Literati Yaji theme painting is a classic proposition in the history of traditional Chinese painting, in the history of Chinese feudal society, there have been many literati gatherings with the Scholar Group as the main member, the gathering is mainly through banquets, play, poetry, painting, dance, fuwen and other forms of elegant activities, so this type of literati gathering is called "Literati Yaji", and the painting proposition that appears in the history of Chinese painting against this background is called "Literati Yaji Theme Painting". Throughout the history of China's feudal society, there are many literati yaji activities, and the most familiar and passed down by later generations is mainly two, the Lanting Yaji in the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Xiyuan Yaji in the Northern Song Dynasty. The Lanting Yaji is well known to the world because of the calligraphy and fuwen of the "Orchid Pavilion Collection" by the book Saint Wang Xizhi, and the Xiyuan Yaji is constantly depicted and admired by later generations because of Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, Su Rui, Mi Fu, Qin Guan and other literati and celebrities, as well as Li Gonglin's "Xiyuan Yajitu" and Mi Fu's "Xiyuan YajiTu".
Figure 1 Li Gonglin's "West Garden YajiTu" long roll of ink on paper 26.5 horizontal 406
Figure 2 Part of Ma Yuan's "West Garden" Long scroll silk color Length 29.5cm width 302cm Collection of Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, USA
Incomplete statistics, in addition to the "Xiyuan Yajitu" (Figure 1), which was created by Li Gonglin and the authentic works are now impossible to verify, the painters who have carried out artistic creation on this theme include Ma Yuan of the Southern Song Dynasty, Liu Songnian, Zhao Boju, Qian Xuan, Zhao Mengfu, Dai Jin, Tang Yin, Zhu Lang, Qiu Ying, Chen Hongzhi, Li Shida, Zhou Chen in the Ming Dynasty, Shi Tao, Hua Xinluo, Ding Guanpeng in the Qing Dynasty, and Fu Baoshi, Zhang Daqian, Chen Shaomei and others in the modern era. According to the research of the scholar Liang Zhuang Ellen, there are a total of forty-seven paintings on the subject of the "West Garden Collection" that can be verified in the historical works, and she has also seen forty-one surviving "West Garden Collection" paintings, a total of eighty-eight. Not only that, Dong Qichang in the Ming Dynasty, Bada Shanren and He Shaoji in the Qing Dynasty all made calligraphy creations based on Mi Fu's "Atlas of the West Garden". It can be seen that the influence of this theme is deep and widely circulated. At this point, the subject matter of Xiyuan Yaji's paintings has become a reflection of the ideological connotation and spiritual world of the literati class.
Figure 3 Part of Ma Yuan's "West Garden" Long scroll silk color Length 29.5cm width 302cm Collection of Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, USA
In China's feudal history, the political and social status of the Literati class of the Northern Song Dynasty reached the peak of the past, the Northern Song Dynasty literati were relatively free and comfortable, and based on advocating elegant and elegant quality of life, pursuing a gentle and exquisite attitude towards life in daily life, and regarded the exchange of calligraphy and painting, poetry and singing, dance music feasting, tea tasting and drinking as an entertainment activity and a normal state of life, Wenhui Yaji is the concentrated embodiment of this life, so it can be said that yaji activities have developed very completely and diversely in the Northern Song Dynasty. Whether it is the Southern Song Dynasty literati, the Ming Dynasty literati or the Yuan Dynasty hermits all have an incomparable admiration and yearning for the living conditions and spiritual world of the Northern Song Dynasty's political and cultural soil, so the Xiyuan Yaji, as the gathering of the core figures of the Northern Song Dynasty literati, has also been continuously praised, mythologized, and has also become the object of imitation and depiction by the literati of successive generations, and the creation of related paintings, calligraphy, fuwen and other themes has been continuously produced, becoming a representative proposition in traditional Chinese culture.
Figure 4 Part of Ma Yuan's "West Garden" Long scroll silk color Length 29.5cm width 302cm Collection of The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, USA
The West Garden is the garden of the residence of the Northern Song Dynasty Ma Du Wei Wang Jie, it is said that in the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty Emperor Yuanfeng, Wang Yi invited Su Shi, Su Rui, Huang Tingjian, Mi Fu, Qin Guan, Cai Zhao, Li Zhiyi, Li Gonglin, Chao Shuzhi and the Japanese Yuantong Master to visit the garden and gather here, when Li Gonglin painted the "West Garden YajiTu", and the Mi Fu book "Xiyuan YajiTu". Su Shi, as a scholar leader and literary ally in the Xining, Yuanfeng, and Yuanyou eras, was revered as the "Three Sus" with his father and brother, and Qin Guan, Huang Tingjian, Zhang Qian, and Chao Shuzhi were all famous literati, and the four of them regarded themselves as Sumen disciples, then known as the "Four Scholars of Sumen". From the history of Chinese art, Su Shi, Huang Tingjian and Mi Fu are the third of the "Four Houses of Song" in the history of calligraphy, and Li Gonglin and Wang Yi are also the top literati and painters in the history of Chinese painting, so Xiyuan Yaji can be said to be a collection of "god" level figures at that time, and even in the history of Chinese literature and painting, this "idol" worship is also one of the main factors that make future generations of literati and painters yearn for.
Figure 5 Qiu Ying's "West Garden Art Collection" Vertical axis silk color Length 152cm horizontal 76cm Collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei
Since Li Gonglin descended, the painters who have depicted the West Garden Yaji in the past have all been based on the "Xiyuan YajiTu" and the "Xiyuan YajiTu" composed by Mi Fu, and have carried out interpretation and conception for secondary creation, including the character plot, mood, action, costumes in the drawing, the scenes, plants, arrangements, furnishings in the West Garden, and even the utensils, ancient stones, incense burners, Yaoqin, and lupines in the drawings. Here is an excerpt from Mi Fu's "Xiyuan YajiTu" as a reference: "Li Bo's time-honored General Tang Xiao Li colored the spring stone, the clouds, grasses, flowers and bamboo are wonderful and moving, and the characters' hair, each with its own shape, has its own forest flavor, without a little dust atmosphere." The person who wears the zodiac with a black hat and catches the pen and writes is Mr. Dongpo; the person who sits and watches with the peach scarf and purple fur is Wang Jinqing; the person who wears the scarf qingyi, according to Fang Qi, is the Danyang Cai Tianqi; the person who catches the chair and looks at it is Uncle Li Duan; there is a female slave after that, Yunhuan Cui decorated with waiters, and the natural rich and noble style is Ji Ye, the house of Jinqing. The lone pine is lush, and there is a lingering winding on it, red and green. There is a large stone case under it, furnished with ancient yaoqin, and the plantain is surrounded. The person who sits next to the stone plate, the Purple Robe of the Dao Hat, the right hand leaning on the stone, and the left hand holding the scroll and reading the book, is Su Ziyu. Tuan Towel Cocoon, with bananas and familiar eyes, is Huang Luzhi. The strip of scarf wild brown, according to the horizontal scroll painting returned to the person, for Li Boshi. Those who wear a green scarf and stand on their shoulders are blameless. Kneeling and making a stone viewer, Zhang Wenqian. Dao towel plain clothes, pressing the knee and looking down, is Zheng Jinglao. Then a boy stood with a scepter. The two of them sat under the ancient juniper of the pangen, with a scarf in green clothes, and the one who listened to them with their hands in their hands was Qin Shaoyou. The crown of the tail of the piano, the purple Dao costume, the picker, is Chen Bixuan. Tang Scarf is deeply clothed, and the person who holds his head high and inscribes the stone is Mi Yuanzhang. The person who stood by and looked up was Wang Zhongzhi. In the front, there are bearded children holding ancient stones, and in the back, there are jinshi bridges and bamboo paths, which are surrounded by the depths of Qingxi, and the green shade is dense. There are those who sit on a futon and say that there is no life, who is a master of yuantong. There is a brown coat next to him and the listener is Liu Juji. The two of them sat on the strange rocks together, and there was a turbulent stream flowing in the middle of the stream, the water and stones were babbling, the wind and bamboo swallowed each other, the smoke of the furnace, the grass and trees were self-congratulatory, and the happiness of the world was clear, but it was not so. ”
Figure 6 Qiu Ying's "West Garden Elegant Collection" Partial Vertical axis silk color Length 152cm horizontal 76cm Collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei
Since the authentic manuscript of Li Gonglin's "Xiyuan Yajitu" no longer exists, Ma Yuanzuo's "Xiyuan Yajitu" (Figure 2) (Figure 3) (Figure 4) is also the earliest surviving piece, Ma Yuan, while referring to Mi Fu's "Xiyuan YajiTu" and Li Gonglin's "Xiyuan Yajitu", more subjectively created, reproducing the scene of Xiyuan Yaji, Ma Yuan not only restored the natural scenery of "water and stone babbling, wind and bamboo swallowing, furnace smoke square, grass and trees are self-congratulatory" in Xiyuan Yajing, and even deliberately exaggerated, simply directly from the Yaji venue The "West Garden" was moved to the deep mountains and forests, which had a cool and sparse meaning of the Southern Song Dynasty landscape painting style. The addition of lakes, streams, distant mountains, strange rocks, bamboo forests, ancient pines, fishermen, mountain people and other elements in the picture makes the picture more poetic and natural and wild. Ma Yuan uses a long scroll as the carrier, using a three-segment composition, and the scroll slowly brings the viewer in from right to left. The first section is introduced by a few donkey farmers on the lakeside path, there is a fishing boat on the shore of the lake, and two boys seem to have just crossed the lake, eager to deliver wine and refreshments to the Yaji venue. Immediately after that, the bamboo forest and boulders that cover the sky obscure the view, and the hidden atmosphere of the deep mountains comes to the face, as if the elegant place is in a rare "paradise".
Figure 7 Qiu Ying's "West Garden Elegant Collection" Partial Vertical axis silk color Length 152cm horizontal 76cm Collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei
The author takes the bamboo forest and the boulder as the boundary, and then the viewer meets the protagonist of the collection, the Dongpo resident who is going to the staff, which is very different from the plot described in the inscription of Mi Fu, and the plot and sense of substitution created by Ma Yuan reflect the author's admiration and sense of participation in creation, and also elevate and highlight the design of the protagonist Su Shi. Following Su Shi's footsteps, the viewer enters the climactic part of the plot, and the crowd is watching Li Gonglin's "Homecoming Map" around the table, the literati have expressions or are interested, comfortable or serious and thoughtful, there are children and maids laughing and playing, and several literati in the distance are chanting poems or Linxi Maozu. With the breeze blowing overhead and the babbling of the stream beneath his feet, Ma Yuan's depiction added a touch of hermit style to the Northern Song Dynasty literati. Perhaps due to the social and political background of the painter's era, compared with the enthusiastic politics and active entry of the Northern Song literati, Ma Yuan's characters are more like the Southern Song Dynasty literati who are disappointed in the government, let go of the mountains, and live in seclusion, so although Ma Yuan depicts the story of the Northern Song Dynasty Xiyuan Yaji, it is more of a reflection of the assembly situation of the Southern Song Dynasty literati.
Figure 8 Qiu Ying's "West Garden Art Collection" Partial Vertical axis silk color 152cm horizontal 76cm Collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei
Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, painters who have created on this subject have not interpreted and created too much, whether it is Tang Yin, Qiu Ying or Zhu Lang, they are either based on Mi Fu's "Xiyuan Yaji Tuji" or copied to pay tribute to the works of predecessors, such as the Qing Dynasty Ding Guanpeng's "Xiyuan YajiTu" that is, the inscription: "Qiu Ying's Pen Meaning". Instead, we can understand the grand situation of the West Garden Collection more clearly and objectively from the works of Ming and Qing painters. Qiu Ying's "West Garden YajiTu" (Figure 5) is very consistent with the pictures made by Mi Fu, and there are five groups of figures in the whole painting. One group surrounded by the "protagonist" Su Shi watched him write poems, one group was watching Li Gonglin painting, and the other three groups were scattered in the secondary position of the figure, one group was listening to the piano, one group was waving at the stone, and the last group was preaching and talking about Zen. In the center of the picture, the "protagonist" Su Shiduan sat in front of a Taihu Spirit Stone, with a calm and elegant expression, wearing a black gauze crown and a yellow Daoist robe, and holding a brush in his hand. On Su Shi's left side was the owner of the West Garden, the initiator of this collection, Wang Yi of the Horse. On the other side, the literati and landscape painter Cai Zhao, who was leaning on the case, sat behind him was Li Zhiyi, a disciple of Sumen and a poet of the Northern Song Dynasty. Holding the book in front of the case on the right is Su Shi's younger brother, Su Rui, one of the "Three Sus", and a boy stands with a staff behind him. The whole group of characters is in a semi-circular shape, highlighting Su Shi in the center, in order to form this contrast, Qiu Ying also arranged Su Rui, who should have been scattered in the Mi Fu Tu, on the right side of Su Shi's same table. (Figure 6) The second group of characters is Chao Shuzhi, Zhang Qian, and Zheng Jiahui watching Li Gonglin's "Return to the Map" (Figure 7) at the second table. The relationship between this group of characters is jagged, there is no potential energy to surround the background, the case is obliquely placed, pointing in the direction of the first group of characters, and in the whole picture, the third, fourth and fifth groups of characters in the rear form a kind of "stars holding the moon" trend towards Su Shi in the center. Corresponding to the pictorial note, the groups of characters in the rear part of the picture are: in front of the stone wall, Mi Fu zhengxin strokes the inscription, on the right is Wang Qinchen, who admires and watches his inscription, and on the left is the boy who holds the ancient Yan service; Chen Bixuan, a Taoist priest who sits and plays Ruan under the ancient pine, and Qin Guan, who sits quietly and listens; the last group is Master Yuantong and Liu Jing, who sit on a boulder in the bamboo forest and preach Buddhist scriptures. (Figure 8)
Figure 9 Zhu Lang's "West Garden Elegant Collection" Vertical axis silk color 167cm width 64cm
Together, these five groups of characters in the picture constitute an idealized state of literati and elegant gatherings, and each part contributes to the literati
The cultural elements and characteristics of the times that the doctor class is fascinated by. Literature and art cover painting, poetry, calligraphy, music; there are bamboo forests, ancient pines, plantains, and spirit stones in the set; the furnishings are elegant and elegant, with ancient yan, zhong ding, suqin, and fine wine; and even in religious culture, there are three schools of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. From this, we can see through qiu Ying's restoration of the Xiyuan Yaji that Mi Fu's "Atlas of the Xiyuan Yaji" depicts a spiritual world and idealized travel state that the literati class yearns for. In the "Atlas of The Collection of The West Garden", Mi Fu reflects that the literati and doctor class gradually began to form a complete and mature value system, literati sentiments and spiritual world, not only political and cultural aspects, but even rose to the height of religion and philosophy. Based on the Confucian culture represented by Su Shi, Mi Fu, Huang Tingjian and other Yuanyou literati, there is also the Taoist and Buddhist culture represented by the Taoist Chen Bixuan and Master Yuantong, which carries the influence and advancement brought about by the convergence of Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist and other cultures, since the Song and Ming Dynasties, the three schools of "Confucianism, Interpretation, and Taoism" have completed their true sense of integration, as the core content of Traditional Chinese culture, the idea of "Confucianism, Interpretation, And Tao" not only promotes and influences each other in Chinese literature and political history, but is more obviously reflected in the Chinese aesthetic value system. The plot performance of the "Confucianism, Interpretation, and Taoism" in the "Xiyuan Yajitu" blending and harmoniously coexisting with each other reflects the ideal state of later generations of literati and painters yearning for and praising the free cultural soil of the Song Dynasty.
Zhu Lang, a painter of the Ming Dynasty, a native of Wu County, Jiangsu (now Suzhou), zi lang, qingxi, good at painting green landscapes, was a disciple of Wen Zhengming, imitating Wen Zhengming's pen and ink, and most of his works were Wenzheng Ming Dynasty pens. Zhu Lang's "West Garden Yaji Tu" (Figure 9) inscription Jiajing 癸卯年, that is, in 1543, the characters use fine penmanship, rich and elegant color, you can see the obvious Wen style. As with Qiu Ying's "West Garden YajiTu", Zhu Lang's work also highly restores the inscription made by Mi Fu, the characters, plots, and scenery in the picture are all perfectly restored, and unlike the predecessors, this work has an obvious Ming Dynasty landscape workmanship, sweet, elegant painting style, in Zhu Lang's pen, the rich and gorgeous green mountain stone with layers of white powder rendering layers of auspicious clouds, it seems to be intentional to give a kind of fairy wind and bone atmosphere to the literati hermits in the West Garden, and the characters and deeds are "immortalized" and "beautified". It also reflects the painter's yearning and longing for the people of Yaji and the legendary color of Yaji itself. Zhu Lang's pen and ink color style is more in line with the aesthetics of the citizens and merchants other than the literati, which also reflects that the theme of the West Garden Yaji is no longer the "patent" appreciated by the literati and doctor class at this time, and the rise of the citizen class has also made their aesthetic pursuit begin to move closer to a higher level of elegance and high-style elegant themes, and "West Garden Yajitu" is one of the most popular and proud masterpieces of this genre.
The reason why Xiyuan Yaji has been repeatedly imitated and interpreted by later generations of literati, painters and painters is because people's yearning for the style, spirit and style of the Literati of the Song Dynasty can also be seen as a nostalgic feeling. Nowadays, Li Gonglin's "Xiyuan Yajitu" originally no longer exists, and there is no place to examine whether the "Xiyuan YajiTu" was written by Mi Fu, so some scholars doubt whether this Yaji is a real thing that happened, or a legend given to the literati of the Song Dynasty in later generations. Because through investigation, the activities of these sixteen people during the Yuanfeng period could not have gathered in the home of Wang Xue of Beijing, and even the protagonist Su Shi should be serving in Xuzhou at this time. According to another theory, the so-called Xiyuan Yaji was actually two or more gatherings in the second year of the Northern Song Dynasty (1079) and the second year of the Yuan Dynasty (1087), and Li Gonglin only later pieced together several gathering scenes into one work, not on the spot.
However, no matter how controversial the historical facts of the West Garden Collection are, it still does not affect the enthusiasm of later generations of literati to pursue. It can be seen that in a cultural sense, perhaps the existence or non-existence of the West Garden Collection, the real historical materials in the minds of later generations of creators, is no longer important. On the one hand, the creators of the literati group in later generations revered the talents and personal charm of Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, Qin Guan, Mi Fu and other sages, and on the other hand, they could feel more empathy for their uneven political encounters as Yuanyou party members, and did not meet Huai Cai. Therefore, the creators' subconscious has created the "West Garden" as a haven where literati can "escape", "lyrical" and "spiritual perch". Therefore, the creation of calligraphy and paintings with the theme of Xiyuan Yaji is more prominent not only their cultural aesthetics but also the ideal world they construct, on the contrary, they also give Xiyuan Yaji higher cultural value and artistic value, making it a spiritual pursuit, and gradually sublimating into a symbolic ideal life and cultural environment, and finally creating a classic proposition in the history of Chinese painting and art, which also makes it have a unique cultural symbolism.