Southern Song Dynasty Liang Kai Budai monk Shanghai Museum collection
In the long river of development of the history of Chinese painting, it is impossible not to mention the painting art of Wu Daozi of the Tang Dynasty and Liang Kai of the Song Dynasty. In addition to court painting, Wu Daozi absorbed a large number of foreign painting styles such as folk painting, forming a unique line drawing characteristic of Chinese painting. Chinese painting developed to the fifth generation and the Song Dynasty, which was basically fully mature, and landscape painting produced Jing Hao, Guan Tong, Dong Yuan, Ju Ran, Li Cheng, Fan Kuan, Guo Xi... Flower and bird paintings have produced many painters with far-reaching influences, such as Huang Xiao, Xu Xi, Cui Bai, Zhao Chang, and Zhao Yao. Court painting, scholar painting and folk painting also formed their own systems, influencing, absorbing and infiltrating each other, showing a prosperous situation. It is in this artistic atmosphere that Liang Kai uniquely uses concise brush and ink to transform real natural forms into artistic pictures, creating another path between "literati" and "courtyard body", thus pushing freehand painting to a new height. Opening the atlas of the history of Chinese painting, we can't help but stop in front of Liang Kai's works, when the large stick figure technique of thick brush lines and block painting is instantly immersed in the soul, and we feel the call of a primitive force in the shock of meditation.
Southern Song Dynasty Liang Kai Right Army Book Fan Diagram The Palace Museum in Beijing
Liang Kai is the founder of Chinese freehand "stick figure" figure painting, and has opened up a precedent for Chinese freehand stick figure painting. Liang Kai's "stick figure paintings" can keenly capture the essential characteristics of objective objects, and fully convey the spirit of objects with simple to extreme brush and ink, thus pushing forward the technique of Chinese freehand figure painting by a big step. This kind of painting method of writing about God without losing its shape and being able to release and receive is actually extremely difficult to do. It is precisely by virtue of his daily profound experience and observation of objective things that Liang Kai "looks at things and takes images" rather than "looks at things and takes things". In the heart, "Cheng Huai Guan Dao", after the refinement of art, with the skillful brush and ink, abandoning the method of seiko, and generally portraying the character image of the pen and the divine foot. From the Tang Dynasty to the Song Dynasty, the mainstream of Chinese painting is gongbi as fashion, gongbi painting is regarded as mainstream and orthodox, and the development of freehand figure painting is far less fortunate than Gongbi figure painting. Perhaps this is why so few such works have been circulated, and most of them have crossed east to Japan, becoming a national treasure of Japan. The appearance of stick figures is directly related to Liang Kai's temperament. This kind of sketch-style "stick figure" with a simple pen and ink, with the nature of a literati pen and ink game, can make a high degree of generalization of the object, to achieve the magic of the gods, a few strokes of the character will be full of spirit. Although the pen and ink are concise, the content of expression is specific and vivid, which has a profound impact on the development of Chinese painting.
Song Liang Kai Loose Willow Jackdaw Picture Page Silk Coloring 26.4×24.2cm Collection of the Palace Museum
From the Kamakura period (1192-1333) in Japan, the paintings of Southern Song Painters such as Liang Kai and Makixi were introduced to Japan in large quantities, while the Northern Song Landscape Paintings and later Literati Paintings, which were more valued in China, rarely or even did not reach Japan. Liang Kai's exquisite ink painting technique was loved by the Japanese and had a great influence on Japanese painters after the Muromachi period (1338-1573).
Southern Song Dynasty Liang Kai Snow Landscape Map Tokyo National Museum Collection
In the mid-14th century, the Ashikaga family, the shogun of the Muromachi shogunate who ruled Japan at the time, was so fond of Chinese art that the monks traveling between China and Japan collected a large number of works of art and calligraphy in China to dedicate to General Ashikaga, including many authentic works of Liang Kai, including the "Snow Landscape Map" and many other authentic works of Liang Kai. "Snow Landscape Map" is a masterpiece of Liang Kai's landscape painting, which depicts two donkey riders wearing white cloaks and snow hats walking through the valley. The two old trees on the right side of the picture, with their crooked branches and sparse leaves, are depicted by Liang Kai with meticulous brushwork. In the middle of the picture, the dense forest is painted with clusters of dots, while the mountain pen is less, and the sky rendered in light ink gives people a feeling of snow, and the whole picture presents a desolate and desolate atmosphere, which can be called a classic of landscape painting.
Southern Song Dynasty Liang Kai Shakya Out of the Mountain Scroll Silk Color 119×52cm Tokyo National Museum
After its transmission to Japan, the "Snow Landscape Map" was first collected by the Ashikaga shogunate, then by the Sakai family and the Mitsui family, and finally purchased by the Tokyo National Museum in 1948 and designated as a national treasure in 1951. The Snow Landscape Map and the Shakya Out of the Mountain, as well as another "Snow Landscape Map" that is said to have been painted by Liang Kai, were admired by the Ashikaga general's family as a group of drawings. On the list of "Higashiyama Imperial Relics" that were later discovered as treasures of General Ashikaga's family, this group of paintings by Liang Kai is clearly recorded, with the "Shakya Out of the Mountain Map" in the center, and a "Snow Landscape Map" on each side. However, due to the decline of the Ashikaga shogunate, the three paintings collected by the Ashikaga shogunate were scattered for a long time, and it was not until 1976 that the "Higashiyama Imperial Exhibition" was held at the Nezu Museum of Art in Japan, and the three works were first seen together. In 1991, the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan acquired the "Map of Shakya Out of the Mountains" from a collector and transferred it to the Tokyo National Museum of Management in 1997. In 2004, the Tokyo National Museum bought another "Snow Landscape Map" from another collector, supposedly painted by Liang Kai. At this point, Liang Kai's three works have re-gathered in the same collection after hundreds of years. The works of the Southern Song Dynasty painter Liang Kai in the Tokyo National Museum. In addition to "Snow Landscape Map" and "Shakya Out of the Mountain", there are many works such as "Li Baixing YinTu" and "Liuzu Cut Bamboo Map", and they have been given high praise.
Southern Song Dynasty Liang Kai Snow Landscape (2) Pastel on Silk 110.8 × 50.1 cm Tokyo National Museum
Unlike the delicate painting style of "Snow Landscape Map", the "Li Bai xing Yin Tu" in the Tokyo National Museum fully shows another style of Liang Kai's painting - "stick figure". As the earliest representative work of Chinese stick figure painting, Liang Kai's "Li Baixing Yintu" is his famous work, the picture uses fresh and flowing lines, and a few simple strokes outline the tang Dynasty poet Li Bai's dashing and detached personality characteristics and uninhibited spiritual world, becoming one of the most successful character images in the history of painting.
Southern Song Dynasty Liang Kai Taibai Xingyin Drawings Ink Pen 1.2×30.4 cm Collection of the Tokyo National Museum
"Li Baixing Yintu" abandons all backgrounds, and the painter only captures the moment when the poet is in the subtle dynamic of the lucky sentence and the poetry. The robe that occupies most of the picture is pulled from the shoulder to the end by two light inks, and with a slight setback, a flesh-and-blood figure is about to come out, seemingly simple and sparse with a few strokes, but it completes the whole process from shape to god. In particular, Li Bai's hair and beard are almost legible. The painter's bold and flying ink lines are in the same way as the poet's romantic poems, and a few strokes portray Li Bai's indulgent and flowing demeanor and bold and arrogant demeanor, without any carving and mannerism. Li Bai's broad forehead in the painting is reminiscent of his open-minded and straightforward personality; His strong hair and slightly upturned beard are reminiscent of his upright and proud character; The slightly raised head and the hands behind his back vividly express the theme of "walking and chanting". The whole painting does not have any extra ink and ink, and it cannot be simpler, but the image of Li Bai depicted is vivid and vivid, which is amazing.
Southern Song Dynasty Liang Kai Ze Pan Xing Yin Tu 22.9× 24.3cm Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
His "Hanshan Pick-up Map" is different from his "Li Baixing Yintu". The pen and ink of "Hanshan Picked Up The Map" is more specific, and the penmanship is both thick and thin, and the spirit is soaring. The painter scans the distribution of the two fairy children with water-filled splashing ink, two condensed light ink thin lines represent the shoulders, arms and backs of the figures, and the thick broken pen scans the hem and sleeves of the robe, if intermittent, it seems to be connected, the outline is clever, the structure is accurate, and the meaning is endless. Liang Kai's Zen-themed work "Budai Monk Diagram" is also a masterpiece with both form and god. This treasure is now in the collection of the Shanghai Museum.
Southern Song Dynasty Liang Kai Liuzu Bamboo Drawings Ink Pen 73× 31.8 cm Collection of the Tokyo National Museum of Japan
Liang Kai's "Six Ancestral Bamboo Drawings" is a work after his middle age, and the pen and ink are extremely rough. Pen pen shape, pen path up and down, peak loop turn, dot dyeing game; Desire for a tree is a tree, desire for a stone is a stone. In the painting, the gold wrong knife is made of ink bamboo, and the mountain stone is swept out with a large brush. A kind of idea with infinite meaning runs through it, so it can calm the movement of pen and ink. Reading Liang Kai's paintings is a kind of pen and ink experience, but also an experience of mood, and it is also a Zen experience.
Liang Kai Splash ink immortal figure Ink painting on paper 48.7×27 cm Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei
"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 was a masterpiece of stick figures created in painting creation. 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 added by later generations, and judging from the image of the big head and drum belly, it is a bit like the cloth bag monk believed in by the folk at that time; The description of his mental posture is a bit like that of a Monk Ji Qiang 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. This picture depicts an immortal with his chest exposed, wide-clothed and big belly, staggering and embarrassed. 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. It should be said that What Liang Kai painted was not a "immortal", but a portrayal of himself. Therefore, this painting occupies a place in the history of Chinese painting.
Southern Song Dynasty Liang Kai Dead Wood Waterbird Picture Page Collection of cleveland Museum of Art, USA
The Landscape and Figure Painting of the Southern Song Dynasty, represented by Liang Kai and other painters, paid more attention to the use of ink, and the level of ink was extremely delicate, and the use of brush was relatively simple. However, due to the rise of the literati painting style that emphasized the use of brushes, the paintings of the Southern Song Dynasty were degraded in later dynasties. Liang Kai's stick figures were also criticized by the Yuan Dynasty literati as "rough and boneless methods". In stark contrast to Liang Kai's snub in China, he was highly regarded in Japan.
Southern Song Dynasty Liang Kai Liuxi Lying Flute Chart Page Collection of the Palace Museum
Liang Kai's freehand figure painting creation is only a dawning appearance in the entire history of Chinese painting, and Liang Kai has become an insurmountable peak for posterity. His genius creation has left a brilliant and brilliant mark in the history of Chinese freehand figure painting. The influence of Liang Kai's stick figure painting on Chinese painting for thousands of years continues to this day.
(This article is excerpted from the article "The Ancestor of Freehand - Liang Kai" by Mr. Yang Gongtuo, which is included in the "Master's Gate 3" compiled by the Beijing Academy of Painting, because the original text is longer, some of it is extracted and shared with you.) ）
Song Liang Kai Cloth Bag Monk Figure Silk Color 82× 33.2cm Collection of the Kaoyuki Museum of Art, Japan
Song Liang Kai Snow Landscape Page Japanese Private Collection
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