Zheng Yan: The tip of the pen pressed on the "picture frame": on the connection between tomb murals and the history of traditional painting

Author: Zheng Yan

Source: "Peking University Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences" WeChat public account

The original article was published in New Art, No. 1, 2009

One

In 1994, an ancient tomb in Zhujiadao Village, Lücun Township, Fuping County, Shaanxi Province, was stolen, and archaeologists immediately investigated it. According to investigators, the tomb is located in the tomb area of Tang Gaozu Li Yuanxian Mausoleum, which is a 4-meter square single-room tomb, because the burial products and epitaphs have been lost, the identity of the tomb owner is unknown, judging from the character costumes, hairstyles, etc., its age is the Sheng Tang Dynasty. The burial chamber is painted with frescoes and is still intact. The west wall depicts a set of six-curved screens of ink landscapes (Fig. 1), the east wall depicts music and dance (Fig. 2), the north wall depicts two horizontal screens, which depict Kunlun Nu driving green cows (Fig. 3) and Xianhe (Fig. 4), and the westernmost part of the south wall depicts a horizontal screen with a lying lion (Fig. 5). The tomb door is flanked by a squire on each side, and the top is painted with stars and suns. According to the classification of ancient screen styles and structures by previous scholars, the three screens on the north and south walls belong to the "one-panel straight-back vertical screen", and the screen on the west wall belongs to the "multi-zigzag fan screen that can be stacked and opened". Based on the investigation report and other relevant reports, I drew a brief schematic diagram that roughly reflects the combination of these screens in the burial chamber (Figure 6).

Figure 1 Shaanxi Fuping Lv Village Zhujia Dao Tang Tomb West Wall Landscape Screen Mural Provided by Mr. Xu Tao

Figure 2 Mural of The East Wall Music and Dance of the Tang Tomb of Zhujiadao in Lü Village, Fuping, Shaanxi Provided by Mr. Xu Tao

Figure 3 Mural of Kunlun Nuyi Qingniu Screen On the north wall of Zhujiadao Tang Tomb in Lü Village, Fuping, Shaanxi Province, Mr. Xu Tao provided

Figure 4 Shaanxi Fuping Lu Village ZhujiaDao Tang Tomb North Wall Crane Screen Mural Provided by Mr. Xu Tao

Figure 5 Shaanxi Fuping Lu Village ZhujiaDao Tang Tomb South Wall Lying Lion Screen Mural Provided by Mr. Xu Tao

Figure 6 Schematic diagram of the configuration relationship between the murals of Zhujiadao Tang Tomb in Lü Village, Fuping, Shaanxi From east to west, Zheng Yan draws

The tomb's landscape screen murals are materials that scholars have often quoted in recent years when discussing Tang Dynasty landscape paintings. In addition, some researchers have also noticed that next to the murals of each group of screens in the tomb are painted waiters holding pens and ink and other stationery. Among them, between the two screens on the north wall, there is a maid dressed in men's clothing holding a brush (Picture 7), and on the south side of the west wall landscape screen, there are two male attendants wearing a head holding a brush, and from the color point of view, the wash contains water and ink (Picture 8). Regarding this detail, Zhang Jianlin said that the waiters on the north and west walls "seem to be waiting for the painter who draws the screen with a brush." Li Xingming pointed out:

This is a scene that has not been seen in other known Tang Dynasty mural tombs. However, the wall does not depict the image of the painter, and it is inferred from the combination of the fresco and the situation formed by the position and posture of the figure that the painter should be the owner of the tomb itself. Therefore, the owner of the tomb may be a nobleman or scholar painter of Yahao Danqing.

This view, which takes into account the relationship between the work and the person by the subject matter and form of the image, is desirable, and of course requires more arguments and analysis. Xu Tao's recent essay expanding the community associated with it to a larger scope "may imply that the owner of the tomb or the relatives or officials who arranged his funeral are connoisseurs of the painting, or that the painter was involved in the design."

Figure 7 Mural of the Maid of the Maid on the North Wall of the Tang Tomb of ZhujiaDao in Lü Village, Fuping, Shaanxi Provided by Mr. Xu Tao

Figure 8 Mural of waiters on the west wall of the Tang Tomb of ZhujiaDao in Lü Village, Fuping, Shaanxi Province, courtesy of Mr. Xu Tao

It seems to me that it is possible that these waiters with pen and ink in their hands hint at the existence of the author of the mural, but they do not have to be tortuously deduced as the dead buried in the tomb, and I am more inclined to think that these unique forms point to the painters who once painted in the tomb and then turned away after completing.

Compared with the dead buried in the ground, the connection between the painter and the fresco is temporary, but more direct. When the painter stands facing the wall, he or she may be more concerned than anyone else about how to complete these murals. The painter first set up a "picture frame" for his own work - a flat screen, which was the most common carrier of Tang Dynasty painting. Next, they can arrange various pictures in the "picture frame". These images vary greatly from each other in subject matter and form. In terms of subject matter, landscapes, animals, and characters do not have much to do with each other. The difference in form is even more obvious: first, the six landscape paintings are distant views of thousands of miles, kunlun nu and cattle are slightly smaller, like the middle scene, and lions and cranes are close-up; second, even the six landscapes on the west wall are not related to each other in compositional form; third, the landscape and crane are more inked, and kunlun nu, cattle and lions are endowed with bright colors. These differences make it impossible for several paintings to prove each other's authenticity, and this sense of alienation tells us that everything is nothing but the bottom of the painter's pen.

Although the waiters who are arranged outside the screen are also part of the fresco, due to the existence of the "picture frame", they are separated from the images inside the screen from the two worlds. The woman holding the pen on the north wall stands in the limited space between the two screens, her hand has been peeled off, and it is worth noting that the surviving nib breaks the border on the east side of the Qingniu screen. In contrast, the corner of the dress behind her happens to be "tangent" with the border on the west side of the double crane screen. That is to say, when dealing with the lines of clothes, the painter carefully avoids the screen to keep the screen intact, but when drawing to the nib, he takes the opposite approach.

The delicate relationship with the screen makes the image of the brush extremely prominent, and also opens up the distance between the woman and the screen painting. Comparable to this detail is the "Annunciation of the Gods" painted by the famous Italian Renaissance painter Francesco del Cossa (1435-1477), who painted a snail at the bottom of the frame (Figures 9 and 10). French contemporary art historian Daniel Daniel Arasse points out: "The snail is painted on top of the picture, but it is not within the picture. The tip of the pen pressed against the "frame" is obviously the intention of the painter, pushing the woman into the painter and the real world in which we live, to borrow Arras' words, the woman is the painter who "creates an image in a certain painting and places it in our space." Contrary to the fact that the pictures in the screen are irrelevant to each other, the woman holding the pen and the two men holding the ink are clearly related, although they are on different walls: their height is almost the same as that of the real person, standing on the same ground plane as the painter; what they hold in their hands is actually a different part of the same set of stationery; more importantly, the painter's actions can directly link them, he can take the brush in the woman's hand at any time, go to the two men to dip the ink in the water, and then wave it in the screen. Who cares so strongly about the meaning of painting tools and materials (pens, ink, water, screens) other than the painter himself? This ingenious design makes the short creative process "solidified" and, in turn, becomes the index of our nostalgic painters.

Figure 9 The Annunciation of the Gods by Francesco de Xosa (circa 1470-1472) From the Art Museum dresden, Germany, from Arrass: We Didn't See Anything– A Collection of Descriptions of Different Paintings, Beijing: Peking University Press, 2007, under color 1

Figure 10 Part of Francesco de Xosa's Annunciation

Unlike the method of examining the subject matter of the portrait based on the literature, the above explanation is based on the analysis of the visual form of the picture. If we limit the "evidence" to the text, then we will probably never find any documentary material to support this judgment. In addition, the nature of the Tomb mural of Zhu Jia Dao is also very different from that of Xhosa, the former is hidden in a dark tomb, while the latter is an altarpiece. In addition to deviating from the positivist track, I may also have to face another criticism – "You enlarged that little nib!" ”

Well, let me take a step back and leave aside for the time being the theoretical arguments, but only to leave this explanation at the level of hypotheses, waiting for new discoveries and studies to test and revise. Importantly, starting from this explanation, a series of questions can be asked: What exactly is the relationship between the tomb fresco and its author? What is the relationship between tomb murals and the history of traditional painting written on the basis of documents and heirlooms? In the face of archaeological materials, what kind of questions should art history ask, and what kind of narrative framework should be established?

Two

The reason why researchers since the 20th century have included tomb murals in the history of Chinese painting is first of all because of the lack of ancient painting historical materials, which can play a role in "filling in the gaps". From this point of view, the tomb murals have indeed made the history of Chinese painting extend forward in the temporal dimension.

Many English-language versions of Chinese art history often refer to murals on the gables of a Western Han tomb in the early years of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Henan Province, on the outskirts of Luoyang (known as Balitai). In 1934, He Changqun introduced this group of cultural relics to China, and initiated Chinese scholars to discuss the academic history of early Chinese painting with tomb murals. But why are these obscure paintings, once sealed in the dark underground, allowed to enter the room and legally compare them with the works of Jingguan Dongju and Wumen? What is the relationship between the materials found in these archaeological findings and the scroll paintings in the traditional perspective of painting history? These preconditions are rarely discussed. These questions involve important theoretical topics such as the relationship between archaeology and art history, and changes in the concept of historiography. To answer these questions comprehensively, not one or two articles can be completed, and what I have raised here is only a few fragments of thinking about such questions.

Some general history works of Chinese painting give us the impression that prehistory and pre-Qin are a large number of patterns on pots and pots, Han Wei and Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties paintings include paintings and tomb murals, portrait bricks, grotto murals and other different forms, Tang Dynasty paintings by the scroll paintings and tomb murals, grotto murals together, and then, tomb murals gradually faded out of the historical stage, a history of painting turned to a simple scroll painting history. In this way, tomb murals and scroll paintings seem to have a process of one after another; the early history of painting had works without authors, later (such as the Wei and Jin dynasties) had authors but no works, and then there were both authors and works. In fact, this is due to the limitations of the material and the simplification of the narrative.

In recent years, some scholars have reminded us to pay full attention to the characteristics of tomb murals, pay attention to the study of ancient funerary rites, and also recognize the contingency and limitations of archaeological materials. Other scholars have summarized the early pictorial materials found by archaeologists as "fine art in the liturgy" to distinguish them from later scroll paintings created mainly for appreciation. These ideas are more worthy of advocacy than the above practices, and my personal research has been influenced by these scholars. There is no doubt that in today's 21st century, we no longer have to limit the history of Chinese painting to scroll paintings, or even to the scope of literati painting, such as tomb murals, grotto murals and other materials can indeed become some new systems worth studying in the history of Chinese painting. Just as the study of temples and cave paintings must take into account the religious and social context, the study of tomb murals should also take into account their funerary function.

But this research orientation does not mean that we can therefore go to the other extreme - to regard the tomb murals of all eras only as the product of general social ideas, as appendages of funeral rites and functions, as materials for the history of ideas or material culture, while ignoring the value of the art forms of these works themselves, ignoring the relationship between works and the creative thinking of the author. More than thirty years ago, Fei Weimei, an American scholar who studied the art of the Han Dynasty, said:

How do you view the content of a work of art? Indeed, no matter what material the artist uses, what patterns or designs he completes, or narrates a story to express the traditions he has inherited, his observations of the outside world, his emotions, and his feelings about beauty, he is always involved in external factors, such as the various requirements of the patron or the master. In creative art, these relativity is always a fundamental concern for students, scholars, and critics who study its traditions and influences, discuss its chronology and historical context, classify its shapes, styles, and design factors, and interpret their symbolic meanings as well as their figurative meanings. These painstaking interpretations are essential to our understanding. But in practice, researchers tend to be confused by the content of their works, ignoring the hands and brains that created them. In these academic discussions, how easy it is to assume themes and styles as entities with independent life! In a step-by-step style analysis, how many times have they been treated as unisexual babies!

Fei Weimei's reminder still has its value today. In her essays, Fei humbly avoids the study of the content of the artwork, paying particular attention to the discussion of materials, techniques, and styles, which often produces enlightening ideas. After decades of new art history, there is no need for us to retreat to the original position, perhaps we can strive to integrate the study of social history and cultural history with the analysis of the form and style of the work, and observe the form and style of the work on a new basis. In this line of thinking, specific to the study of tomb murals, one of the problems that needs to be noted is the change of such murals in various periods.

The tomb murals have their own cultural traditions, influenced by the concept of life and death and other religious concepts at that time, and there is a strong inheritance relationship before and after the tombs of various periods, and some late tombs often continue many of the contents of the early tombs. But on the other hand, the changes before and after the ancient tomb murals are very obvious. If we can roughly interpret the tomb murals of the two Han Dynasties as a kind of functional painting, then the late tomb murals are gradually distant from the traditional concept of life and death and funeral rites. Cao Wei's practice of thin burial, coupled with the popularity of Buddhism, also underwent an important change in people's concept of tombs, which led to changes in the content and form of tomb murals. Some researchers often transplant some of the problems in the early tomb murals into the materials of other eras later, it seems that from the Two Han Dynasties to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, all the paintings in the tombs are to reflect the immutable and pious "view of life and death" of the ancients.

Figure 11 Landscape screen in the mural on the east wall of the East Ear Chamber of the Tomb of the Five Dynasties Wang in Xiyanchuan Village, Quyang County, Hebei Province (taken from the Institute of Cultural Relics of Hebei Province and the Cultural Relics Management Office of Baoding City: "The Tomb of the Five Dynasties of the King", Color Edition 18)

Figure 12 "Deep Mountain Chess Diagram" excavated from tomb No. 7 in Faku Ye Maotai, Liaoning Province (collected from the Identification Group of Ancient Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy: The Complete Works of Chinese Painting (3): Five Dynasties of Song And Liaojin, vol. 2, Hangzhou: Zhejiang People's Fine Arts Publishing House, 1999, p. 82, Figure 57)

The burial chamber murals used for funerary use are of a different nature from the paintings of people's daily social life, but this is not to say that the two developed independently and did not have any connection. Although the tomb system is special, in the end, the tomb murals are still presented in the form of paintings. The development and evolution of painting in social life cannot fail to have an impact on the underground tomb murals, people's understanding of the aesthetic value of painting, the independence of painting art, and the enrichment and development of the painting language itself will affect the content and form of tomb murals. This is especially evident in later tombs. For example, the landscapes (Figure 11), flowers and birds painted in the screen in the tomb of the Fifth Dynasty King of Xiyanchuan Village, Quyang County, Hebei Province, although not necessarily from the handwriting of famous artists, can indeed see the connection between the landscape of Dong Yuan and the flowers of Xu Xi's costume hall recorded in the literature. In Liaoning Faku Ye Maotai Liao Dynasty Tomb No. 7, even two vertical axis paintings were directly hung on the inner wall of the small wooden coffin room (Figures 12 and 13), although recent scholars have made new interpretations of the contents of the paintings from the perspective of funeral rites, but it cannot be ignored that these paintings are no longer traditional murals, but adopt the form of vertical axes. Yang Hongshi once noticed that the women of the Golden Tomb of Persimmon Zhuang in Jingxing County, Hebei Province, were practicing murals, and thus discussed the popularity of the facsimile of Zhang Xuan's "Trick Painting" in the folk, pointing out that "perhaps the folk will also circulate Zhang Xuan's painting style works, and even according to his powder book to paint tomb murals, it is not known." Another famous example is the landscape mural in the tomb of Feng Daozhen in the second year of the Datong Yuan to the second year of the Yuan Dynasty (1265) in Shanxi, in addition to its composition and brushwork can be compared with the paintings that have been handed down from generation to generation, the inscription "Late Photograph of the Forest" also appears in the painting, which is no different from the form of a hand scroll (Figure 14). Obviously, these late tomb murals are quite different in form from those of the Han and Wei dynasties. Of course, we can also continue to discuss the special significance of the murals in the specific architectural space of the tomb, in the liturgical and religious context (for example, considering the landscape murals of Feng Daozhen's tomb in connection with the identity of this Daoist official of the Quanzhen Sect and the suzerainty of the Longxiang Wanshou Palace), but in any case, we cannot ignore some of the new changes in their form, and from this point of view, researchers have reason to observe the "Evening Illumination of the Forest" together with the scroll paintings passed down from generation to generation.

Figure 13 "Bamboo Bird Double Rabbit Diagram" excavated from Tomb No. 7 of Faku Ye Maotai, Liaoning Province (collected from the Identification Group of Ancient Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy: Complete Collections of Chinese Paintings (3): Five Dynasties of Song Liaojin, vol. 2, p. 84, Figure 59)

Figure 14 Landscape murals of Feng Daozhen's tomb in datong, Shanxi (collected from Cultural Relics, No. 10, 1962, page 45)

Three

When it comes to the transformation of tomb murals, a key point worthy of in-depth analysis is the Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties. During this period, painting, like other art forms, entered a whole new phase. Similar to the flourishing of shelf painting after the European Renaissance, independent hand scrolls became increasingly popular and became one of the basic forms of Later Chinese painting. These portable hand scrolls have stimulated people's enthusiasm for reading and playing, and identifying and collecting. The screen mentioned at the beginning of this article was no longer just a kind of furniture during the Wei and Jin Dynasties, but was transformed into an important medium and carrier of painting. Book II of the Records of Famous Paintings of Past Dynasties: "If you must also carry the scroll in your hand, set your mouth on the nobles, and do not hesitate to spring goods, and want to hide the basket, then Dong Boren, Zhan Ziqian, Zheng Fashi, Yang Zihua, Sun Shangzi, Yan Liben, and Wu Daoxuan have a piece of screen, worth 20,000 gold, and the second one sells 15,000." (Original note: Since Sui has drawn many screens before, it is unknown that there is a picture box, so the screen shall prevail.) Judging from the materials found in archaeology, a painting was often painted in a screen during this period, and "fan" became synonymous with "width".

Figure 15 The main statue of the tomb on the sarcophagus bed of the Northern Zhou Kangye Tomb at the infrastructure construction site of shanglinyuan residential area in Xi'an, Shaanxi (collected from Cultural Relics, No. 6, 2008, page 31)

In 2004, a sarcophagus bed with a screen was found in the tomb of Kang Ye in the northern suburbs of Xi'an, North Zhou Tianhe Liu (571), and one of the screens depicted the front image of the tomb owner, who was under a house and whose seat was also a bed with a screen. It is worth noting that the screen behind it is decorated with a set of independent landscape paintings (Fig. 15). Although the lines are simple, this is almost the earliest example of independent landscape painting we have seen so far, and can also be seen as the "predecessor" of the fuping tomb landscape screen. This example shows us an important feature of the early stages of landscape painting, that is, these new painting subjects often appear in people's lives in the form of screens.

What is intriguing is that when we take a step back to observe the Kangye sarcophagus as a whole, we will find a special phenomenon: the portrait of the stone screen does not follow the theme of daily life, that is, each screen is not decorated with these simple and more aesthetic landscapes, but various forms of tomb owner portraits, such as kurama, ox cart and other tomb murals and popular themes in the Ming ware of this period, also appear in the screen. Because this bed is no longer an ordinary piece of furniture in daily life, but a burial tool for placing the remains of the tomb owner, its portrait is not more from the paintings in daily life, but to express a specific funerary concept, which is consistent with the theme of the tomb murals and figurines at that time. The design of these subjects is not so much intended to decorate a set of furniture, but rather to use images to construct another "life" for the deceased.

This image system, which is closely linked to the concept of funerary burial, has been roughly formed in Han Dynasty tombs. For example, in the Tombs of the Eastern Han Dynasty in Inner Mongolia and Linger Xiaobanshen, the carriage and horse rows and city mansions that show the tomb owner's experience before his death start from the Yongdao and pass through the passage between the four walls of the front chamber and the front middle chamber, and continue to the middle chamber. In the Eastern Han Tomb in Yanshi Xingyuan Village, Henan, large-scale murals of carriage and horse travel are connected in the four walls of the front room, up to 12 meters long. Tomb No. 1 of Wangdu Yaocun, Hebei Province, depicts the tomb owner's subordinate officials from the front chamber on both sides of the tomb door on the south wall of the front chamber through the left and right walls and extends to the passage between the front middle chamber. Most of these frescoes are not unfolded on a two-dimensional plane, but are combined with the three-dimensional architectural space of the burial chamber. When we look at these rambling images, it's easy to forget the presence of walls. Murals have transformed the limited architectural space of the burial chamber into a more expansive world of images.

In Northern Dynasty tombs, the traditional themes and compositions of frescoes continued, and at the same time, a new way of composition emerged. On the sarcophagus bed of Kangye Tomb, the traditional themes expressing the identity of the tomb owner have not only changed in the specific composition of the subject matter, but have acquired new forms — they are divided into relatively independent units, arranged in a series of screens. What we see is both an image in the picture and a screen, a painting with materiality.

Figure 16 The west wall and north wall of the tomb of North Qi Cuifen in the Floating Mountains of Linqu Sea, Shandong Province (collected from Linqu County Museum: "Mural Map of Northern Qi Cuifen", color figure 15)

The new changes were not limited to burial utensils, but were also reflected in the decoration of tomb walls during this period. For example, in the second year (551) of the Northern Qi Tianbao In Linqu Sea, Shandong, a new painting method appeared in the mural of Cui Fen's tomb. The east, north and west walls of this single-chamber tomb are painted with screens (Figure 16), but the continuity of the screens is destroyed by the small niches of the north wall and the west wall, the structure of the screen becomes scattered and incomprehensible, and its integrity as furniture no longer exists, but each of its fans is still complete and can meet the needs of the picture frame. Apparently, the author of this set of murals first saw his work as a separate "painting", and then as a "mural" in the traditional sense. Coats under the tree appeared in the screen, which can be explained as a popular theme at that time. However, Kurama, dance, etc. were also painted in the screen, so traditional themes were incorporated into the new "framework".

Four

Let's use the literature to see how the ancients viewed and described the murals. Since tomb murals are rarely documented, the materials we use revolve around murals in above-ground buildings. Needless to say, the nature and style of these texts are different from each other, and the chronological span is also large, however, they are close to the era of the painting in question, or may reflect to some extent the changes in the way people viewed and understood the frescoes at that time. If we acknowledge that there is an interactive relationship between the work and the viewer, then this change in the way we look at and narrate can be a meaningful angle for our understanding of the transformation of the fresco form.

One of the earliest examples I gave was Qu Yuan's Heavenly Questions. According to wang yi of the Eastern Han Dynasty's "Order of Heavenly Questions and Sentences", this work is a mural in the Chu "Temple of the First King and the Ancestral Hall of the Gongqing" after Qu Yuan was exiled, "because of the wall of the book, He (Oh) asked it, in order to vent his anger and soothe his sorrows." Sun Zuoyun believes that the Tianwen was written in the autumn of the thirtieth year (299 BC) of King Huai of Chu. According to Sun Zuoyun's summary, the full text of "Heavenly Questions" is in turn asking the heavens, asking the earth, asking the beginning of mankind, asking shunshi, asking about summer affairs, asking business affairs, asking western Zhou affairs, asking about spring and autumn affairs, asking about the four things and concluding words. From these contents, we can capture a kind of "program" of vision and thought movement, that is, starting from space, associating the murals inside the building with the vast universe, and then reviewing the entire history of mankind before the Spring and Autumn Period according to the clues of time. Sun Zuoyun pointed out: "Although the Tianwen is based on the murals, it cannot be said that everything asked in the Tianwen is found in the murals. Therefore, these texts are not necessarily truthful descriptions of the murals, the author only uses the various themes in the murals, "to vent his anger and relieve his worries", and the architectural structure and picture form are not presented on the surface of the text. What is expressed in "Heavenly Questions" is not so much what Qu Yuan saw as what he thinks. In other words, in these texts, the frescoes are only "leads" of the universe and history, and their characteristics as works of visual art are not fully expressed.

Unlike Qu Yuan's state of mind, more than four hundred years later, Wang Yi's son Wang Yanshou went north from Chu to the state of Lu, with the sole purpose of "watching the art of Lu". When he saw the luxurious style of the Spiritual Light Hall built by Liu Yu, the King of Lu Gong in the Western Han Dynasty, he was greatly surprised, so he wrote the famous "Lu Ling Guang Temple Endowment". Fu begins by praising the founding of the Han Dynasty, The Marquis of Yulu, and the grand cause of building a city in Beijing, and then recounts the rich and spacious architecture and ornate decoration of the Hall of Spiritual Light. The author compares the overall pattern of this building with the stars in the sky, and according to the change of his own position, he narrates the "Chongyong", "Zhu Que", "Gaomen", "Taijie", and "Tang", and then travels north through the "Golden Gate" to enter the meandering and secluded "Spiral Room", "Cave Room", the "West Wing" of the leisure banquet and the "East Sequence" of the heavy depth, and then lays out the beauty of the architectural components such as beams, columns, doors and windows, and patios.

The following passage is often quoted by scholars who study Han portrait masonry:

Birds and beasts, because of the wood posture. Ben Hu grabbed liang and leaned on, and he struggled and was proud. The dragon soars with a worm, and the jaw moves and hesitates. The vermilion bird Shu wing is balanced, and the snake is cockroach and circling. The white deer is in the maple, and the cockroach is like a frieze. The cunning rabbit crouched on the side of the rafter, and the apes climbed the rafters and chased after each other. The bear is dirty, but the load is squatting. Qi Shou's eyes widened, and his eyes narrowed in vain. The Hu people are gathered in the upper japon, and the ya are opposite, and the deception "犭思" (combined into one word) is carved (combined into one word), (combined into one word) and the jaw is confused. If you are sad in danger, you are squawk and emaciated. The Immortal Yue Yue was in the middle of the building, and the Jade Girl peeked down through the window. Glance at the sound of the image, like a ghost god.

This passage seems to be a description of the reliefs on some of the building components, all of which are combined with specific building components. In the next passage, architectural terms cease to exist, reminding us of images laid out on flat walls:

Picture heaven and earth, categories of life, strange debris, mountain gods and sea spirits. Write its shape, to the Danqing, ever-changing, things in their own shapes; with the color of the image, the song of its feelings. The opening of the Shang Dynasty, the beginning of the ancients; the five dragons than the wings, the nine heads of the human emperor; the scales of the Fuxi, the body of the snake of the Nüwa. Honghuang is simple and simple, and the sui are sui, Huan Bing is considerable, the Yellow Emperor Tang Yu. Xuan is crowned with a mediocre, with special clothes, under and three queens, adulterous concubines and adulterous lords; loyal servants and filial piety, martyr virgins. The virtuous and foolish succeed or fail, and do not tell the truth; the evil is admonished to the world, and the good is shown later.

Obviously, the latter paragraph still retains the narrative structure of "Tianwen" from space to time. However, the heaven and earth mentioned here are the "heavens and earth" of "pictures", and the pointing of words is not a thought or concept, but a specific visual image. The depiction of the characters has also developed from Qu Yuan's "Nuwa has a body" to a specific expression such as "Nüwa Snake Body", and all the pictures are "impressive". After that, the author briefly mentions the indoctrinating function of the picture - "evil is admonished to the world, and good is shown later". At the end of the endowment, he took a macroscopic perspective to look back at the entire set of buildings and their relationship with the environment, raising the significance of the Spiritual Light Hall to the historical height of "Rui I Han Room, Immortal".

In Wang Yanshou's pen, the relationship between the mural images and the architecture is further clarified. However, while praising the murals as "ever-changing and varied; with the color of the image, curved to their feelings", he still emphasizes the connection between the content of the murals. This situation has changed in the third example we have given, Zhang Yanyuan's Records of Famous Paintings of Past Dynasties. In the section of volume 3 of the book, "Remembering the Two Capitals and the Outer Prefecture Temple Painting Wall", a large number of temple murals are recorded, and we arbitrarily select a "Ci'en Temple" in Chang'an to see his way of accounting:

Between the east and west of the tower, Yin Lin painted. Bodhisattva jockey in the west and elephant on the east.

The south gate lieutenant under the tower was late in painting. The West Wall Thousand Bowls Manjushri, Wei Chi painted.

Two rooms and two doors in the north and south, Wu painting, and self-titled.

Between the front windows of the north hall of the pagoda, Wu paints bodhisattvas. Inside the hall, Yang Tingguang's paintings have been changed and color damaged.

On the north wall of the East Xuan Corridor of the Main Hall, Wu paintings have not yet been painted. The old legend is Wu, but a closer look is not.

The east corridor of the main hall is from the north first courtyard, with white paintings of Zheng Qian, Bi Hong, Wang Wei and so on.

On the north wall of the hospital, the two gods are very wonderful, and they have lost their names.

Painting of Yan Ling between the walls of the two galleries. The middle and west corridors of Li Guonu painted monks.

Outside the southeast middle gate of the tower, Zhang Xiaoshi painted hell and had peeled off.

The east corridor of the courtyard is from the north of the first room to the south wall, and Wei Luan paints pine trees.

The east wall of the Great Buddha Hall is well painted and has lost its name.

On both sides of the middle three doors, Yin Lin painted the gods.

In Zhang Yanyuan's text, the building still exists, but there is no complete description of its structure, mentioning the west wall, but not mentioning the east wall, speaking of the first room, but ignoring the second room, and there is no connection between the contents of the mural, and the space-time coordinates seen above no longer exist. Zhang seems to have selected some works in the monastery, based on the fame of the painter and the level of the work, just as the title of the book says, he chose a series of "famous paintings". Zhang Yanyuan's account largely ignores the content of the murals, let alone their religious significance. These monasteries were converted into art galleries exhibiting the paintings of famous artists, and all the murals were like screens and scrolls displayed in the exhibition halls.

We cannot simply understand this transformation as a way unique to a scholar who specializes in the history of painting. The reason why these religious murals, which are mixed in the bustling metropolis, attract the attention of the people is not only because of their religious value, but because of their increasingly secular style, just like the common saying in the monasteries, the reason why the peddlers and pawns flock to them, and more importantly, because the way they preach is becoming more and more literary. (For example, at that time, Ci'en Temple was the place where the theater in Chang'an City was most concentrated.) Wu Daozi's depiction of hell in the Xingshan Temple can certainly have the indoctrination function of "the people who slaughtered the fishing and fishing in Kyoto, those who saw it and feared the sin and changed their professions, often there were those who cultivated the goodness", and at the same time, when he painted the statue of the god, it was also like performing a big drama, "The old and young people in Chang'an City are competing, and the viewers are blocked." Its round light is swept by the pen, and the momentum is like a whirlwind, and everyone is called the help of the gods", "the sound of the noise, alarming the fangyi". The appeal of such a mural is not mainly in the subject matter of the painting, but in the superb technique of the painter. Therefore, those who go to the monastery to see the paintings often carry a pair of aesthetic eyes.

In the Tang Dynasty, the connection from "mural" to "painting" was not only expressed in concept, but also sometimes on the material level. Zhang Yanyuan remembered that the west courtyard of the Chang'an Xingtang Temple "also has Wu Sheng (Daozi) and Zhou Fang silk paintings", Xue Yongnian pointed out: "This kind of silk painting is either framed on the wall or hung on the wall, because the façade of the silk painting has a certain scale, if the mural is not spliced and stitched, it needs to be composed of several pieces of a shop, and in the Tang poems, 'the flowing water coils back to the mountain for a hundred turns, and the embroidery is several hanging in the middle hall', that is, the active murals composed of several without sticking to the wall. "This kind of special silk mural in the Tang Dynasty monasteries can be seen in form as a bridge between scroll paintings and murals. What is even more intriguing is the historical fact that the murals were cut and collected by people:

There are many ruins in Huichang, and now they are also loaded, and there are also good things to receive paintings in people's homes.

In the fifth year of Huichang (845), Emperor Wuzong destroyed the Tianxia Temple Pagoda, and three or two were left in each of the two capitals, so the name painted on the temple wall was the only one or two that survived. There were good things at that time, or they were exposed to the walls of the house. He has been a former journalist, and he has been widowed. First of all, The prime minister Li Deyu town of Zhejiang West, founded the Ganlu Temple, only the ganlu is not destroyed, take the pipe of the inner temple painting wall, placed in the temple ...

The religious value of the murals was denied in the frenzy of the Wuzong Extinction Law, and the murals that people cut and unveiled, broke away from the building matrix, and obtained an independent frame, highlighting the smooth flying lines of the famous murals and the red, dark, green and light colors.

Five

Let's return to the world of images.

The murals in Zhujiadao Village, Bupyeong, provide too much space for our imagination, which is not without value for the study of art history. Instead of bluntly removing murals from the walls, the painters of ZhuJiadao's tomb used their own brushes to subtly transform the rambling walls into screens that seemed to move easily. The visual impression of the screens independent of each other is that these paintings with different themes are not simply a set of "murals" prepared for funeral needs, but a standard "painting". The way of viewing and describing this set of paintings is not Qu Yuan's and Wang Yanshou's style, but Zhang Yanyuan's style, which is close to the times.

Unlike the crowded temples, this is, after all, a dark underground burial chamber. Death is frightening, and no matter how warmly the painters decorate it, the burial chamber is always an ominous place, a place where scholars who are good at poetry and literature do not pay attention. In general, the living person cannot see these paintings in the cold tombs. Perhaps the bereaved family who paid for them could see these murals, but it is hard to imagine that if the painter painted the waiters with pen and ink in their hands, the employer would increase his wages. I tend to think that the author's intention is to identify himself. Fate determined that the place where the painter worked was confined to the burial chamber, but these special forms of paintings could remind the painter that he was no longer a tomb muralist in the traditional sense, but a painter who could be compared with the famous artists who had entered the annals of history, because his works were no longer just "murals" but "paintings", and even more "painting" than the murals in the temples, and those who held pen and ink outside the screen were even the household slaves of the tomb owner, and at this time they had been sent by their masters to serve this distinguished painter.

Amazingly, the cranes, lions, cattle, and landscapes seen in the screen roughly correspond to the Way the Tang People classified the subject matter of painting. For example, the four categories mentioned by Zhu Jingxuan in the preface to the "Catalogue of Famous Paintings of the Tang Dynasty" are "people", "animals and animals", "landscapes" and "building halls and houses". Zhu Jingxuan said of Cheng Xiuji, "Youjing landscapes, bamboo stones, flowers and birds, characters, ancient sages, merits, and beasts."

Zhang Yanyuan said: "Why should the six laws be complete (original note: the six methods are solved in the next part), but it is possible to take a skill." (Original note: The characters, or the house trees, or the landscapes, or the kurama, or the ghosts, or the flowers and birds, each has its own strengths.) The chamber is smaller, and the frescoes were most likely done by one person independently. When painting such murals, he is not just a person who "takes a skill", but can swing works of various themes on different screens. Beyond the screen, there are also paintings of music and dance, doorman, and starry sky, but that is only the continuation of tradition and the needs of the system, not his main interest. He offers the dead no longer just a religious, functional space, but a colorful world of painting.

For a long time, people have been accustomed to using typological methods to classify and study tomb murals under the concept of "tomb system", so that they can grasp the basic situation of the development and change of ancient tomb murals as a whole, which is conducive to observing and mastering many universal problems. However, in typological studies, it's easy to exclude something that is unique. While the study of art history is concerned about common issues such as the style of the work era, it should also pay attention to the study of some works with personality. Almost all researchers have noticed the personality shown in the murals of Zhu Jiadao's tombs, which cannot be explained at the level of the "burial system", but shows the autonomy of the painter in a certain scope and degree. For another example, li chongjun, the prince of Jieshu, has a male attendant painted on each side of the small niche on the east side of the cave on the first passway, and according to the "system" or tradition, these two male attendants should be in a posture of standing solemnly, just like other common images in similar positions; however, the painter painted one on the north side as if he was rushing from a distance. Painting the gate tower on the north wall of the tomb of Li Xian is probably also a provision of the "system", but the painter painted the silhouette of a scholar who was leaning down and looking down behind the bamboo curtain on the east side of the gatehouse. If such details are ignored, how different are these murals from the pots and jars mass-produced on the assembly line?

Figure 17 Susanne Greiff, Yin Shenping: Das Grab des Bin Wang: Wandmalereien der stlichen Han- zeit in China, abb. 28）

Figure 18 "Painter's Worker" in the mural on the west wall of the back room of the Eastern Han Tomb in Baizi Village, Xunyi, Shaanxi (edited by Xu Guangji: The Complete Collection of Excavated Murals in China, vol. 6, Beijing: Science Press, 2012, p. 125, Figure 118)

The author of the Zhujiadao tomb mural seems to have a desire to try to highlight his own value in the mural. The self-identification of this identity is different from the past, in stark contrast to the example of the Eastern Han Tomb in Baizi Village, Xunyi County, Shaanxi Province. The walls on either side of the tomb's back chamber depict the tomb owner and his wife receiving worship from their subordinates, and the painters and couples also appear in the ranks of those subordinate officials (Fig. 17). This is the earliest "self-portrait" of China that has been seen so far. The painter was so humble that he did not write his own name, but only wrote the words "painter worker" (Fig. 18), and he was only a small supporting role in the whole set of murals. Without the inscription, we cannot distinguish him from other figures.

Even so, we cannot think that the painters of the Han Dynasty were completely engaged in a passive and uncreative work, otherwise we would not be able to explain why the same subject matter was expressed in different styles in the Han Dynasty. In fact, Han Dynasty painters, in addition to taking into account the religious and ceremonial functions of murals, also devoted themselves to the exploration of painting language. In the study of Han Dynasty murals, we should pay special attention to how the early Chinese painting language was experimented with and increasingly enriched in this era.

Figure 19 One of the parts of the hunting map of the east wall of the Han Tomb at the infrastructure construction site of Xi'an University of Technology in Shaanxi Province (collected from the State Administration of Cultural Heritage: "2004 Important Archaeological Discoveries in China", page 109)

Figure 20 Part 2 of the hunting map of the east wall of the Han Tomb at the infrastructure construction site of Xi'an University of Technology, Shaanxi Province (collected from the State Administration of Cultural Heritage: "2004 Important Archaeological Discoveries in China", page 109)

There is a hunting map on the east wall of the Han tomb at the infrastructure construction site of Xi'an University of Technology in Shaanxi Province, in the special environment of the tomb, two thousand years later, some lines of the portrait manuscript are faintly revealed, and careful observation can see that in the basic draft, some of the horse's front legs were originally retracted backwards, but when the draft was finalized, the painter changed the front legs to a parallel forward extension, so that the horse's movement was more intense (Figures 19, 20).

Such a modification will not have any effect on the subject matter or the ideas expressed. So why did the painter bother to modify these legs? The answer, most likely, is that the painter is not just working passively, he stands against the wall, contemplating, contemplating, deliberating, not for the utility of these paintings in funeral rites, not for the employer's wages, but just for the better painting of these running horses. At this time, he was no longer an ordinary craftsman who only worked for rice sorghum, but a self-conscious artist. It is precisely because of this that we can write these works into a history of Chinese painting.

The author, Zheng Yan, is a professor at the School of Arts of Peking University

Comments from omitted, the full version please refer to the original text.

Editor: Xiang Yu

Proofreader: Water Life

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