated by Song Huizong, and both works have been selected as china's top ten famous paintings by later generations.
The aesthetics of today's world are similar to those of the Kang Yongqian period, and there are flashy drawbacks, such as super spectacular military parades, eye-catching beautiful women, or seals that have been very popular in recent years, although these things are not obscene, they are not called level, and the artistic taste of Song Huizong is different, which can be slightly known from the examination questions he gave to the Hanlin Calligraphy and Painting Institute, such as "stepping on flowers to return to horseshoe incense", "selling restaurants by the bamboo lock bridge", "tender green branches are red".
As far as the former is concerned, "a man rides a horse to return in a forest full of flowers" can be understood, but the word "incense" seems abstract, and what mood should be used to make the reader think of the fragrant fragrance of flowers when he sees the picture? This was a great embarrassment to the world's readers, and Song Huizong himself also went through countless scrolls to find the ideal picture:
A horse walks slowly, and several butterflies flutter forward or backward, chasing the horse's hooves. Horseshoes and butterflies skillfully express the "stepping on the flowers" of the previous moment, and the chase of the butterflies shows the fragrance of the flowers, turning the invisible into the tangible, the artistic conception is beautiful and elegant, adding a lot of charm and imagination space.
Song Huizong was very strict with the students of the academy, requiring the painter to copy the brush and ink skills of others and to be unique; both requiring the painter to retain the initial creative imagination and deeply observe the realism. Song Huizong ran to Hanlin Academy to personally supervise and draw students to paint, and if anyone dared to draw crooked in the classroom examination, the career of a painter would definitely come to an abrupt end.
There are very few students who can survive this kind of alternative devil training that lifts pens and grinds ink every day, but it has also produced many artistic masters, just like the Wang Ximeng just mentioned, he is the youngest author of China's top ten famous paintings, when he was only eighteen years old, after half a year of devil training in the academy, he created the masterpiece "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains". At the same time, Emperor Huizong of Song was also very generous to the academy, and every once in a while he sent all kinds of famous paintings that he regarded as treasures to the academy for students to imitate.
The development of art in the Song Dynasty can be described as extremely prosperous, and it is beyond the reach of Kang Yongqian and the Tang Dynasty. Under the rule of Emperor Huizong of Song, the painters of the painting academy enjoyed the treatment of civilian officials, and the way to get a career was no longer the four books and five classics, but more free literary and artistic thought. Although Emperor Huizong of song ignored the government and neglected politics, which eventually led to the destruction of the Northern Song Dynasty by the Jin Dynasty, his concept of devoting his life to art and culture is indeed worth learning.