From the separation of calligraphy and painting to the combination of calligraphy and painting:
The change of brush and ink in Song and Yuan paintings
◇ Li Yongqiang
The separation of calligraphy and painting refers to the absence of calligraphy brushes in painting, and the brush and ink in painting belong to the painting method, and its function is mainly to depict the shape and charm of objects, and calligraphy and painting are in two separate forms. The combination of calligraphy and painting can also be called calligraphy into painting, which means that the brush in painting belongs to the category of calligraphy, and the brush and ink in the painting are no longer simply for the service of modeling, but also assume the function of expressing the painter's emotions, as well as showing the expressiveness and beauty of the brush and ink itself. From the Song Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty, painting experienced a transformation from the separation of calligraphy and painting to the combination of calligraphy and painting, although the combination of calligraphy and painting was gradually perfected in the Yuan Dynasty, but it has a long theoretical history. Zhang Yanyuan in the Tang Dynasty, Guo Xi, Han Zhuo, Zhao Xihu and others in the Song Dynasty all put forward the concept of the same method of calligraphy and painting, but this theory only stayed at the level of the same origin and the same method of calligraphy and painting before the Yuan Dynasty, and there were no theorists to discuss and explore how to use the same method, how to combine the brushwork of calligraphy with painting, and no painter to carry out specific practical exploration.
1. The separation of calligraphy and painting in Song Dynasty painting
The separation of calligraphy and painting in Song Dynasty painting is mainly reflected in two aspects, one is that the technique of Song Dynasty painting is to serve modeling, which is mostly extracted from objective objects and actual geographical characteristics, and there is almost no painting method that uses books into painting. Second, the style of Song Dynasty painting belongs to the no-money, poor, and hidden money, and the calligraphy level of the Song Dynasty painters is not high.
1. How to draw in the service of modeling
The paintings of the Song Dynasty were very realistic, and landscape paintings, flower and bird paintings, and figure paintings all showed this characteristic, which stemmed from its truth-seeking artistic proposition and delicate technical language. The painting techniques of the Song Dynasty are very rich, many of them are based on the actual geographical characteristics and objects and images refined, which mainly serve the objective objects, and its important purpose is to serve the realism, so it is called "painting method". Taking flower and bird painting as an example, its technique is dominated by gongbi painting, most of which are double-hooked coloring, and there are relatively few broad brush freehand paintings. The style of flower and bird painting is mainly rich and exquisite, delicate and delicate Huang Zhen painting style, and the depiction of objective objects and shapes in the works has reached the ultimate height of precision and delicacy. In the Song Dynasty, Shen Kuo's "Dream Creek Brush Talk" volume 17 Zhongyun: "Zhuhuang painted flowers, the magic lies in the coloring, the pen is very new and fine, and the ink is not visible, but it is dyed with light color." It can be seen that Huang's painting style is to use extremely delicate light ink to outline the outline of the object, and then use various blending methods such as separate dyeing, accumulation dyeing, lifting dyeing, and cover dyeing to achieve the artistic effect of both form and spirit. Huang Qian's painting is vivid and realistic, both form and spirit, Huang Xiufu of the Song Dynasty in the "Yizhou Famous Painting Record" in the cloud: "Guangzheng Jiachen is old, Huainan is hired, there are several cranes in the letter coin, and the Lord of Shu ordered the crane to write on the wall of the side hall. The vigilant dew, the mosspecker, the hairman, the whole feather, the sky, the foot, the wonderful body, more than the life, often the crane stands on the side of the painting. The lord of Shu sighed, and then saw the six crane palaces. "Sketch of Rare Birds" (Fig. 1) is a hand-me-down work of Huang Qian, although it is not necessarily authentic, but it can provide some supporting evidence for us to understand the "wealth of Huang Qian". The painting depicts sparrows, wagtails, pulsatillas, cicadas, bees, turtles and other animals, with accurate shapes, vivid and realistic, and both form and spirit. In terms of technique, light ink is used to double hook, then light ink or cyan is used to dye it, and then it is rendered with color, which is delicate and exquisite, reflecting the artist's ability to observe objects and images and depict them superbly, which is also consistent with the record in Shen Kuo's "Dream Creek Brush Talk". When Zhao Ji of Song Huizong was arrested, this style of realism intensified, and on the basis of inheriting Huang Qian's painting style, he pursued more realistic shapes. In order to make the birds he painted more vivid and realistic, and increase the realism of the paintings, he "mostly uses raw lacquer to dot the eye, faintly beans, higher than the paper element, and almost wants to move, and the history is incomprehensible." It can be seen that the painting method of flowers and birds serves the state of modeling.
Fig.1 [Northern Song Dynasty] Huang Zhen sketching rare birds
41.5cm×70cm ink and color on silk, collection of the Palace Museum
The same is true of the landscape paintings of the Song Dynasty, all kinds of methods in landscape paintings are realistic, all of which serve the modeling, as the so-called "pen to establish its shape, ink to divide its yin and yang". At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, Dong Yuan created a "Phi Ma Jia" based on the characteristics of soft soil, abundant rain, lush vegetation, and mixed mud and grass in the south of the Yangtze River, as well as his own aesthetic feelings. There are also the Qilu scenery of Li Chengzhi in the Song Dynasty, the scenery of Fan Kuan's Zhongnan and Taihua, all of which originate from nature and are all faithful to nature...... The peaks and mountains are thick, the momentum is strong, the brushes are even, the people and houses are all quality, and Fan's works are also "different painting styles". Indeed, Fan Kuan's iron-like lines, square and hard raindrops, abrupt main peaks, and lofty schemas truly express the texture of the lack of vegetation and the bare stony cliffs in the mountains of Northwest China, as can be seen from his work "Traveling in the Mountains and Streams" (fig. 2). In addition, there are Li Tang's scraping iron, raindrops, short strips, and small axe splitting, Guo Xi's cirrus clouds, grimace stones, crab claw trees, etc., all of which come from the natural world that the painter is familiar with, and are processed by the artist to reproduce the natural landscape.
Fig.2 [Northern Song Dynasty] Fan Kuan's Xishan travel map axis
206.3cm×103.3cm ink pen on silk, collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei
These painting methods are only for the purpose of reproducing the objective world, and do not have the function of expressing the subjective emotions of the painter, so most of them present the characteristics of neatness, delicacy and subtlety, and do not have the characteristics and nature of writing. Strictly speaking, the painting method at this time did not have much to do with the calligraphy brush, and the painting method and calligraphy were separated.
2. No money, poor money, hidden money
The style of Song Dynasty paintings is basically no-money, poor, and hidden, and most of them do not use seals. Titles with more words are rare. Most of the inscriptions in Song Dynasty paintings are small in number of words, and they are written very small, and the painter hides them in places that are not easily discovered, or hides them on the stones to cover them up, or they are written in the trunks and leaves of trees to hide the image. For example, Li Cheng's "Reading the Stone Tablet Map" inscribes the paragraph "Wang Xiao Figure, Li Chengshu Stone" on one side of the stone stele, Li Tang's "Ten Thousand Pine Wind Map" inscribes the paragraph "Emperor Song Xuanhe Jiachen Chunheyang Li Tang Pen" on the distant mountain peak (Fig. 3), and Xiao Zhao's "View of the Mountainside Building" inscribes the word "Xiao Zhao" under the dense trees on the side of the mountain cliff. In addition, the Song Dynasty Mi Fu "Painting History" also recorded a more bizarre collection, its cloud: "Fan Kuan Shi Jing Hao, Hao self-proclaimed Hong Guzi." Wang Xu's taste is sent with two paintings, and the title is a cloud hook dragon shuang painting. Because of the heavy back into the water, on the left side of the stone there is Hongguzi Jing Hao pen, the word is under the green plastering stone, not the descendants of the people also, but not as wide at all. "It's the ultimate in collectibility, and it's impossible to find it unless it's re-framed.
Fig.3 [Southern Song Dynasty] Li Tang's inscription of "Ten Thousand Pine Winds".
For the Song Dynasty painting has no money, few paragraphs, small characters, and hidden money, some people believe that it is caused by the low level of calligraphy of Song Dynasty painters, such as Shen Hao's "Painting" article under the cloud: "Before the Yuan Dynasty, there were many paragraphs, paragraphs or hidden stone gaps, afraid that the book was not fine, and there was a wound to the painting bureau. There is a certain degree of rationality in this view, and if we carefully compare the texts in Song Dynasty paintings with Song Dynasty calligraphy works, it is not difficult to see the huge gap between them. It is an indisputable fact that the calligraphy level of Song Dynasty painters was not high, because they believed that painters did not need to practice calligraphy, and there was no need to inscribe large areas of text in their paintings, which would destroy the real effect of the picture.
Judging from the two aspects of the painting method of the Song Dynasty painting for the modeling service and the poor money and the Tibetan money, the calligraphy level of the Song Dynasty painters is indeed not high, and from the existing calligraphy and painting works and documents, there is indeed no painter who is good at calligraphy and painting. Although Mi Fu and Su Shi are good at calligraphy and painting, but the actual situation is the result of history. Although Mi Fu's calligraphy level is indeed very high, but the level of painting is really not flattering, even the painting dedicated to the emperor is made by his son Mi Youren, and he has not even handed down a true handiwork, even if it is the Southern Song Dynasty Deng Chun has only seen his two works, and issued a "ancient painting pine has not seen this system" "the wonder of the real Kuang Dynasty also" exclaimed, it can be seen that Mi Fu's painting level is not high, and is not recognized by the people. As the great calligrapher of the "Four Song Families", Su Shi's only hand-me-down work "Dead Wood and Strange Stones" is also quite controversial about its authenticity. It can be seen from this that the painting of the Song Dynasty was a state of separation of calligraphy and painting, that is, the painter was not good at calligraphy, and the calligrapher was not good at painting. In addition, there is almost no shadow of calligraphy in painting, and the method of painting is the method of painting, and it is difficult to see the way of writing with calligraphy.
Second, the combination of calligraphy and painting in Yuan Dynasty painting
The combination of calligraphy and painting in the Yuan Dynasty painting is mainly reflected in two aspects, one is that the painting method of the Song Dynasty painting has been transformed into the writing method at this time, and the painting has become the mainstream of painting, both in theory and practice. The second is that the Song Dynasty painting has been transformed into a form of poetry, calligraphy and printing at this time.
1. The brushwork of drawing with a book
In the Yuan Dynasty, the delicate painting method of the Song Dynasty has been transformed into a rough writing method, showing the phenomenon of "painting with books", and the techniques are mainly to serve the painter's emotional expression rather than objective images to a certain extent, and the painting techniques have a certain unity with the external form of objective objects, which is the presentation of painting with books. In this regard, we discuss from two aspects: landscape painting and flower and bird painting.
In the Yuan Dynasty, the brush and ink techniques of landscape painting gradually changed to symbolism, and the rich brushes began to become single, and gradually formed the mainstream of techniques based on the linen, while other brushes gradually disappeared. Although there are other such as Ni Zhan's folded belt and Wang Meng's cow hair, etc., but tracing back to their origins, these methods are still transformed from the phi linen. Zhao Mengfu and the "Four Yuan Families" greatly admired Dong Yuan, the founder of Pi Majiao, and they took Dong Yuan as the object of their teaching, and sought their own artistic style on the basis of learning from Dong Yuan. For example, Huang Gongwang Zeng Yun: "Those who make landscapes must take Dong as their teacher, such as learning Du Ye of poetry." "The decline and monolithic use of techniques indicates that techniques are developing in the direction of symbolization, and their realistic function has been dissolved, while the proportion of the painter's emotions and emotions it bears is gradually increasing. We selected representative painters and representative works of the Song and Yuan dynasties, including Fan Kuan's Journey to the Mountains and Streams, Li Cheng's Reading the Stone Monument, Guo Xi's Early Spring, Li Tang's Ten Thousand Pine Winds, Ma Yuan's Song Song, Xiao Zhao's Mountainside Tower, Qian Xuan's Mountain Dwelling, Gao Kegong's Yunheng Xiuling, Zhao Mengfu's Shuangsong Pingyuan, Huang Gongwang's Water Pavilion Tranquility, Sheng Mao's Autumn River to be Crossed, Ni Zhan's Six Gentlemen, and Wang Meng's Summer Mountain Dwelling. Through comparison, we find that the landscape painting of the Song Dynasty attaches great importance to the shape, volume, texture, yin and yang of mountains and stones, etc., emphasizing the branches of the tree on all sides, emphasizing the complexity of the trunk shape and the interspersed branches and leaves, emphasizing the realism of the technique at the level of painting techniques, and pursuing the realism of natural objects as a whole. On the contrary, the landscape painting of the Yuan Dynasty tended to be simple and light, and the mountains, stones, and trees in the painting paid attention to the thickness and smoothness of the calligraphy brush, which weakened the rigorous modeling of the object, and the painter deliberately refined and summarized the basic characteristics of the object and depicted it, which weakened the realism and texture of the object, and emphasized the emotion that the painter poured into the object. The painters of the Yuan Dynasty realized the lyrical function of painting by refining and summarizing the characteristics of objects and making "subtraction" of painting techniques. The more complex the representation of the object in the painting, the more the painter's emotional expression will be reduced, because to express the truth and complexity of the image, it must be completed after the painter's emotional calm is excited. Yuan Dynasty painting paid attention to the expression of emotions, and it was inevitable to symbolize objects and techniques, and transform "painting" into "writing", so that the painters' purpose of expressing emotions through painting could be realized. Through comparison, we clearly feel that the difference between the paintings of the Yuan Dynasty and the Song Dynasty lies in the transformation of the calligraphy of paintings, in which Zhao Mengfu contributed a lot. He "summarized the various tree methods and methods in Chinese landscape painting into symbolic forms, made them into disassembled dot painting structures, and then matched them with the dot painting structure of text writing, and used calligraphy brushwork to coherently make the various styles of Chinese landscape painting become calligraphy symbolic methods, calligraphy brushwork and composition principles have become an integral part of the application of painting methods, and calligraphy and painting methods have returned from the same origin to the same method...... The introduction of calligraphy added many intriguing formal meanings to the landscape paintings of the Yuan Dynasty. In this way, under the unity of brushwork, the dot painting structure of the Chinese landscape painting tree method and the dot painting structure of calligraphy and calligraphy have found the compatibility between calligraphy and painting, and the transformation of calligraphy into painting has finally become possible."
Fig.4 [Yuan] Zhao Mengfu, Xiushi Shulin Picture Scroll
27.5cm×62.8cm ink pen on paper, collection of the Palace Museum
In the Song Dynasty, the delicate and delicate painting method of "no ink" and "dyed with color" of flower and bird painting was also transformed into writing, and the technique began to become coarse, and the painting methods of ink plum, orchid, and bamboo were more mature. At this time, the role of techniques in serving the objective objects in the painting was reduced to a large extent, and the painter paid more attention to the expression of his own emotions, that is, to write the heart, lyricism, and to express the meaning. In the specific brush and ink techniques, the Yuan Dynasty painting paid more attention to calligraphy. Zhao Mengfu said in the inscription of his work "Xiushi Sparse Forest Map": "The stone is like flying, the white wood is like a tree, and the bamboo is also written in the eight laws; if there are people who can understand this, they will know that calligraphy and painting are the same." (Fig. 4) He applied the brushwork of calligraphy to painting, and achieved the organic unity of calligraphy brushwork and the painting method of depicting objects and images in the brushwork, emphasizing the calligraphy, so that the painting method was further generalized, refined and abstracted, and evolved in the direction of the calligraphy of the brush, and finally made the painting method produce new styles and aesthetic standards. Later, Wu Zhen said in "Mei Daoren's Ink": "The pen should be vigorous, the section should be pressed and the void should be raised, and it will be passed with a wipe, and if it is left behind, it will be dull and thick." Ke Jiusi wrote more specifically: "Write the rod with the seal method, the branches with cursive calligraphy, the leaves with the eight-point method, or use the Lu Gong brushwork, the wood and stone with the golden hairpin strands, and the last intention of the house leakage." These are all inheritances of Zhao Mengfu's theory of using books into paintings. We can compare and analyze Zhao Mengfu's "Bamboo and Stone Drawings of Trees", Wu Zhen's "Ink and Bamboo Spectrum", and Ke Jiusi's "Ink and Bamboo Drawings of the Qing Pavilion" with the bamboo written by Wentong in the Song Dynasty. Although Wen Tong's "Ink Bamboo Drawing" also presents a certain degree of calligraphy, we can see that Wen Tong's bamboo pays more attention to the natural shape of bamboo. The tenacity of the bamboo, the subtle shape of the bamboo joints, and the delicate changes in the branches in "Ink Bamboo Drawing" (fig. 5) are all depicted very delicately and accurately, even the backward relationship between a bamboo leaf is expressed, which reflects not only Wentong's painting style, but also the ink bamboo painting method under the influence of the overall fine and delicate painting style of Song Dynasty painting. In particular, if you compare Wen Tong with the ink and bamboo of Wu Zhen in the Yuan Dynasty, it shows the difference between the two of them in terms of painting methods. Wen Tongmo's bamboo paintings, emphasizing the interspersing of branches and leaves, and distinguishing the backward of bamboo leaves by shades, have disappeared in Wu Zhen's paintings. The shape of the bamboo in Wu Zhen's "Ink Bamboo Spectrum" has not been paid attention to by the painter, and the painter tries to use calligraphy to express the image of the bamboo in his heart. Wu Zhen has a good grasp of the charm of calligraphy and bamboo, and the relationship between pen and ink is also handled very properly, with light colors for branches and thick ink for bamboo leaves, which complement each other.
Fig.5 [Northern Song Dynasty] Wentong Mozhu Diagram Axis
131.6cm×105.4cm ink pen on silk, collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei
Through comparison, only from the perspective of visual experience, we can clearly feel that the brush used in painting in the Yuan Dynasty was coarse, informal, and close to the brush of calligraphy. Even those who are not painting majors can see the difference in the technical expression of Song and Yuan paintings, and this difference is the difference between "writing" and "painting".
2. Poetry, calligraphy, and printing in one
Compared with the Song Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty painting style can be said to be a big step forward, inscriptions, seals gradually become the inevitable behavior of the painter's artistic creation, and gradually formed a unified form of poetry, calligraphy and seal.
There are so many works of Yuan Dynasty painting that almost every painter has such works. For example, Qian Xuan, a painter in the early Yuan Dynasty, almost every painting must be titled, every topic must be a poem, and the painting is stamped with a seal, and there are also idle chapters, such as "Wang Xi's View of the Goose", "Mountain Dwelling", "Autumn River to be Crossed", "Yanjiang to be Crossed", "Autumn Melon", "Return to Speech", "Yang Concubine on the Horse", "Flowers and Birds" and so on. Qian Xuan's "Floating Jade Mountain Dwelling" is a classic work of poetry, calligraphy, painting, and printing, and there is a poem from the title of Qian Xuan in the upper right corner of the picture: "Zhanbi Nanshan Cen, white clouds He Pianpian; The sun and the moon have no end, and the valley changes. The gods are sparse, and the five strings are waved in Xingji; The right title Yu painted a picture of the mountain dwelling, and Wu Xingqian chose Shunju. "Shunju Seal" and "Qian Xuanzhi Seal" are printed in the upper left corner of the picture, and "Shunju" is printed in the upper left corner of the picture. The composition of this work is heavy on the left and light on the right, the image is more on the left and less on the right, and the upper right is just vacant for the title, so the overall is more coordinated. At the same time, Zheng Sixiao's "Melantu" is also a masterpiece combining poetry, calligraphy, painting, and printing, and the inscription in the upper right corner of the picture is a seven-character quatrain: "I have always bowed my head and asked the Emperor Xi, who came to this hometown." Before the painting, the nostrils were opened, and the sky was full of ancient fragrance. Sonanon. The inscription on the upper left is "This volume was made on the fifteenth day of the first month of Bingwu", and the Zhu Wenfang seal "Suo Nan Weng" and the white Wen square seal "If you ask for it, you have to ask for it or with the old eyes and the clear breeze in the present and the ancient". Zhao Mengfu's works also have a large area of inscriptions, such as "Two Sheep Picture", "Human Riding Picture", "Water Village Picture", "Xiushi Sparse Forest Picture", "Shuangsong Ping Yuan Map", etc., all of which are works with good prints, and the text in "Quehua Autumn Color Picture" is as many as 80 words, and "Shuangsong Ping Yuantu" is 97 words (Figure 6). Zhao Mengfu also strongly admired the simple beauty of Han seals, and personally created prints, and wrote the book "History of Seals", which greatly promoted the process of painters using seals. The "Four Yuan Families" and other well-known painters of the Yuan Dynasty, such as Ren Renfa, Wang Mian, Ke Jiusi, Zhu Derun, etc., have many works with a variety of prints, and there are many works with complementary titles and pictures, such as Wu Zhen's "Ink and Bamboo Spectrum", "Yundang Qingying" and so on.
Fig.6 [Yuan] Zhao Mengfu, Shuangsong Pingyuan, 26.7cm×107.3cm
Ink pen on paper, collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA
The style of Yuan Dynasty painting basically completed the process of integrating poetry, calligraphy and printing, but at this time, the art form of poetry, calligraphy and printing was not highly mature, and compared with the highly developed style of literati painting in the Ming and Qing dynasties, it still seemed a bit stiff and immature. This "stiffness and immaturity" is reflected in the following two aspects: one is that the seal is generally relatively large, and it is not harmonious with the text of the inscription; second, the relationship between the position of the inscription and the picture is not very particular, and the complementary relationship has not been achieved, such as Zhao Mengfu's "Quehua Autumn Color Picture" and Ni Zhan's "Rong Knee Zhai Picture". The latter may be the result of the reluctance to find a place to inscribe after the painting is completed, rather than the location of the inscription was planned at the time of creation. Although there were some works at this time whose inscriptions complemented the composition of the painting, it was not a mainstream phenomenon after all.
The Yuan Dynasty painters had a high level of calligraphy, otherwise they would not dare to inscribe so many words in the picture. Indeed, Ni Zhan's small Kai Jun Yongxiuyi, Wu Zhen's cursive dot painting flying, Zhao Mengfu is true, Kai, seal, subordinate, and line are all refined, and he is also known as one of the "Four Masters of Chinese Regular Script". It can be said that most of the painters of the Yuan Dynasty were good at calligraphy and could inscribe in the paintings, which illustrated the depth of painting and the breadth of acceptance by painters in the Yuan Dynasty.
3. The participation of many literati in painting promotes the combination of calligraphy and painting
Factors such as a painter's identity, upbringing, and living environment will have an extremely significant impact on the style of his artworks: because this determines whether their relationship with painting is dependent (making a living from painting), or whether they regulate their lives, cultivate sentiments, and cultivate self-cultivation, and also determine whether their understanding of painting obeys the orders and arrangements of their superiors, or caters to the aesthetic needs of the public and the market, or whether it comes from the heart and swayes casually. The freedom of creation also determines whether their attitude towards painting is respectful, they dare not go beyond the thunder pool, dare not talk about innovation and breakthroughs, or "I write my heart by hand", naturally, and constantly surpass. The identity of a painter determines his living environment, as well as his artistic accomplishment, literary accomplishment, and then his artistic characteristics and style.
The Song Dynasty was a period of highly developed culture, and Zhao Kuangyin, Taizu of the Song Dynasty, set the basic principle of "establishing the country with Confucianism in this dynasty" in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. The Yuan Dynasty was completely different, the rulers conquered the Central Plains and Jiangnan by force, and completed the great cause of unification, believing that only force was the foundation of a strong country, and did not pay attention to the literati and Confucian scholars and the imperial examinations, especially the Confucian tradition of Han culture. The ruler suspended the imperial examination, causing a large number of literati to lose the direction of life, and later although it was once opened, but the number of admissions was too small, and the admission process also discriminated against Han intellectuals, so the late Yuan scholar Ye Ziqi's evaluation of the imperial examination was very accurate, and its cloud: "As for the subject of the scholar, it is only one ten-thousandth of an ear, and it is nothing more than a tool to whitewash the peace. We can imagine that a large number of literati, especially those born in the Southern Song Dynasty, have been influenced by the Confucian ideology of studying and advancing and governing the country and the world since they were children, and they have studied hard, hoping to become known in the world and realize their own life value and social value. However, the cruel social reality is that the imperial examination is not prosperous and there is no way to enter the office, so they turn to hiding and entertaining themselves, and calligraphy and painting are the choices of many literati. The literati were able to write and write poetry, and the result of their participation in painting was to change the aesthetic direction of painting, from the delicate courtyard style of the Song Dynasty to the extensive and free literati painting style.
There is a big difference in the identities of the mainstream painters of the Song and Yuan dynasties. From the Song Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty, the identity of mainstream painters changed from court painters to literati, and "the literati group controlled the discourse of painting and determined the direction of the development of painting". The change of the identity of the mainstream painter has directly affected the transformation of painting, making painting change from the separation of calligraphy and painting to the combination of calligraphy and painting. Let's analyze in detail the differences in the mainstream identities of Song and Yuan painters. By combing the identities of court painters, literati painters, and literati doctors in the Northern Song, Southern and Yuan dynasties, it is found that from the Song to the Yuan Dynasty, the identity pattern of painters has undergone the following changes: 1. There were 82 court painters in the Northern Song Dynasty, 92 in the Southern Song Dynasty, and 13 in the Yuan Dynasty. 2. There were 3 literati painters in the Northern Song Dynasty, 1 in the Southern Song Dynasty, and 19 in the Yuan Dynasty. 3. There were 49 literati doctors and painters in the Northern Song Dynasty, 49 in the Southern Song Dynasty, and 47 in the Yuan Dynasty.
From the quantity, it can be seen that from the Song Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty, the number of court painters is decreasing, the number of literati painters is increasing, and although the number of literati doctors and painters has not changed, the percentage is actually increasing, because the Yuan Dynasty is half shorter than the Northern Song Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty, and the overall number of painters is not as good as the two Song Dynasty. It can be seen that the number of literati participating in painting is increasing, and the momentum for the development of literati painting is becoming stronger and stronger, while court painting is gradually withdrawing from the mainstream of the art world.
In addition, the number of painters who can paint ink and bamboo in the Song and Yuan dynasties is also a side presentation. According to incomplete statistics, there are very few painters who can paint ink and bamboo in the Northern Song Dynasty, only 13, and the ink and bamboo painted are extremely neat and delicate; the Southern Song Dynasty gradually increased, reaching 23, and the themes of ink plum and Mo Lan were added; in the Yuan Dynasty, the themes of ink and ink plum, orchid and bamboo were extremely common in the creation of painters, and there were 73 painters who could be traced, and these painters not only included literati painters and literati doctors, but also many were social and folk painters, and even court painters, such as Han Shaoye's "ink and bamboo are good old men". In addition, the technique style of ink bamboo also became more and more extensive in the Yuan Dynasty, tending to be simple. This shows that under the influence of the theories and techniques of literati painting, both literati doctors and court painters have a tendency to move closer to the aesthetics of literati painting.
Fig.7 [Yuan] Fang Congyi Gao Gao Pavilion diagram axis
62.1cm×27.9cm ink pen on paper, collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei
By analyzing the mainstream identities and proportions of painters in the Song and Yuan dynasties, it can be seen that the Song Dynasty was dominated by court painters, while the Yuan Dynasty was dominated by literati. The court painters advocated a delicate and delicate style of painting with gorgeous colors, while the literati painters advocated a style of painting with broad brushstrokes and calligraphy. The mainstream literati identity of the painters of the Yuan Dynasty led to a change in painting. After a large number of literati participated in painting in the Yuan Dynasty, their aesthetics also directly influenced other groups of painters, such as the professional painter Sheng Mao was influenced by Zhao Mengfu and others, and his painting style moved closer to the broad brushstroke, as well as his son Sheng Sheng's extensive use of brushes, which can be seen in his work "Fishing in the Waves". Shang Xuan, a social folk painter, "likes to paint landscapes and has to break the ink method". In particular, it is worth mentioning the Taoist painter Fang Congyi, whose works "Wuyi Fangdi" and "Gao Gao Pavilion" (fig. 7) vividly demonstrate the influence of literati painting techniques. He is far away from the "two meters", close to Zhao Mengfu, Gao Kegong, and into his own will, with the pen to wander vertically and horizontally, the pen is swaying. It can be seen that many literati doctors, painters, social and folk painters, and even court painters in the Yuan Dynasty are changing in the aesthetic direction of literati painters.
epilogue
From the Song Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty, painting underwent a transformation from the separation of calligraphy and painting to the combination of calligraphy and painting, which reflected the different identity patterns of the mainstream painters of the two dynasties and the aesthetic standards they represented, as well as the attitudes of the rulers of the Song and Yuan dynasties towards culture and painting. It should be pointed out that, compared with the Song Dynasty, the combination of calligraphy and painting in Yuan Dynasty painting is obvious, and compared with the Ming and Qing dynasties, the combination of calligraphy and painting in Yuan Dynasty painting did not reach a mature state, but was in an important stage in the process of combining calligraphy and painting. The combination of calligraphy and painting in Yuan Dynasty painting played an important role in the pursuit of the independent aesthetic value of brush and ink in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the further deepening of the use of calligraphy in painting.
(Author's Affiliation: Guangxi University of Arts)
[For details, see "Chinese Painting and Calligraphy" magazine 2024 No. 3 / total No. 255]
New Media Editor: Sun Lian
Editor in charge: Ouyang Yichuan
Reviewer: Liu Guang
Final review: Kang Shouyong
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