Painting genre is a common cultural phenomenon in the history of the development of Chinese and foreign art, and is an important way to study the artistic style of painting and the characteristics of the cultural era. The biggest difference between the study of painting school and the case study of painters is that the former can better observe the philosophical ideas, literary and artistic trends and regional cultural characteristics of an era and a region through a group of painters, thus providing a rich and three-dimensional space for the writing of art history.
"On the Chinese School of Painting" (by Zhou Jiyin, Zhejiang University Press, September 2020 edition) focuses on the author's in-depth thinking on the Chinese painting school system for more than 50 years, and contributes wisdom to the construction of the discipline system, academic system and discourse system of contemporary Chinese painting school.
There are three conditions for the formation of a school
The author has made the greatest contribution to the research of the Chinese school, especially in the concept definition, connotation standards, and style inheritance of the Chinese school, forming a rigorous and complete academic structure and theoretical system. In the general discussion of "My View of the Chinese Painting School", the author uses the method of examination and speculation to expound his views on the problems of the Chinese Painting School. After summarizing and refining, I think the following three issues are the most important and have the greatest impact.
First, school of painting is a serious academic concept. The Chinese painting genre originated in the Tang Dynasty, and subsequent generations have formed many schools of painting with diverse styles, especially in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The term painting school first appeared in dong qichang's collection of writings in the late Ming dynasty, but the collection of essays is vague about its origin and metamorphosis. The author believes that most of the names of the painting schools in Chinese history have been summarized by later scholars after in-depth study, which is a serious academic issue, some have formed a conclusion, and some are still in the stage of debate, such as the difference between the names of the Yangzhou Eight Monsters and the Yangzhou School, and the Jinling Eight Schools cannot be called the Jinling School. The study of various schools of painting in the whole book, whether it is positive interpretation or negative criticism, always follows the conceptual connotation of the school, and achieves objective fairness and historical evidence.
Second, the formation of a painting school must have three basic conditions. Most of the painting schools in Chinese history were not formed consciously, but spontaneously, and often one or more influential painters directly or indirectly influenced the painters around them, and then gradually formed a group of painters with similar aesthetic pursuits, painting styles and creative methods. In the book, the author clearly proposes that the formation of the painting school must have three basic conditions: one is to have kaipai figures, the other is to have a group of painters who have a heritage relationship with kaipai figures, and the third is to be similar in painting style. This view has been widely recognized by the art history circles and has become the starting point and foothold for many scholars to engage in the study of painting schools.
Third, the painting school is still not good to build. At the end of the 20th century, in order to polish the regional cultural brand and enhance cultural influence, various localities began to create painting schools, and some local painting schools mushroomed. Although some of these are spontaneously formed, most of them are consciously established for commercial hype. In response to this phenomenon, the author puts forward the view that "the painting school is still not good to build" in the book. He believes that the creation of painting schools with commercial hype is not only not conducive to the inheritance and innovation of China's excellent traditional culture, but also to the prosperity and development of contemporary art. In fact, artificially creating a painting school not only cannot form a painting genre in the true sense, but also limits the painter's artistic creation vision and restricts the painter's artistic creation ability.
In the general discussion section, the author intends to explore the definition criteria, connotations and connections of traditional Chinese painting schools from a macroscopic perspective. In the sub-discussion section, Xue Yongnian put forward the view that the history of Chinese painting in 1993 has two meanings: "diachronic painter transmission" and "synchronic local painting school", in order to expound his own case study of painting school.
Literati painting is closely related to folk art
There is a special school of painting, which is not limited to one time and one place, but runs through the entire history of Chinese painting, which has continued for more than a thousand years and has even become the mainstream of Chinese painting. For example, the "Literati Painting School" with Wang Wei of the Tang Dynasty as the originator, the "Jiangnan Landscape Painting School" opened by the five generations of painter Dong Yuan, and so on. Strictly speaking, it is not possible to generalize and study the ordinary painting stream. If we apply Western literary and art theory, this is first of all the inheritance and continuation of a creative technique; when examined in the context of traditional Chinese society and culture, it is the inheritance and continuation of the aesthetic spirit and aesthetic ideals of traditional Chinese painting, and it is an pictorial expression of Chinese aesthetic style and national spiritual temperament.
Literati painting first began with Wang Wei's aesthetic taste of "painting in poetry, poetry in painting", transplanting the romantic creation technique of poetics into painting, forming an opposition to the realistic and rich aesthetic concept of courtyard painting, with the addition of Su Shi, Mi Fu, Wen Zhengming, Dong Qichang and other cultural giants, literati painters obviously have the upper hand in discourse. The Yuan Dynasty was the highest peak of the development of literati painting, and Huang Gongwang, Wu Zhen, Ni Zhan and others repeatedly raised the "altitude" of literati painting, so that literati painting dominated the painting world, and the continuity remained uninterrupted. It can be said that literati painting is an artistic expression of the humanistic spirit of traditional Confucianism and Taoism in China, especially literati landscape painting represents the highest achievement of painting art in ancient Chinese society.
The author of the book agrees with Xue Yongnian's view that literati paintings and so on are summarized as "diachronic painters' transmission", and under this theoretical concept, he has made in-depth research on the social basis of literati painting, the nature of the painting school, and the characteristics of art. The author believes that compared with the courtyard body painting, literati painting and folk art are more closely related, and many literati painters have absorbed the advantages of folk art to enrich their works, which in turn has promoted the improvement of folk art. At the same time, the differences in aesthetic views, artistic views and creative methods between literati painting and courtyard painting are to some extent the result of the struggle between realism, romanticism, formalism and naturalism. These two important views were put forward by the author in the early 1960s, which had an important impact on the research horizon of contemporary literati painting history, which is an objective and pertinent academic attitude.
In recent years, many achievements in the study of literati painting have focused on the philosophical and cultural aspects of their philosophical and cultural forms, while their origins at the technical level have been less discussed, or this aspect has not been regarded as the focus of the study of literati painting. As a kind of plastic art, literati painting is separated from the in-depth study of the technical level, which cannot but be said to be a deviation from the direction and even a misunderstanding. While taking into account the philosophical and cultural forms of literati painting, the author of the book repeatedly emphasizes the issue of identifying and judging the aesthetic concepts inherited by diachronic painters from the technical level and artistic style. In this way, we can better corroborate each other from the two aspects of philosophical height and technical details, thus further improving the systematicness, integrity and objectivity of the research content of the book.
The school of painting was formed at the time of the time
The formation and development of the traditional Chinese painting school is not presented in a fixed pattern, but shows a variety of cultural forms according to the time and place, such as the literati painting school, the courtyard painting school, the Jiangnan landscape painting school and so on mentioned earlier, which lasted for several generations, which can be called the great painting school. Then, some are in a dynasty, a period or a certain region, there are some like-minded painters who are consciously established because their artistic pursuits and aesthetic ideals are similar or identical, they have the leaders of the school, the main cadres, and even have clear artistic ideas, such as the Loudong School, the Changzhou School, and so on. Some are because the activity area or place of origin is the same, but the artistic style is pursued differently, and it is studied and promoted by later researchers as a group, thus obtaining the name of the painting school, such as the Four Houses of Wumen, the Eight Houses of Jinling, and the Eight Monsters of Yangzhou. The painting school in the above two cases can be called a small painting school. Also because the small painting school is limited by the scope of one time and one place, the inheritance context is relatively clear, and the historical materials of the world are relatively rich, so it is valued by later scholars, and the research results are relatively fruitful, but there is often a great controversy in the name of the school.
The author selects 17 painting schools that occupy an important position in the history of Chinese painting for research. Among them, the study of the Zhejiang School, the Guzhi School and the LanzhuShi School is the most in-depth. In this section, the author uses a unified title method, that is, the study of each school highlights its kaipai characters in the title, such as Lan Ying and wulin school, Hongren and Xin'an school, etc. I think that this arrangement, which is aimed at emphasizing the artistic propositions and painting inheritance of the characters of the painting school, coincides with the author's understanding of the three basic conditions for the formation of the school. Compared with the Bochen School, the Loudong School, the Changzhou School, etc., the Nanhua School of painting that prevailed in the Huzhou area was not well known to everyone. In fact, Shen Quan, who was good at the auspicious theme of flowers and birds and the method of painting Huang Quan of the fifth generation of Zong, was a painter with great influence in the early Qing Dynasty, especially in the history of Sino-Japanese painting exchanges, Shen Quan was praised by the Japanese art circles at that time as "the first imported painter", and was regarded as the pioneer of the Japanese "Southern Apple Painting School". In the book, the author believes that Shen Quan is a representative figure of Chinese auspicious allegorical theme painting, and he uses symbolic methods to create art, reflecting the aesthetic characteristics of early Confucianism on nature, which can be described as "heli" painting in the Qing Dynasty of ancient and ancient mud, which can be called "Fenglin".
The article "Zheng Banqiao and the Lanzhu Stone Painting School" is the author's heavier part, and one of the important points that caught my attention was that Zheng Banqiao said that his painting of bamboo was "no teacher", and the author believed that Zheng Banqiao was "a teacher", just "not a mud ancient law". In the Qing Dynasty, there was a general style of mud and ancients in the painting world, and many painters had profound pen and ink skills, but they achieved flatness because they could not jump out of the barriers of ancient pen and ink. On the contrary, the generations such as Shi Tao, Bada Shanren, Gong Xian, and Hongren were able to break through the cultural dilemmas of the times, stand at the height of "pen and ink when the times are contemporary", and have a conscious sense of cultural change, thus occupying a chapter in the history of Chinese painting.
(Author Affilications:Institute of Culture, Ningxia Academy of Social Sciences)
Source: China Social Science Network - China Social Science Daily Author: Jia Feng