One night in the late autumn of 1945, the Beijing Liuli Factory, where antique dealers gathered, was as quiet as usual.
A middle-aged man walked quickly to an antique shop called "Yuchi Mountain House" and knocked on the door to enter the inner room.
Ma Jichuan, the owner of "Yuchi Mountain House", is a famous antique connoisseur in Beijing, carefully removing it from the rosewood cabinet and unfolding an unusually large picture scroll. The middle-aged man stepped forward, showing a look of surprise; bent down, and looked at it carefully, his face full of ecstasy.
Although the boss priced the scroll at 500 taels of gold (the price of a former Qing palace at that time), the middle-aged man still insisted on buying the painting.
What is it about paintings that are so valuable? It turned out that this was the "Han Xizai Night Feast", which can be called the pinnacle of ancient Chinese figure painting, and its new owner, Zhang Daqian, the "Scattered Immortals in the World".
"Han Xizai's Night Feast" is a comic strip, the painter Gu Hongzhong in accordance with the order of story development, cleverly use the screen to separate into "ancient painting version of time and space cohabitation", presenting five scenes of listening to music, watching dance, temporary rest, blowing, and scattering banquets, compiled into an intriguing story.
In the "History of Chinese Art", Yi Gongzi called this "Han Xizai Night Feast" as the "art version of "Mission Impossible"", and used her unique perspective to write in time, with concise, vivid and humorous language and rich and exquisite pictures, leading us to understand the development of Chinese art from a new perspective, experience the spiritual connotation of Chinese art, and feel the unique artistic color of this land in China.
As for how to correctly appreciate these scrolls, Yi Gongzi told the big truth in "The History of Chinese Art":
The best way to watch Chinese long scroll paintings is to look up, far, walk, stop and look... Love looks at it any way it wants. Because no matter how you look at it, you will have different feelings.
Now, we will slowly unfold this "Han Xizai Night Feast", follow the "History of Chinese Art", carefully watch this artistic masterpiece, and slowly unveil this mystery left to history.
The story takes place at the end of the Southern Tang Dynasty, social turmoil, a generation of famous ministers Han Xizai saw that the decadence was difficult to save, so he decided to fade out of government affairs and sang at night in his own mansion.
The Southern Tang Emperor Li Yu was an expert in eating, drinking, and writing poems and reciting Buddhas, but he was "ignorant" about governing the country and fighting wars. On this day, Li Yu suddenly remembered Han Xizai as a person, but he heard that Han Xizai's reputation was not very good, and he was not quite sure whether he was loyal, so he sent Gu Hongzhong, a professional painter who was good at capturing details, to lurk in it for careful observation.
Gu Hongzhong is worthy of being one of the top figure painting masters, and very contentiously highly restored the scene in this banquet, drawing "Han Xizai Night Feast Map".
The whole painting is divided into five scenes, but it contains many untold stories.
The first act, Gao Peng admires the moon.
This banquet full of friends, the guests are not simple. Sitting on the bed wearing blue-gray clothes was the master Han Xizai, wearing red clothes was the Southern Tang rookie Zhuangyuan Lang Cang, as well as Ziwei Lang Zhu Milling sitting on the side, and Dr. Taichang Chen Zhiyong on the opposite side. They all looked at each other in unison, and they all watched the performance of Tianhou Leji, Li Ji, who played the pipa.
The second act, drumming and watching the dance.
After three rounds of drinking, Han Xizai excitedly ordered the house slave to move out of the karma drum, take off the blue-gray coat, roll up the sleeves, and personally accompany the dance of the house trick. At this time, the protégé Shuya struck the board with music, and Lang Yue looked intently at the family trick, and there was a monk with his hands crossed with obvious prominence in the picture, the Deming monk.
Act III, Resting hands.
This scene is the simplest rest, but it is also the most ineffable part. At this time, Han Xizai was sitting on the bed, and the family trick brought him a golden basin to let him wash his hands. There is also a bed behind the bed, and the pillow quilt has long been laid out, but there seems to be someone in the quilt.
Stills from "How to Tell This Picture"
Act IV, Listen to music.
This "Qing Blow" is the climax of the whole volume, and the painting of Han Xizai sitting in a chair with his clothes undressed, seemingly leisurely enjoying the musicians' silk blowing bamboo. The dress of the 5 singers is very exquisite, the color matching is particularly exquisite, and the court teacher Li Jiaming also plays with them with the clapping board, and the overall picture is very rhythmic.
In the fifth act, the guests dispersed.
Towards the end of the banquet, the drunken Chen Zhiyong held the singer's hand tightly, the disheveled Shuya wrapped her arms around the singer and refused to let go, and Han Xizai, who lived among them, seemed to be thoughtful. The comic strip returns to the beginning again, connecting the whole banquet and officially telling everyone that the banquet is over.
This "political intelligence" presented by Gu Hongzhong seems to confirm Han Xizai's hedonistic character, but a closer look at Han Xizai's expression will find that things are not so simple.
In this scene of joyful singing and dancing, Han Xizai's depressed and unexplained sadness conveys the pain, helplessness and self-indulgence of a sober soul.
Yi Gongzi explained this scene in the "History of Chinese Art in Big Talk":
What Gu Hong saw was a banquet of sounds and colors of dogs and horses that Han Xizai had directed and acted by himself.
It's just that this drama has come to the end and deceived all people, but only they can't deceive themselves. The curtain had fallen, and everyone was still intoxicated, but Han Xizai was unusually sober.
Although there are still many mysteries that have not yet been solved in "Han Xizai's Night Feast", its artistic value is undeniable.
In 1945, Zhang Daqian bought the painting, and in 1952 Zhang Daqian moved to Brazil to sell the painting, selling several cultural relics, including "Han Xizai's Night Feast", for $20,000 to the mainland's working group for the acquisition of scattered cultural relics, which is now treasured by the Palace Museum.
The story of "Han Xizai's Night Feast" has ended, but the artistic road of "The History of Chinese Art" is still very long.
Yi Gongzi started from the pottery of primitive society, including 150 Chinese works of art, such as jade, bronze, landscape painting, calligraphy, etc., 45 artistic masters, 32 unexpected art stories, spanning qin, Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing, and other periods, showing 10,000 years of brilliant Chinese art history, sentence by sentence, decoding the deep connotation of Chinese art.