The Surging News learned that on March 8, the "Liren Xing - Ancient Chinese Women's Image Exhibition" opened at the Zhejiang Art Museum on the banks of The West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, with an exhibition selecting ancient female image paintings collected by the Zhejiang Museum, while supporting the display of related ancient women's jewelry, clothing, daily necessities and other physical objects, as well as the works of contemporary female artists, through more than 160 pieces (groups) of exhibits, inviting the audience to see the beauty in the painting with a variety of styles, and taste the life of the beautiful people outside the painting.
Exhibition site
In the 5th century BC, patterns with female figures began to appear in China, and by the Han and Tang dynasties, female figures were already one of the common subjects of painting. Many of the surviving ancient paintings, especially the long scrolls and sets of paintings popular in the Ming and Qing dynasties, were dedicated to depicting women's lives.
The main line of this exhibition selects 75 paintings with ancient women's themes in the collection, and around the paintings, more than 80 pieces (groups) of ancient women's jewelry, clothing, daily necessities and other objects related to the content of the picture are exhibited, including porcelain, gold and silverware, bronzeware, lacquerware, silk fabrics, etc. Paintings and supporting cultural relics are organically combined into information groups, and two-dimensional images and three-dimensional paintings complement each other, which can allow the audience to have a more intuitive understanding of the ancient women's costumes, utensils, and daily necessities expressed in the paintings.
Qing Fei Danxu "Listening to autumn sipping tea" exhibition site
The exhibition is divided into three units: "Boudoir Charm", "Cloud Curtain Pepper Room" and "Courtyard Spring Deep", which arrange the exhibition lines according to the exhibition hall pattern on the three floors of the West Lake Art Museum, from the outside to the inside, leading the audience to gradually approach the world of ancient women. And through the detailed information group, the relevant knowledge points are extended to further enrich the audience's cognition of ancient women.
The first unit, "Boudoir Charm", focuses on the external image of ancient women. Among them, the "State of Thick Meaning" section explores the changes in the aesthetic fashion of female images in different eras under the action of various social and cultural factors; the "Embroidery Luo Cuiwei" section shows the rich and diverse hairstyles, makeup, jewelry and clothing of ancient women, showing the unremitting pursuit of beauty by women of all generations.
Qing Shenshi "Independent Lady Figure" (partial)
Beauty is the unremitting pursuit of ancient women, coupled with the "for the self-pleasing" thinking to promote the waves, plastic surgery, the pursuit of good looks, has become an important part of the life of ancient women. Women's grooming process is secretive and private, and there are many themes depicting women's grooming and dressing in ancient paintings, which provides a way for us to peek into the secrets of ancient women's grooming.
Qing Shenshi "Independent Lady Figure" (full picture)
The beauties shown in the paintings are often carefully groomed, wearing exquisite ornaments and colorful clothes, giving them an intoxicating look. In addition to showing the beautiful posture of boudoir women's grooming and dressing, guying the sadness of self-pity, many female grooming pictures also have the significance of mirror reflection, grooming and moral indoctrination.
The second unit, "Yunmu Pepper Room", focuses on the activity space of ancient women and is divided into two sections: "Liju Jinghao" and "Landscape Garden". From the indoor boudoir world to the outdoor garden mountains and rivers, compared with the vast world of men, the female space depicted in the painting is full of limitations, which can be seen in the ancient society of "male lord outside the female lead" under the norm of female spiritual feelings.
Qing Fei Yigeng, Zhang Xiong, "Plum Blossom Lady Picture Banner"
The original meaning of "boudoir" was the small door of the inner chamber. The social and public space in which men are active is vast and macroscopic, while the boudoir space of women's daily life is limited, microscopic, quiet and flat, unfazed, and conformist. The heavy curtains and curtains in the painting are not only the isolation and closure of women's living space, but also the suppression and bondage of emotional nature. And this "inside" has several layers of meaning and specific norms: the demarcation between social classes is actually more essential, and women in the scholar class are in many ways the sharers of benefits and privileges. Thus, in contrast to the "wall" between classes, the spatial division of women of the same class is neither the image of the "wall" nor the image of the "screen", but the image of the "curtain": it indicates the boundary and also implies the connection; it is not impenetrable, but it does exist.
The third unit, "Courtyard Spring Depth", focuses on the multidimensional identity of ancient women. Among them, the paintings in the three subsections in the "Year of Passing Water" section show the ancient women's talents in piano, chess, poetry and painting as talented women, their family life as virtuous wives and mothers, and the labor of female reds.
Qing Fei Danxu "Listen to the Autumn SipPing"
Ancient Chinese women have "human design": first, the body cannot go beyond the scope of the home, second, the behavior cannot go beyond the scope of housework, and third, consciousness cannot transcend the family paradigm. From excavated cultural relics to farming and weaving drawings, courtyard paintings, export paintings, and then to folk paintings, the objects include royal women, aristocratic women, and ordinary peasant women. They are daughters, concubines or wives, mothers, but they are not themselves. Qualified scholars and doctors will open a back garden in their private courtyard for the female relatives of the family to play and relieve their boredom. Such conditions can be described as favorable, but they also lock them firmly in the backyard of the inner house. Although enclosed in the "back garden", they are not the owners of the "back garden". The ancient private garden was originally a place of spiritual rest created by men for themselves, as a woman to be attached to them, but like those flowers and stones, it was an indispensable high-level aesthetic element in the garden. So such as godsons, textiles, embroidery, etc., more a lot of leisure, such as makeup, playing the piano, chess, reading, painting, writing poetry, cooking tea, drinking, games, and even just sitting idly by the column has become an important part of the life of the bridesmaid.
Qing Yun Bing《 Jade Cave Immortal Plant Diagram
The "Boudoir Fangfei" section selects the works of ancient female painters to explore their spiritual world and self-awareness. Women in the feudal upper class have leisure time, and they are not willing to have no goals in life. To this end, there is an urgent need to indoctrinate and practice various talents, and Yuan Ming is one of the literati who are keen on this religion, and the "teaching" aims to make women more loyal, tame, and further enslaved in spirit and life. In some families, women's behavior may also be appreciated, cherished and supported by their fathers, brothers and husbands, such as each talent of the Banana Garden Poetry Society (there are 12 backbones before and after) have a collection of poems, some of them are also specialized and versatile, can poetry and painting, and their talents have also been recorded in the official history records, so that the entire family can be glorified. Although it is still only a branch of the male world, women may be readers, writers, writers, painters and enter the public eye, and some have become professional painters to make a living.
Qing Ye Yanlan 《摹隨園十三女 disciple Hu Lou Please Karma Map) (partial)
The exhibition dynamically displays the key exhibit "Thirteen Female Disciples of The Thirteen female disciples of The Garden", which records the elegant gathering of Yuan Ming, a Hangzhou native of the Qing Dynasty, who taught at the West Lake Gem Mountain Villa, and each girl in the painting left her name with her talent, and the audience can know the characters in the painting one by one through animation.
Although the theme of the exhibition revolves around "Images of Women in Ancient China", this exhibition also specially sets up a space for contemporary female artists, exhibiting the unique artistic works of shi Hui, Pan Wenxun and Liu Yujun, three female artists of different ages, and launching a dialogue between classical and contemporary, painting and outside the painting, individual and group. Ancient and modern echoes, showing the talents of contemporary "beautiful people".
In the exhibition space of "Li Ren Xing", the audience will be surrounded by many detailed designs that integrate the characteristics of the exhibition, and in addition to appreciating the exhibits and reading the story, they can also discover and dialogue in this special field and feel the aftertaste of the details.
Three-screen vanity mirror table with clear clay and gold paint
Qing Mengchen purple sand pot
Kiyoshi Takako Fukushou double full copper mirror
The formal design of the exhibition conveys the gentle character of ancient women through the overall color tone, with the help of a large number of doors, windows, curtains, screens and other elements to create an atmosphere sense of ancient women's space, and with the four seasons of plants, courtyard scenery, boudoir decorations, to bring the audience an immersive experience.
From 2022 to the "Li Ren Xing - Ancient Chinese Women's Image Exhibition", the "Li Ren Xing" series of exhibitions continue to deepen the content and explore the exhibition mode.
The offline exhibition "Li Ren Xing - Ancient Chinese Women's Images" was born in 2021 "Li Ren Xing - Ancient Chinese Women's Image Cloud Exhibition", and all the images in the offline exhibition can be searched in the cloud exhibition. During the exhibition viewing process, the audience can open the mobile cloud exhibition in front of the display cabinet, search for images of interest, and further understand the author profile, inscription and interpretation of the painting. It is also possible to browse and search for the "Beauty Walk" cloud exhibition through multimedia interaction in the lobby.
On March 8, along with the Zhejiang Provincial Museum's "Liren Xing - Ancient Chinese Women's Images Exhibition", the Anhui Museum's "Green Sideburns ZhuYan - Painting Exhibition of Women in the Ming and Qing Dynasties" and the Jiangxi Provincial Museum's "Porcelain · "Jiangnan Jiali - Suzhou Museum Collection of Female Paintings Exhibition" at Suzhou Museum, "Beautiful And Picturesque Beauty - East Asian Female Figure Painting Art Exhibition from the Nineteenth to twentieth Centuries" at Huzhou Museum. The five halls are linked to form a "1+4" exhibition mode of one main exhibition hall and four sub-pavilions, and the "cloud interaction" between the five halls is realized with the help of digital technology. Audiences from all over the world can cross the barrier of the epidemic, view the live pictures of other museum exhibitions through multimedia screens, and browse the exhibits of each museum.
Exhibition posters
(The graphic information in this article is provided by the Zhejiang Provincial Museum)