2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Mr. Chen Shizeng, a famous artist and educator in modern China. Recently, China Pictorial Publishing House has specially launched a full-scale collection edition of Mr. Chen Shizeng's representative work "A Brief History of Chinese Painting", which is based on the lecture notes on the history of Chinese painting taught by Mr. Chen Shizeng at the art school.
Chen Shi has studied Chinese and Western, and is particularly good at the field of fine arts. Based on historical data, taking the clues of time as the "classic" and the clues of painting genres, painters and painting techniques as the "weft", he is systematic but not verbose, concise but comprehensive, constructing a clear and complete historical grid of Chinese painting, clarifying the development, inheritance and transformation of the Chinese painting context. The wonderful development of Chinese painting is all in his pen.
The development of Chinese painting presents distinct phased characteristics, so Mr. Chen Shizeng divides the whole book into three periods: ancient history, medieval history, and modern history, and each period is narrated sequentially in accordance with the order of dynastic changes, which is for the "jing", that is, vertical. Within each dynasty, the beginning is a summary of the period, and then the chapters are divided according to the school, painter, and painting categories, which is for "latitude", that is, horizontal. This narrative method is convenient for readers to grasp the framework of the development of Chinese painting from a macro perspective, and it is also possible to select chapters according to their own interests to carry out targeted reading.
Before the publication of this work, most of the works on the study of Chinese painting were mainly to comment on painters and painting techniques, and it was still blank in systematically summarizing painting theory. Chen Shi once took a unique approach, from the painting genre, painters, works, techniques and painting theory and other angles, made a systematic and perfect summary and combing of the development of Chinese painting, which made people feel refreshed by the view of the source of Chinese painting, this work can be described as the pioneering work of systematic research on the history of Chinese painting, with epoch-making influence.
Because of this, this book has been recognized and recommended by four professors, Yuan Yunsheng, Liu Rong, Yu Yue, and Cao Qinghui of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. They wrote a preface and expressed their reading feelings, affirming the immortal value of "A Brief History of Chinese Painting" in the academic field and its important practical significance at present. Their affectionate and professional academic texts can also help readers better understand the rich history and heritage of Chinese painting.
"A Brief History of Chinese Painting" wins in "pearls and pearls". In addition to the textual content with high academic value, another major advantage of this book is the selection of 300 ancient Chinese paintings, which echo the text. The painting genres, painters, works, and techniques mentioned in the content of the article are accurately matched with the ancient paintings in the collection, one is to annotate the article, and the other is to construct a sense of picture, so that the reader can immerse themselves in it, as if talking and laughing with those thunderous giants of the painting world, and then more intuitively and deeply understand and feel the beauty of Chinese painting.
Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Zhang Jia
Editor/Bow Lifang