Main achievements in painting and calligraphy during the Six Dynasties:
1. Integrating calligraphy into painting: Lu Tanwei
Lu Tanwei, Han nationality, Wuxian County (now Suzhou) people. A painter in the Liu and Song Dynasties of the Southern Dynasties. In the history of Chinese painting, he was the founder who formally incorporated calligraphy into painting. He applied the cursive style of Zhang Zhi of the Eastern Han Dynasty to his paintings. Unfortunately, it is difficult to see his paintings today. Zhang Yanyuan of the Tang Dynasty recorded more than 70 paintings by him in "Records of Famous Paintings of the Past Dynasties", with a wide range of themes, ranging from paintings of sages, Buddhist statues and figures to birds and animals.
He is also known as "Gu Lu" together with Gu Kaizhi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty; even Xie He highly praised him in his "Ancient Paintings List". He is one of the earliest outstanding painters in Suzhou, Jiangnan. In order to study his legacy, the author has attached several works of the same painting style for reference and comparison.
2. The ancestor of Chinese painting and landscape painting: Gu Kaizhi
Gu Kaizhi (348-409), whose courtesy name was Changkang and whose nickname was Hutou, was a Han nationality and a native of Wuxi, Jinling (now Jiangsu Province). Wuxi City). An outstanding painter, painting theorist and poet in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Because he had great achievements in literature and painting, people called him Jue in painting, Jue in literature and Jue in art.
Gu Kaizhi was erudite and talented, good at poetry, calligraphy, and especially painting. He was good at portraits, Buddha statues, animals, landscapes, etc. At that time, people called him the three masters: painting, writing and infatuation. Xie An attached great importance to it, thinking that it had never happened before. Gu Kaizhi, Cao Buxing, Lu Tanwei, and Zhang Sengyao were collectively known as the "Four Great Masters of the Six Dynasties". Gu Kaizhi's paintings were intended to express the spirit, and his arguments such as "imagination is wonderful" and "describing spirit with form" laid the foundation for the development of traditional Chinese painting.
During the Southern Dynasties, the creation of New Yuefu was mainly produced in two areas, namely the Sanwu area where Jiankang, the capital of the Southern Dynasties, was located, and the Jingchu area to the west. Compared with Yuefu in the Han Dynasty, due to the destruction of national unity and the enterprising spirit of the Southern Dynasties government, the feelings of family and country in the hearts of literati have declined to a certain extent.
Although Zu Ti still had the middle-class ambition to attack Ji at the beginning, in the later period, the vision of literati and officials was already focused on the life of "miscellaneous peanut trees and flocks of orioles flying around". This also allowed people to describe the literature of the Six Dynasties as "the love of children is long, and the wind and cloud are short".
However, this special literary creation atmosphere also provided the soil for the birth of the New Yuefu in the Southern Dynasties, which is also known as "Qing Shang Quci", that is, music that does not require musical accompaniment and can be sung a cappella. Ci.
As mentioned earlier, the creative direction of the literati in the Southern Dynasties was directed towards the life around them and their affection for the mountains and rivers. This allowed the creative themes of the Six Dynasties literature to resonate with the people, so a large number of folk songs also became Part of the New Yuefu, although there is a certain gap between them and literati works in terms of words and sentences, their content and style are similar, and they have a unique taste in life, so they also have extremely high literary value.