Famous masters of the past - Song - Liang Kai

Liang Kai, date of birth and death unknown, was a painter of the Southern Song Dynasty. Ju Qiantang (present-day Hangzhou, Zhejiang). Jia Shigu is tall. Painting figures, Buddhist taoism, ghosts and gods, and is also good at landscapes, flowers and birds. It has a reputation for being blue. Fortunately, the painting is divided into two parts: one is "fine brush"; the other is "reduced brush", inheriting five generations of Shi Ke, few brushes, summarizing elegance, and has an important influence on Ming and Qing and modern painters. His heirloom works include "Six Ancestral Bamboo Diagrams", "Eight High Monks Story Diagram", and "Splash Ink Immortal Diagram".

"Splash Ink Immortal Figure" is a painting of an immortal with a bare chest, a wide coat and a big belly, staggering steps, and a cute attitude. Those small eyes were drunk and hazy, as if they saw through everything in the world, and a mysterious smile appeared at the corner of their mouths. The funny appearance, which is both naughty and cute and unpredictable, makes the image of the immortal otherworldly and full of humor and humor come alive. There is almost no rigorous and detailed portrayal of the characters on the screen, and the whole body is lyrically written in splashing ink, and the heavy and beautiful, rough and subtle large pieces of splashed ink can be described as simple and natural, which brilliantly shows the mental state and personality characteristics of the immortals who are both insightful and rarely confused.

Once a master of the painting academy, Shi Jia Shigu (Jia is known for learning Wu Daozi), and far more than the teacher, it is said that at that time, the people in the painting academy saw Liang Kai's works, and there was no one who did not admire. It can be seen that Liang Kai had a high reputation when he was in the Southern Song Dynasty Painting Academy. Liang Kai inherits the achievements of his predecessors and applies them flexibly. He deeply observed the spiritual characteristics of the characters he painted, showed the sound and smile of the characters with concise brush and ink, accurately grasped the essential characteristics of things with concise brush and ink, and fully conveyed the feelings of the painter, thus pushing freehand painting to a new height and making people feel refreshed. According to the Qing Dynasty official's "Pei Wen Zhai Calligraphy and Painting Notation", "Shiqu Baodi" and Li Yan's "Southern Song Dynasty Painting Catalogue", Liang Kai left no less than dozens of works, but we can only see about ten today, and most of them are not in China. According to the themes of Liang Kai's works, most of them show Buddhist Taoism, ghost gods, and ancient masters and scholars, such as "Right Army Book Fan", "Xi Zhi Guan Goose", "Huangting Jing Changing Goose", "Yuanming Statue", "Ju Kui Statue", "Hanshan Pick-up", "Samzen Tu", "Tian Le Tu", "Zhuang Sheng Dream Butterfly", "Su Wu Muyang", "Confucius Dreaming of Zhou Gong", "Lian Peng Disguise", "Taiyi Sangong Soldier Formation Map" and so on.

Liang Kai was a Zen painter who belonged to the rough line school. Informal, he is a wandering skeleton, and has close contacts with Miao Feng and ZhiYu monks, and although he is not a monk, he is good at Zen painting. Zen Buddhism began around 520 AD and by the Tang Dynasty had become a climate, divided into two sects, the north and the south. The Tang monk Huineng is the six ancestors of Zen Buddhism, and the lord epiphany says that he is the ancestor of the Southern Sect. The Southern Zen saying emphasizes that the Buddha is in the human heart, drinking water and carrying firewood, and can realize the Tao. All religious rituals are worthless, and one does not need to chant to communicate with the "absolute spirit" or "truth" in a state of super-knowledge, which is a naturally profound abstract experience. The "Six Ancestors Cutting Bamboo" shows that Huineng can "have nothing in the process of splitting bamboo, so it can be in line with things; there is no wisdom in wisdom, so it can be transported to wisdom". Liang Kai's "Six Ancestors Cutting Bamboo" is a work after the middle age, and the pen and ink are extremely rough. The pen pen sees shape, the pen path rises and falls, the peak turns, the dot dyeing game; the desire tree is the tree, the desire stone is the stone, "the overflow of the heart, the trance is like, in and out of the endless". Liang Kai also seems to have participated in the painting, and the painting is not painted. His figure paintings are simple, general and vivid. All three can be reflected in his pen. There are many dangerous brushes in the painting, up and down, sharp and heavy, and changeable; the golden wrong knife is made of ink bamboo, and the mountain stone is swept out with a large brush. There is an idea running through the painting, and this idea is deep and distant, so it can calm the movement of the pen and ink. Reading Liang Kai's paintings is actually a kind of pen and ink experience, but also an experience of state of mind, and even more a Zen experience.

The Japanese attach great importance to this painting, which is related to their cultural psychology of participating in Buddhism and Zen, and of course, it is also related to the artistic value and historical and cultural value of this painting.

"Splash Ink Immortal Figure" is the earliest surviving freehand figure painting of splash ink. It can be said that after Liang Kai broke with the painting style of the academy, he broke with himself and was unique, and he created a masterpiece of "reducing the brush" in his painting creation. In addition to the immortals on the screen, except for the face and chest with a thin pen to outline the demeanor, other parts are swept horizontally and vertically with a broad pen, and the pen is smooth, the ink color is dripping, and the boldness is uninhibited, as if entering the realm of no one. When constructing the character image, the author deliberately exaggerated its head part, almost accounting for most of the face, and squeezed the facial features on a small area in the lower part, hanging eyebrows and thin eyes, flat nose and skimming the mouth, which appeared to be drunk and funny, but also witty and funny, making people laugh, showing the author's ideological realm and life attitude in a vivid image, and laughing and cursing to the fullest. According to the history of painting, Liang Kai is an informal, good wine, self-indulgent, wild and uninhibited, and willful and arrogant, has his own creative ideas in art, and refuses to follow the tide, so he is known as "Liang Crazy". It should be said that What Liang Kai painted was not a "immortal", but a portrayal of himself. In the early stage of his artistic career, Liang Kai was strictly trained by the "Gelu" of the Painting Academy, and the figure painting inherited Li Gonglin's painting style, and later because of the author's own quality and historical factors, Liang Kai, with this "crazy" energy, opposed conformism, dared to be different, and dared to create development, so he occupied a place in the history of Chinese painting.

The production of the "Splash Ink Immortal Figure" is inseparable from the prevalence of Zen Buddhism in the Southern Song Dynasty. This icon is titled after posterity, and judging from the image of its big head and bulging abdomen, it is a bit like the cloth bag monk believed in by the people at that time; the description of its spiritual posture is a bit like that of the Ji Qiang monk at the same time as Liang Kai. This diagram not only embodies Zen thought, but is also an inevitable product of the Southern Song Dynasty in which Liang Kai lived. From another point of view, it also fully reflects Liang Kai's bold innovation spirit of the figure painting system.