Endless green water and green mountains: how modern people should appreciate green landscape painting

Written by | Qiu Shuwan

Source | Interface art

The subject matter of Chinese painting is roughly divided into three types, characters, landscapes, flowers and birds. A brief overview, The Sui and Tang Dynasties preceded the Xingxing characters, and the Song and Yuan Dynasties xingshanshui. The green landscape painting has its own royal aesthetic genes, the peak of development in the Song Dynasty, the low tide in the Yuan Dynasty, the inheritance in the Ming Dynasty, and the revival in the modern era. Why is there such an aesthetic flow? Mastering the laws behind it is conducive to better appreciation and creation today.

First, born noble with its own legendary color

As the most well-known representative of the green landscape painting, it is the "Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" from the late Northern Song Dynasty, which was written by a student of the Palace Painting Academy named Wang Ximeng, who was only 18 years old at the time. The young man seemed to be like the son of heavenly choice, received the personal guidance of Emperor Huizong of Song, and the pen and ink were refined and fast, and it took half a year to complete the creation, perhaps exhausting his mental strength, and unfortunately passed away two years later, but he also relied on this painting alone to pass on for thousands of years.

Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) Wang Ximeng,1191 cm on silk 51cm×1,191 cm

The nearly 12-meter-long scroll paints the magnificence of the mountains and rivers, the beauty of the rivers, the heavy colors of green and green, and it is still brilliant and dazzling after all the vicissitudes. The magnificent picture and the brilliant colors convey the sense of imperial power and the order of heaven and man.

Painting had an extraordinary status in the Song Dynasty. The biggest reason is that there is official promotion, and Song Huizong, who likes art, has specially opened his own royal academy to train court painters. The whole society has also risen and fallen, and it has become a common practice, and it attaches great importance to elegant things.

Since it is produced by the royal family, the work must have a court aesthetic style. The development path of Chinese painting is not from the beginning of ink painting, but from the beginning of coloring. Coloring, i.e. blending color. Ancient Chinese color research has long existed, and the concept of "five colors" was proposed in the Zhou Dynasty. The colors of nature are colorful, and there is no distinction between honor and inferiority. But the color of the world has a certain cultural meaning. Yellow, for example, represents the Nine-Five-Year-Old.

In ancient times, under the influence of Confucianism, red and black were the "orthodox colors", and cyan and green were regarded as "intercolor" and "lowly colors". However, during the two Han Dynasties, the introduction of Western Buddhism, a large number of murals of teachings were drawn, and a large number of turquoise colors were used under the influence of the Gandhara painting style, dunhuang at that time was the center of Buddhist activities in the western region, and the turquoise tone of the Dunhuang grotto murals influenced the traditional painting of the Central Plains, which promoted the production of green landscape painting to a certain extent.

Dunhuang murals Pictures from the Internet

In addition, from the Sui to the Tang to the Song, the basic people who can paint with turquoise are royal painters or royal children. Because this color is not easy to come by, it needs to be ground with more expensive minerals, and the production cost is very high. In addition, the painting materials are still more silk than paper, and the production cost and creation cycle are very long, which further highlights the aristocratic status of the green landscape.

The artistic effect of the green landscape painting of the Song Dynasty courtyard is golden and brilliant, magnificent and magnificent, and is deeply loved by the court nobles. But does the aesthetic of the court necessarily represent the aesthetic of the highest realm? If you look back at history, you will find that "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains" has been in a lonely state for a long time in the historical collection system. Even the last comment given by Emperor Huizong of Song was only "Shangjiazhi", not "Divine Product", why is this?

Second, why is it a landscape?

Before the Song Dynasty green landscape painting reached its peak, it was explored by ancestors, the most representative of which was the Sui Dynasty Zhan Ziqian's "You Chun Tu", which was considered by later generations to be the work of the founding school of Chinese landscape painting, and then there was Li Zhaodao's "Ming Emperor Xingshu Tu" in the Tang Dynasty.

Sui (581~618) Zhan Ziqian "You Chun Tu" silk 43cm×80cm

"You Chun Tu" shows a group of people and horses and family members, boating between mountains and rivers in spring. In 1952, zhang Boju, a collector, donated it to the Palace Museum. Today, "You Chun Tu" has become one of the treasures of the town hall of the Palace Museum in Beijing, and it is often met with the audience, such as the Shiqu Baodi special exhibition that triggered the "Forbidden City Run" in 2015, and the special exhibition of green landscapes in 2017.

More than 1400 years ago, "You Chun Tu" is known as "the world's first picture scroll". Shen Congwen once said that the importance of this picture scroll is really a bridge significance for the history of Chinese landscape painting... Without it, history would be missing an important link, and the present and the present would not be connected.

Landscape painting, also known as landscape painting, before the Sui Dynasty, because the subject matter of painting was mostly based on the portraits or life records of the royal palace nobles, the landscape was in a background role. Moreover, the proportion of the figures and the surrounding natural environment is not coordinated, and the painting method belongs to the relatively early stage. For example, in the "Luoshen Endowment" by Gu Kaizhi, a famous painter in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, there was a scene of "people are greater than mountains, and water cannot be panned".

The main feature of early landscape painting was actually green landscapes. Green refers to the mineral color stone blue, generally applied to the tip of the mountain; green, refers to the mineral color stone green, generally used in the mountainside, to express the green color of the mountain; the foot of the mountain and the slope of the shore are usually ochre to express the earth color, the three are combined, the mountain color is rich and calm. This painting technique originated from the Western Regions, that is to say, the emergence of green landscape painting is also a re-creation after the integration of Chinese and Western cultures. In addition, the development and maturity of green landscape painting in the Tang Dynasty is also related to the open and inclusive environment of the entire Tang Dynasty, making its aesthetic preferences more colorful, such as Tang Sancai.

Li Zehou mentioned in the "Three Books of Aesthetics" that "the real independence of landscape painting should be around the Middle and Tang Dynasties." The reason behind this is that before the Tang Dynasty, the religious consciousness was relatively strong, and people paid less attention to their own present life. After that, the reform of the social system caused changes in the psychological state and aesthetic taste of the group who appreciated painting, and the landscape began to become an independent aesthetic object, and it was no longer the background of personnel or the creation of the environment.

Tang (618-907) Li Zhaodao, "Ming Emperor Xingshu Tu", 55.9cm×81cm on silk, National Palace Museum, Taipei

"Ming Emperor Xing Shu Tu", painting Tang Ming Emperor and his party ma are walking between the lofty mountains and mountains of Shu Dao, the cliffs are hooked, green and green, the clouds are swirling, the characters are vivid, but the historical background of the painting is "the chaos of Anshi". Compared with Zhan Ziqian's "You Chun Tu", Li Zhaodao's "Ming Emperor Xing Shu Tu" has taken another step on the road of making landscape painting independent. The work was shipped to Taiwan by the Kuomintang government in 1949 and is now in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

However, the green landscape, which has its own royal temperament of the early landscape paintings, was gradually replaced by ink literati paintings in the Southern Song Dynasty, especially after the Yuan Dynasty, and has been influential to this day. Why does the green landscape not continue its vein? This has a lot to do with the group behind the paintings and the people who appreciate the paintings – a large number of frustrated literati appeared and began to dominate the painting world.

After the southern Song Dynasty was destroyed, the Mongols established the Yuan Dynasty, and as the main group of cultural creation, it was a large number of Han landlord intellectuals (especially jiangnan scholars), who could not accept the reality of regime change and being degraded to inferior people, chose the hermit landscape, and put time, energy and emotional thoughts on literature and art, which can also be regarded as "painting Mingzhi". The most representative are the Yuan Sijia in the field of landscape painting (one said is Zhao Mengfu, Wu Zhen, Huang Gongwang, Wang Meng). At the same time, the painting theory and literary taste of this period are consistent, especially the literati doctors represented by Ouyang Xiu, Shen Kuo, Su Shi, etc., more emphasis is placed on the expression of the spiritual level, and "qi rhyme" and "freehand" have become the focus of pursuit. At the same time, it further purifies the aesthetic taste and understanding of beauty, from color to pen and ink and lines, in order to express cold and introverted, elegant and elegant, poetry also began to appear on the screen, so the painter is no longer the appearance of painting reality, but more of a scene in the heart. For example, the masterpiece of ink painting in the Yuan Dynasty, "Fuchun Mountain Jutu", is no longer a simple depiction of natural scenery, but the appeal and expression of the painter's spirit, the expression of life attitude, and the embodiment of life pursuit.

Yuan (1271-1368) Huang Gongwang", Fuchun Mountain Residence, 33cm1036.9cm Ink on paper

"Fuchun Mountain Jutu" is an ink painting on paper created by the Yuan Dynasty painter Huang Gongwang in 1350, one of the top ten famous paintings in China, which took seven years to complete. Huang Gongwang was painted by his disciple Zheng Fan (a useless teacher), changed hands several times, and was buried in the first two sections for "burning paintings and martyrdom". The first half of the volume: the remaining mountain map, now in the collection of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum; the second half of the volume: the useless division volume, now in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. In June 2011, the two sections were exhibited for the first time in the National Palace museum in Taipei.

Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) Zhao Boju "Autumn Color Map of Jiangshan" silk, color, length 55.6 cm, width 323.2 cm.

Royal disciple, he integrated the taste and technique of ink landscape into the tang Dynasty Li Sixun, Li Zhaodao father and son of the big green painting method, forming a style of "seiko extreme, but also morale" between the Song Court body painting and the literati painting.

The combination of this transformed aesthetic trend and the popular Zen thought at the time, coupled with the traditional Chinese Lao Zhuang philosophy's intimate attitude towards nature, eventually made literati landscape painting the best carrier for seeking spiritual liberation and getting rid of human troubles. Therefore, since the Yuan Dynasty, the Chinese painting world has also been influenced by literati painting, paying attention to the rhyme of black and white ink painting, and taking a transcendent realm as the highest aesthetic pursuit.

From Chinese painting to oil painting, there are endless green waters and green mountains

From the Sui Dynasty Zhan Ziqian's "You Chun Tu" by the founding school of Chinese landscape painting to Li Zhaodao's "Ming Emperor Xingshu Tu" in the Tang Dynasty, to Wang Ximeng's "Thousand Li Jiangshan Map" in the Northern Song Dynasty, and Zhao Boju's "Autumn Color Map of Jiangshan" in the Southern Song Dynasty, the green landscape painting vein has always been inherited. In the Yuan Dynasty, few people painted green landscapes, but in the Ming Dynasty, there was a slight recovery, such as qiu Ying's version of the "Qingming River Map" in the Ming Dynasty. In modern times, Zhang Daqian was inspired by his sketches in Dunhuang and revived green landscape paintings, and then He Haixia, Chen Peiqiu, Lu Yushao and other older generations of Chinese painting artists innovated in the inheritance. At the same time, after Western painting was introduced to China a hundred years ago, some artists tried to use oil paintings to express Chinese landscapes, such as Zhu Yaokui and Tian Xuesen in modern and contemporary times.

In a traditional landscape form of black and white, Zhang Daqian, a modern green and green painter, created a semi-abstract ink-colored painting method of splashing ink and color. Its rich and novel characteristics are shocking and push the green landscape to a new height. The integration of the green and green styles of various stages of history: seiko, morale, decoration, etc., is a very "modern" approach.

He Haixia's green landscape draws on all available artistic achievements from ancient and modern China and abroad, so that the vitality of traditional color styles and the spirit of modern art collide together.

Confucius once said, "The wise man enjoys water, the benevolent one enjoys the mountain: the wise man moves, the benevolent one is quiet; the wise man is happy, and the benevolent one lives." Lao Zhuang's philosophical view is even more particular about Taoist nature. After a thousand years, the Chinese people's love for landscapes has never weakened, and from Chinese painting to oil painting, there have always been painters exploring. The landscape is still that landscape, but it presents different landscapes in different eras and in the pen of individuals. In the eyes of the people above the temple, the landscape represents the unity of heaven and man, orderly, and magnificent. In the eyes of the frustrated literati, the landscape represents the best place to escape from the world and relax. In the hearts of the world, landscapes have always been a place to provide energy supply, return to innocence and heal the soul.

Zhu Yaokui (1932-present) studied under his father Zhu Shijie, Yan Wenliang, Liu Haisu and other first oil painting masters from an early age, advocating the concept of "great art" and being an important promoter of art education in New China. He is diligent in exploration and innovation, integrating Chinese landscape imagery with Western realistic painting to form a unique creative style.

The environment in which modern people live is mostly cities, but everything that comes into contact with the city, especially food, is mostly processed or semi-processed finished products, and this state of fragmentation makes us unable to see how natural things are sown and sprouted, how to grow and bear fruit, and how to be harvested and polished, so that the cognition of things has become fragmented and fractured. But the face of nature itself is chaotic, mountains and rivers, land, flowers, birds, fish and insects, each of which is interconnected. In the natural landscape, people can have a feeling of equality of all living beings, and have a true compassion. Because of the feeling that all things are animistic, there will no longer be a desire to conquer nature, and obedience to the laws of heaven and earth will lead to a sense of awe.

Fortunately, we also have green landscape paintings. The Chinese painting scholar Shi Shouqian once said, "Landscape painting has been able to form a tradition that spans time and space, which is fundamentally based on the concept of the relationship between man and nature it represents." Today's world has wars, plagues, and various urban diseases, and jumping out of the complex social rules and the tense life of the city into a landscape art world may comfort the tired soul.

Tian Xuesen, Shen Ping, 390X200cm Oil on canvas, 2013

In the early morning of Taihua in the east, the main peak is majestic, the valley is quiet, and the mountains under the backlight are unified in a multi-layered blue tone, bringing a sense of tranquility, tranquility and warmth. Tian Xuesen has lived in Huashan for ten years, with birds and insects, accompanied by mountain winds, and depicting the mountain in his heart with a paintbrush. Using the techniques of Western oil painting Impressionism and combining the freehand style of Chinese painting, he created a landscape painting with the fusion of Chinese and Western culture and the atmosphere of literati.

Landscapes have always been the best places and landscapes to heal the mind. In nature, people will feel accepted rather than against repression, relaxed and steady rather than nervous. To borrow the words of Mr. Xu Fuguan, "I think that if modern people could appreciate Chinese landscape paintings, it would be of greater significance to the mentally ill people who came from excessive tension." And no matter how ancient or modern, no matter when landscape painting was born, who depicted it, and what way it exists now, as long as the green water and green mountains of nature are still there, there will be endless paintings of green landscapes in the world.