Today is Mr. Feng Jicai's eightieth birthday. Listen to him tell the story of him and his "Qingming River Map".
A painting that has been entangled with me for decades is the well-known "Qingming River Map". I came from a landscape painting background, but when I first learned about it, it gave me a powerful shock. A painter actually dared to paint a city, and the only one in ancient and modern China and abroad was this Song man Zhang Zeduan. And this painting is incredibly pombo and deep, precise and evocative, even the donkeys in heat on the street, the snoozing people and the horned toilets are all included in the painting! Now that I think about it, my obsession with it is inseparable from the potential of my interest in folklore. I was in my early twenties, so bold and bold that I swore to copy it.
To copy the "Qingming River Map" you must understand the original work, but the original work is hidden in the Forbidden City, you can only take the train to the painting hall of the Palace Museum in Beijing again and again, and write down some of the details you have realized in a small book, often looking at it for two or three days, and then running back with a fresh feeling when reading the painting, lying on the case, and copying it according to the printed materials. However, the Palace Museum does not always exhibit this painting. At that time, there was no information, let alone the Internet, and it was impossible to know when it would be exhibited. It is often a white errand run, take advantage of the fun, and return home disappointed.
My initial copy of the "Map of the Upper River of the Qingming Dynasty" was a failure. I thought that I had learned to paint from the Song Dynasty, and it would not be too difficult to copy this painting. However, I learned that in addition to the mountains, stones, trees and flowing water in the painting, a large number of houses, figures, boats and cars, shops, furniture, customs and daily necessities have never been painted. I don't know how to draw, it's hard to get started. Zhang Zeduan's brushwork is both freehand and workmanship, refined and precise, vivid and vivid, and has never been seen in the paintings of others. The stronger the personality of the painter, the more difficult it is to copy, and the pen used by Zhang Zeduan is bald, and there are still some "war pens" when writing, which is vigorous and vivid, quite charming, and it is more difficult to imitate.
However, I naturally like to face challenges, and when copying this picture, I chose the most complex section of the painting, Hongqiao, thinking that by taking this link, I could cover the whole volume. Who would have expected that this picture of less than two feet would be crowded with hundreds of characters. Everyone has its own shape, small enough to be inches, and its hands and feet are like grains of rice. These characters are huddled together, intertwined, and obscured; if misplaced, even if they are even the slightest difference, they will be chaotic. Only after copying all this can we understand the incomparable superiority. So after painting this section of The Rainbow Bridge, I put down my pen and felt defeated by this painting for a while.
The determination to copy the Qingming River Map was rekindled in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, the antique work I was engaged in was forced to stop, and I was idle every day, and I had a lot of time to imitate this huge work in the history of painting.
I'll be well prepared. Make a small table with a glass countertop, place a table lamp underneath, and spread the whole picture of the white drawing drawn with sulfuric acid paper on the glass and apply plain silk; when the electric light is turned on, the picture is clearly illuminated on the silk, so that the copying of the print will not be misplaced. But what if I don't have the kind of bald pen that Zhang Zeduan uses? I figured out a good way to burn the sharp tip of the brush with the embers after the match was blown out, and the lines drawn by this artificial bald pen were as vigorous as the old pen that had been around for a long time. At the same time, I also carefully studied the various techniques in the "Qingming River Map", and first had to practice on another paper, until I had a grasp of it, and then I dared to copy it. In this way, starting from the end of the roll, from left to right, all the way down, the more smooth the painting, I feel that my brush accompanies Zhang Zeduan through the streets and alleys, wandering around hundreds of shops, rubbing shoulders with pedestrians, pushing and shoving; when I walk out of the city gate, wander in the crowd, I feel that there should be no problem in completing the copying of this huge painting, and suddenly an unexpected thing happened -
One day, my neighbor attracted a Chinese-American who said he wanted to see a painting. The visitor is said to be a writer. At that time, I was not yet engaged in literary creation, and I had a mysterious and admiration for the writer, so I opened the "Map of the Upper River of the Qingming Dynasty" that was being copied to her. The frame was so long and the picture was hanging low, and I was trying to put the painting on the table, when she suddenly knelt down to look at it, and I was surprised by the state of piety. People like me who grew up in the planned economy have no idea about the shows of market life. When she said that if she "had such a painting, she would not want anything more." "I was deeply moved, thinking that I had really met an artistic confidant, and immediately said I would paint you a picture." She listened, and the expression seemed to have reached heaven.
The driving force of art is often to be moved. So I put down a small and a half of the "Qingming River Map" in my hand, and the next day I went to buy silk and tailor silk, mixed it with black tea with glue alum, dyed the silk yellow and dyed the old one over and over again, and then set up a bamboo pole in the house and tied a hemp rope to dry the silk. The silk was more than five meters long, and it folded and "wandered" in mid-air in my little room. At this time, I was very comfortable copying this painting, and I was very satisfied with myself. Work every day, copy at night, until midnight. He chewed on the steamed bun pickles in his mouth, but gave all the strength in his heart to this painting. I was thirty-two years old, energetic, and I went on in one breath, and on the day I finished it, I bought a bottle of tonghua red wine with my wife to celebrate, and it took me a year and three months to pinch my fingers!
During this time, the Chinese-American kept writing letters and saying all the good things, especially the phrase "I would like to step into China in one step", which made me still moved and look forward to giving her the painting as soon as possible. But soon the Tangshan earthquake came, my home was destroyed, the wall collapsed, and the family was almost buried inside. When the man climbed out, he was still thinking about the painting. A few days after the earthquake, I ventured into the rubble in search of clothes and bedding. Fortunately, I kept it in a slender iron cylinder containing biscuits and rested on the bottom floor of the desk drawer, so it was intact. This painting escaped with me, and it is a normal relationship with me?
After that, some friends looked at this incomparably complicated huge painting and advised me not to give it to the Chinese-American. I insisted, "I promised people, how can I say it or not?" ”
In 1978, the Moment the Chinese-American came to China and took the painting from my hand, I was a little reluctant in my heart. I feel like she took it from my heart. She probably saw how I felt and said she must have a professional photographer take a set of photos for me. Since then, she has written to say that the painting has been set on the wall of her fifth street living room in Manhattan, New York, or asked a museum in Washington to make a frame. The letter contained several photographs of the painting, but they were taken with a point-and-shoot camera, and the light was dim and incomplete.
In 1985, I went to the United States to attend the Iowa International PEN Club, and in the middle of the time, I went to New York to see her and see my paintings. My painting is indeed set in a huge and exquisite frame, with dark lights inside, and the soft light shines on the more than 500 characters in the painting. Every character I know, like an "acquaintance.". Although it is copied, it feels like I painted it myself. I told her not to forget to give a set of photos as a souvenir. But she said the painting was fixed inside the frame and could no longer be taken off for photography. She had it all; mine, not at all. At that time, Chinese painters did not understand that paintings could be sold for money, whether they asked for paintings or sent paintings, all by their feelings, the so-called "show talent and human love paper half a sheet". For a moment I felt plundered, and I was left empty. After all, it was a whole year of my young life in exchange!
Now I still have a small half-volume of the unfinished "Qingming River Map" in my hand, and after I interrupted "this" and lost "that painting", I no longer have the strength to continue to paint this painting. I naturally don't like to repeat, not to mention that copying the "Qingming River Map" is another project that is too big and too tiring. Moreover, at this time, I have entered the literary world, and the blood in my heart has turned into words.
Writing this, someone must have said that you are stupid and asked someone to take away such a big painting!
I would say that being deceived is mostly due to a sense of trust or affection. The best things in the world have not been taken away, and they are still in me. Moreover, there is this unfinished small half-volume of "Qingming River Map", hidden in the studio, self-witness. (Feng Jicai)