Introduction: Ma Hezhi's works are ingeniously conceived and detached, creating the "leech drawing" technique in the eighteen drawings of traditional Chinese painting. What's more, he also combined the characters with the scenery stone trees, so that the characters and the scenery were integrated, forming a typical schema style.
Part of the "Tang Wind Scroll"
The Southern Song Dynasty Xuanhe Painting Academy is a place where immortals fight. The art emperor Song Huizong did not seek similarity when recruiting painters, but focused on artistic conception.
His exam questions changed from physical objects to a poem or word, such as "Yedu unmanned boat self-crossing, blue field day warm jade smoke, spring breeze ten miles of horseshoe incense, etc.", these can only understand the ineffable poetry, how to focus on the brush?
However, the first person in the masterful Imperial Painting Academy was not from the Painting Academy, but a Jin Shi and the first officer to the soldier Shilang, who was the teacher of Li Tang and created his own leech depiction.
Part of the "Tang Wind Scroll"
Extreme personality of the leech depiction
"Where painting, the characters are the most difficult, the second landscape, the second dog and horse; Taixie must be an ear, difficult to make but easy to be good, do not need to think of wonderful. "Today, whether it is people, landscapes, flowers and birds, cars and horses, or taixie, they are all good subjects for painting, and it is as difficult to draw good works.
Chinese figure painting has a history of nearly 1,600 years since Gu Kaizhi, whose works have been handed down. However, the development was extremely slow, and there was not much change through the Sui and Tang dynasties, the fifth dynasty and the Northern Song Dynasty. Even Li Gonglin in the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty continued the style of Wang Wei, Han Gan and others, and made great progress in photo performance compared with previous generations, but he still did not depart from the function of just embellishment.
Part of "Idle Diagram"
In the late Northern Song Dynasty, Li Tang began to pay attention to the echoing relationship between the characters and the background rocks and trees. In the depiction of the characters, he adopts a unified delineation technique with trees, mountains and stones, making the brushwork simple, the lines twisted, and the thickness changed and jumped. Ma Hezhi has perfected on the basis of Li Tang, freeing pen and ink from the confinement of character modeling, and transforming pen and ink from "mainly expressing the function of character modeling" to "strengthening the aesthetics of pen and ink itself".
Although the aesthetic value of pen and ink itself has been valued before Ma Hezhi, Ma Hezhi's works have highlighted the status of pen and ink, and have presented an aesthetic consciousness beyond its modeling function, forming an abstract aesthetic language of personal symbolization, that is, "leech drawing".
Part of Wu Daozi's "Sending the Son Heavenly King Diagram"
Leech drawing is Ma Hezhi's evolution of Wu Daozi's "lettuce strip" brushwork, the difference is that the leech drawing highlights the arbitrariness of brushwork changes.
Comparing Wu Daozi's "Sending Zi Tianwang Tu" with Ma Hezhi's "Shijing Luming Zhishi Four Mu", it can be seen that the two are both simple and sparse. However, Wu Daozi's brushwork is smooth and vigorous, while Ma Hezhi's brushwork is short and many and meandering on the basis of Wu Daozi. The character line expression is not strictly organized according to the structure of trees, rocks or clothing folds, and the brushwork changes more freely and freely.
Part of the Book of Poetry
"Later Chibi Futu"
Ma Hezhi's master Cheng Li Tang, which can be seen from the layout style of the cliff scene in his "Later Chibi Futu". Because his mountain structure, spring location, reef layout and other places are the same. Even the temperament of the picture is also in the same vein, mainly light ink, and the heavy ink is slightly dyed with a gray visual feeling to present the plot of "Chibi", expressing its feelings for time and space, history and life.
Comparison of Li Tang and Ma Hezhi's "Red Cliff Diagram"
Learning and borrowing from classic illustrations is one of the direct ways to pass on excellent experience. Ma Hezhi's pen and ink use and space creation in "Later Chibi Futu" is obviously a great improvement compared with Li Tang's "Chibi Shengyou Map Page", the picture vision is more broad, and it can create a sense of time and space of grand history, it can be said that Ma Hezhi's "Later Chibi Futu" is almost a compressed and elongated version of Li Tang's "Chibi Shengyou Map Page".
Part of Li Tang's "Chibi Shengyou Picture Page"
The difference is that Li Tang's "Chibi Shengyu Tu" is a reproduction of Su Shi's visit to "Chibi", and to a certain extent, expresses the poet's complex emotions for Chibi. Ma Hezhi's "Houchibi Futu" takes Su Shi as the main character, and uses the poetic reproduction of Su Shi's "Niannujiao Chibi Huaigu" to express "Chibi".
Ma Hezhi uses Su Shi as the main body of the painting, aiming to highlight Su Shi's literary achievements. Through the open perspective overlooking the picture, the exquisite brushwork and ink color, and the distant and vast artistic conception, it shows Su Shi's profound life understanding and shows his open-mindedness to ups and downs, honor and disgrace.
Part of Li Tang's "Cai Wei Tu"
In addition, in "Later Chibi Futu", you can also see the brushwork used to depict characters in Li Tang's "Cai Wei Tu", they all place the characters in the natural scene, and take into account the integration of the characters' brush and ink with the background. However, compared with Li Tang, Ma Hezhi obviously pays more attention to the overall relationship between the characters and the scene, is more free and detached, the ink color changes are richer and more delicate, and the charm of the characters and the background is more coherent and vivid.
Although Li Tang has made a breakthrough in the performance of the fusion of the character's pen and ink and background, he still has not got rid of the shackles of "objective objects" on pen and ink. It is still limited to the function of "modeling", and pen and ink are still in a subordinate position based on modeling. It can be seen from Ma Hezhi's "Later Chibi Futu" and the part of "Shijing Xiaoya Jinan Zhishi "that in terms of character performance, the aesthetic of pen and ink itself has risen to a higher position.
Part of the Book of Poetry, Xiaoya Jiunan no Shi
At the same time, Ma Hezhi is based on Li Tang, and his attempt to combine the pen and ink of character expression with the pen and ink expression of Jingshan stone trees has pushed to maturity. The characters and the scenery are integrated and natural, forming a typical schematic style, which has to be said to be the development of figure painting.