Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1777: The Era of Leaping to Greatness

These are of course off-topic. Since they are all famous artists, Zhou Zhi would certainly not just chat about gossip on such an opportunity. He quickly turned the topic back to the works of the Six Dynasties painters.

When talking about painters of the Six Dynasties, the first people that come to mind are usually the Three Heroes of the Six Dynasties and the Four Masters of the Six Dynasties.

The three heroes were Gu Kaizhi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Lu Tanwei of the Southern Song Dynasty, and Zhang Sengyao of the Southern Liang Dynasty; later, Cao Buxing of the Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period was added, and the three heroes became four families.

There are far more than that. According to the records of Records of Famous Paintings of All Dynasties, among the painters, there are emperors such as Cao Mao and Sima Shao, ministers such as Zhuge Liang and Yang Xiu, painters such as Cao Buxing and Lu Tanwei, and aristocratic families such as Xun Xu, Wei Xie, Wang Yi, and Wang Xizhi. There are 23 people who can be called "masters" in the Three Kingdoms alone, and 27 in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, 28 in the Southern Qi, 4 in the Liang, 1 in the Chen, 9 in the Later Wei, 10 in the Northern Qi, 1 in the Later Zhou, and 21 in the Sui.

Among these painters, except for those with no historical records and unknown identities, they can be roughly divided into several types: one is painters, such as Cao Buxing of Wu, Gu Jingxiu and Lu Tanwei of Song.

The second group is hermits, including several figures such as Xie Yan, Cao Long, Ding Yuan, and Yang Hui, who "all refused to accept the invitations"; Dai Kui and his sons Dai Bo and Dai Yong, the Dai family "lived in seclusion, and their high moral character was renowned in the Jin and Song dynasties"; Zong Bing and his grandson Zongce, as well as Tao Hongjing and others.

The third are monks, such as Yao Tandu, Tandu's son Huijue, and Seng Zhen from the Southern Qi Dynasty; and Weigong, a monk from Guangzhai Temple in the Liang Dynasty, as well as Monks Jidiju, Mara Bodhi, and Jia Buddha. These three monks were all foreigners, and most of the paintings they made were of foreign figures and animals.

The fourth category is the most important, namely the great men. They can be divided into two subcategories. The first category is the emperors, such as Cao Mao, the young emperor of Cao Wei, Sima Shao, the Ming emperor of Jin, Xiao Yi, the Yuan emperor of Liang, etc. Although these people are emperors, they like painting and are also scholars in terms of their cultural literacy. The second category is the scholars who entered the officialdom. They usually hold other positions and are good at several arts, and painting is one of their interests.

The logic comes out here. Before the Pre-Qin Dynasty, painters were mostly called "Shi", "Gong" or "Ke". There was no special title and their status was not high. Their names were not left in history. Their work was mostly about decorating palaces and tombs, more like decorators, and their works were mostly treated as accessories to these buildings.

It was not until the reign of Emperor Ming of Han that a special painting academy was established. It was under the jurisdiction of the Shaofu and had a painting studio director, who was a eunuch with a rank of 400 shi and a yellow ribbon. The painters managed by the painting studio director were called "Huangmen painters" or "Shangfang painters", who were still decoration workers, but they worked exclusively for the royal family.

Afterwards, a group of talented people who specialized in painting began to emerge. Although they were still called "painters", their artistic attainments and names were recorded. The most famous one was Mao Yanshou, who deliberately painted Wang Zhaojun ugly.

In the Later Han Dynasty, scholar-painters finally began to appear. From then on, scholars became the main body of painting history. However, painters of the Later Han Dynasty such as Zhao Qi, Liu Bao, Cai Yong, and Zhang Heng all held other positions and did not work in the palace painting studio. They also mastered several arts and were not only famous for their good paintings. For example, Zhao Qi served as the Minister of Rites and had many talents. Liu Bao served as the governor of Shu County. Cai Yong was a doctor in Jianning, skilled in calligraphy and painting, good at playing the zither, and also a writer. Zhang Heng was repeatedly appointed as the Palace Attendant. He was "extraordinarily talented, clever, and good at understanding the weather and painting." What everyone is familiar with is his achievements in astronomy and geography.

It was the emergence of paintings by scholars with relatively high social status and cultural literacy that elevated the quality of painting.

During the Wei, Jin and Six Dynasties, scholar-painters finally became the mainstream of painting. Correspondingly, painting officially became an outstanding artistic achievement of mankind, just like music, calligraphy and literature, and officially entered the elegant hall. Professional painting theories and histories appeared, and various masters emerged one after another.

The function of painting also underwent a major change at this time. Previously, paintings were more about knowledge, such as "strange objects, mountain gods and sea spirits. Write down their appearance and express them in painting."

Or the historical records, "The Yellow Emperor, Tang and Yu. Their carriages and crowns were ordinary, but their clothes were different." Or the warning function, "When viewing paintings, all people look up to the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors; all people feel sad when seeing the tyrants of the Three Dynasties; all people gnashing their teeth when seeing the usurpers and treacherous heirs; all people forget to eat when seeing the noble and virtuous people; all people bow their heads when seeing the loyal and faithful people dying in danger; all people sigh when seeing the ministers being exiled and the sons being scolded; all people look askance when seeing the adulterous husbands and jealous wives; all people praise and honor the concubines and the obedient empresses. So we know that paintings are meant for warning."

At this time, landscape painting gradually became popular, and the aesthetic value of painting began to attract attention. In the Preface to Painting Landscapes, Zong Bing of the Southern Song Dynasty proposed the idea of ​​"freeing the mind": "The peaks are towering, the clouds and forests are vast, the saints and sages are reflected in the unparalleled world, and all kinds of interests are integrated into their thoughts. What else can I do? Just free the mind. Who can be freer than the mind!"

This is the beginning of emphasizing the spiritual enjoyment that painting brings to people.

Wang Wei also has a famous statement in "Explanation of Painting": "Looking at the autumn clouds, the spirit soars; facing the spring breeze, the thoughts are vast. Even if there are the music of gold and stone, the treasures of jade, how can they imitate it? It is not just the movement of fingers and palms, but also the divine light descends. This is the feeling of painting."

This was the beginning of elevating painting to the same status as calligraphy and ritual vessels, and believing that it had the function of transmitting spiritual thoughts.

Therefore, Chen Hengke said: "Painting before the Six Dynasties was mostly used to assist human relations, facilitate politics and education, or decorate buildings. Art had not yet broken free from its constraints. By the Six Dynasties, art had an independent spirit, and the aesthetic trend emerged. Gradually, the buds of free art were seen, and its skills improved dramatically."

In this era of great changes, several outstanding artists have put forward their own creative spirits. These spirits have become the most basic logic and fundamental principles followed by Chinese paintings in later generations, and constitute a unique Eastern aesthetic and artistic philosophical system.

Gu Kaizhi proposed the theory of conveying the spirit, requiring "to preserve the spirit with form, and to transfer the imagination to wonderfulness", advocating that painting should express the mental state and personality characteristics of the characters, and the imaginative activities of the painter in the process of artistic conception should "transfer" the subjective emotions into the objective objects to obtain artistic feelings. "Wonderful" is its result, that is, through the emotional activities and aesthetic contemplation of the artist, the objective spirit is integrated into a "conveyant" and perfect artistic image.

Lu Tanwei is the founder of formally incorporating calligraphy into painting. His paintings have two main characteristics. The first is his pursuit of brushwork, which is as vigorous and powerful as carving with a knife. Through his keen grasp and ingenuity of the coherent stroke characteristics of cursive script, he introduced it into the field of painting and created an unprecedented "one-stroke painting" method. The second is that he goes beyond the focus on external form and directly reaches the spiritual level of the ideal personality entity, so when people face the picture, they will have a feeling of "awe-inspiring as if facing a god."

Zhang Sengyou had unique creations in painting. He did not use brush and ink to outline landscapes, but created the famous "boneless painting method" in Chinese painting. He broke through the constraints of lines and introduced the "dot, drag, chop, and brush" methods of calligraphy into painting, which greatly enriched the techniques of Chinese painting. At the same time, he also absorbed the Indian "convex and concave flower" technique, which is now called chiaroscuro and perspective, which is of great help in the spatial shaping of forms, making the picture three-dimensional and achieving a realistic effect.

Different from the tight and dense strokes of Gu and Lu, Zhang Sengyou's painting style is called "sparse style". Thus a new two-way standard was established, which enriched and expanded the previous painting principles: "If you know that painting has two styles, sparse and dense, then you can discuss painting."

Later, Xie He proposed the social function of painting and six criteria for evaluating painting in his painting theory treatise "Painting Quality", namely the "Six Laws": vivid spirit and rhythm; using brush with bone method; depicting objects according to their shapes; coloring according to their types; arranging positions; and copying and imitating.

In addition to explaining the theory, Xie He also used this standard to evaluate the works of Cao Buxing and 27 other painters of his time. He divided the painters into six levels, using spirit, temperament, and demeanor as the criteria. Among them, the concept of "vivid and lively" has been upgraded to the level of spiritual feedback, just like calligraphy and music.

After a meal of mutton hotpot, Zhou Zhi finally understood why the Four Masters of the Six Dynasties were called the "Four Ancestors".

The Six Dynasties to painting is like the Tang Dynasty to poetry and the Song Dynasty to lyrics and music. They all reached a level of perfection that is difficult to surpass no matter how changes occur in later generations.