Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 551 Shen Zhou
"I don't know if the sticks will say that they invented celadon in a few years..." Zhou Zhi scratched his chin and thought a little farther.

"Can this happen?" Jiang Tianxi, the head of the history department, was dumbfounded: "How can they be so shameless?"

"Well, there is a saying over there that Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty and Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty conquered Korea, but they all failed shamefully in the end. All the officials of Emperor Taizong's Lingxiao Pavilion were buried in the three eastern provinces, and even Emperor Taizong himself was shot blind. Only one eye, and finally begged the Korean general Quan to cover Suwen, and then escaped with a name, and returned to Chang'an in embarrassment... Oh, what's wrong with you, Director Jiang..."

Director Jiang pressed his hand on his chest, his posture was a bit like a heart attack, Zhou Zhi was so frightened that he quickly supported him: "Let's stop talking about this, let's go and read calligraphy and painting..."

In fact, there are many other porcelains worth looking at, such as the exquisite porcelains of various dynasties in the Qing Dynasty. Among them, Zhou Zhi covets two things the most. Huayao White Porcelain Standing Avalokitesvara.

These are two things with completely opposite styles. One is extremely complicated, using various enamel glaze colors, and it is covered with silver after firing. The inside looks like a pure silver enamel bowl. It is a piece of porcelain, but it is covered with silver skin inside.

But the other color is extremely simple, pure white.

This kind of white is called "swan white" by foreigners in export porcelain, and it was the whitest porcelain among all the porcelain in the world at that time.

The Guanyin statue uses hard porcelain to show a soft effect. From Guanyin's skin to clothing and ribbons, it is full of elasticity and elegant feeling, which shows that the sculptor's grasp of dynamics has reached the extreme.

Zhou Zhi didn't have these types of porcelain, so he wanted to study them in detail, but it was a pity that Director Jiang almost lost his temper because of a careless word, so he had to change the environment quickly.

The ancient paintings and calligraphy works in Shu University’s collection date back to the Song Dynasty at the earliest and lasted to modern times at the latest. Among them, Director Jiang and Director Yuan are most proud of the two series of large collections.

The Wumen School of Painting in the Ming Dynasty and the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou in the Qing Dynasty.

The Wumen School of Painting is a general term for several famous painters and their artistic heirs in the mid-Ming Dynasty. It is mainly composed of the "Four Masters of the Ming Dynasty", each of whom is famous——, Qiu Ying, Shen Zhou, Tang Bohu, Wen Zhengming .

There are also Chen Zun, Lu Zhi and others.

Now Zhou Zhi was standing in front of several big pictures.

Shen Zhou's "Imitation of Ni Yunlin's Landscape", and Wen Zhengming's "Rushing Valley".

Shen Zhou is the founder of the Wumen School of Painting. He learned from the four masters of the Yuan Dynasty and was influenced by the style of the Southern Song Dynasty Academy of Painting. He also crossed the Northern Song Dynasty and went up to Dong Yuan.

Because the nonsensical "Tang Bohu Spots the Autumn Fragrance" is familiar to everyone. Among the "Four Great Talents in the South of the Yangtze River", Tang Bohu, Zhu Yunming, and Wen Zhengming are all his disciples.

The reason why the word "Fan Ni" was added before "Landscape of Yunlin" is because Shen Zhou's inscription in the painting said that he was the work of Ni Zan and Ni Yunlin, the four masters of the Yuan Dynasty.

Zhou Zhi now holds two restored ancient paintings by Jing Hao, namely the "Sitting Dragon Picture" and "Shushan Picture", which are handed down in ancient times. This is no longer a complete layman.

The characteristics of Ni Zan's landscape paintings are tranquility and indifference. The most typical composition method is an earth slope in the foreground, with a cluster of mixed trees growing on it, a small grass pavilion next to it, and gentle hills in the distant view.

The characteristic of the rubbing method is that it is folded and rubbed, and the whole ink painting is outlined with a fine brush, with light and elegant colors, basically without thick brush and heavy ink.

This can be said to be a typical symbol of Ni Yunlin's landscape.

And Shen Zhou has a nickname called "rough and heavy", and his paintings have two styles: "fine and heavy" and "rough and heavy".

Fine and heavy is to absorb and imitate the painting methods of famous literati paintings in the previous dynasty. It is elegant and bookish, and it is a representative of literati paintings in the Ming Dynasty.

And "roughness" is his pioneering work. The writing is bold and heroic, concise and simple, which is a breakthrough and innovation of the previous dynasty.

So here comes the question, if Shen Zhou is in front of Zhou Zhi now, Zhou Zhi can't help but ask him - it's agreed to imitate Ni Zan, why do you still play your own style?

Looking further down, hey, as if Shen Zhou expected someone to ask such a question, he wrote two sentences in the inscription - "This is similar to Ni Yuan, it is specious and not true."

"You know how to paint, Elbow?" Director Yuan asked.

"I only know a little bit, I know more about Song paintings."

This is indeed not a lie, although the paintings of the Ming Dynasty are also great, and the auction price is tens of millions, but the two Song paintings that have been restored in Zhou Zhi's hand are enough to replace all the paintings of the Wu School in this exhibition hall. work.

"Then you should be able to see clearly. After all, the four families of the Ming Dynasty are all famous masters of the Five Dynasties, and the most influenced by the famous masters of the Five Dynasties, and the most recent inheritance, isn't it the famous masters of the Song Dynasty?"

"Yes, I know Ni Zan's style of painting well." Zhou Zhi said, "Shen Zhou's style of painting seems to be... in the strokes of ink, even though he occasionally rubbed his hands to follow the brushwork of Song and Yuan schools, he still poured out the block in his chest. .”

"Where do you think there are occasional intentions to chase after?" Director Yuan didn't want to let Zhou Zhi pass the test so easily.

"Ni Zan's paintings like to draw stone slopes near the shore with three or five trees in the close-up; one or two flat slopes and distant mountains in the distant view; the blank space in the middle is the water surface without waves. At first glance, the paragraphs are concise and clear, dense and dense. The magic of "white" is used to the extreme, and what I pursue is "the sound beyond the strings" and "the realm beyond the words". I call it the "one river and two banks" method, just like standing at the corner of the stone plate in our hometown and looking at the close-up The strange rock is similar to the mountain village and the White Pagoda on the other side of the river."

"The painting around the body, from the screen, is the autumn scenery of the Western Mountains. The composition imitates Ni Zan's "one river and two banks" flat and far composition. The scenery is simple and the realm is wide. It is an island in the middle of the lake, the temples and pagodas stand tall on the island, and the distant view is the misty mountains, the water surface is quiet and there are no water patterns."

"The slope of the mountain is gentle, similar to Dong Ju's "Mantou Mountain". The outline of the mountain rocks is outlined with light ink, these are the characteristics of the painters of the Five Dynasties."

"However, the side-front folded bands are often used in the nearby soil slopes and bank corners, which seems to have the characteristics of Ni Zan's "criticism of hemp folded bands". Dot first and then crack."

"If I'm not mistaken, it should be Shen Zhou's own initiative and characteristic."

"The slopes and mountain outlines in the whole picture are neat and tidy, the brush and ink are refined and simple, the light ink strokes, textures and thick ink dots of moss are alternated, and the ink color of the picture is rich in layers. With Shen Xiong's simple and vigorous technique, it is quite a bit Ying The demeanor of lifting weights as if they are light."

"I am not very familiar with Shen Zhou's works, but although this painting is a copy, it does not copy Ni Zan's style step by step, but adds personal understanding to the copy, I guess, this should be Another of his styles—a source of rough talk."

Both Gu Zhenduo and Director Jiang applauded at the same time. Director Yuan felt very curious: "You seem to be very familiar with Ni Zan, Elbow! Ordinary people can't say so much."

"I'm not very familiar with Ni Zan either, but he inherited Jing Hao's painting style. I'm more familiar with Jing Hao, and I know that Ni Zan likes to use the crimping method, which is often used in the close-up of this painting. At that time, there were a few of Shen Zhou's paintings that intentionally imitated Ni Zan."

(End of this chapter)