Learning History with You 28—— The Art of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties with Charm and Style

? The four hundred years from the Three Kingdoms, the Jin Dynasty to the Southern and Northern Dynasties are the times with the most adjectives in China's history. It is full of turmoil, suffering, war and absurdity. Politically, it experienced numerous wars and political confrontations from the yellow turban insurrectionary in the late Eastern Han Dynasty to the unification of Sui Dynasty. In ethnic relations, the war and the great migration of ethnic groups have promoted the coexistence of Hu and Han and the unprecedented blending between ethnic groups; In terms of ideology and culture, Confucianism, which has been advocated since Qin and Han Dynasties, has split and gradually declined, so the metaphysical thought originated from Laozi and Zhuangzi has become popular, forming a light, uninhibited and detached Wei and Jin demeanor; At the same time, with the prosperity of Buddhism, it injected new blood into China culture, and the cultural core of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism gradually expanded during this period. At this time of China, the glory of Qin and Han Dynasties has passed away, but the weather in the prosperous Tang Dynasty has not yet arrived. As the most chaotic period in China's history, people faced with the deepest suffering, and the period when the control of the dynasty was the weakest, the political high pressure did not exist, which stimulated people's spiritual and artistic liberation and freedom, and gave birth to the cultural and artistic characteristics of paying attention to aesthetics, yearning for nature and pursuing transcendence.

In the art of calligraphy, the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties was a climax in the history of calligraphy in China, during which the calligraphy not only had outstanding works, but also had a large circulation. On the other hand, the calligraphers such as Wang Xizhi and Zhong You who appeared in this period had an important influence and contribution to the development of the whole history of calligraphy. The greatest feature of Jin characters is the perfect expression of the personal value of calligraphy. Among them, Wang Xizhi, the sage of calligraphy, and his seventh son, Wang Xianzhi, are the most influential. The Preface to Lanting, which is known as the world's first running script, embodies the character of Jin people in its literary mind and calligraphy skills, and makes China literati's understanding of the world and nature rise to a new height. This work is exquisite and has laid the characteristics of a new running script. The four hundred years of Wei and Jin Dynasties at the end of Han Dynasty was a brilliant period for the development of China's calligraphy art. In a state of high spiritual freedom, Wei and Jin scholars pursued the beauty of calligraphy with abundant energy, imbued with temperament, generosity and style, immersed in thick ink and indulged in it, and inadvertently created an extremely pleasing charm, reaching the extreme of China's calligraphy art. People say "Jin's rhyme, Tang's rhyme and Song's rhyme". The style of calligraphy in Wei and Jin Dynasties is "natural, free and easy", that is, a word "rhyme". During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, China's calligraphy entered the era of "Bei Bei Nan Tie", and the rich Wei Bei also made important contributions to the emergence of different ways of writing regular script, and the rich Wei Bei form made great contributions to the future development of calligraphy. For example, in the Tang Dynasty, Yan Zhenqing's elegant face and Liu Gongquan's delicate Liu Ti were all influenced by Wei Bei.

? In painting art, during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, due to the long-term division of the country, the great ethnic integration made social art develop more diversified. Its characteristics focus on the deepening of painting art in Han dynasty and the absorption and digestion of Buddhist culture and art, thus making Wei and Jin painting reach an unprecedented aesthetic realm. The form of painting in this period was mainly long scrolls, and the vivid portrayal of characters was emphasized. Although this was only the product of a specific era, it had a far-reaching impact on the painting of the whole feudal society. During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, influenced by the Han culture, the paintings of ethnic minorities gradually changed to the direction of Central Plains figure modeling, and the painting skills of Central Plains were also influenced by other ethnic groups, especially those of Greece, Persia, India and the Western Regions. In painting, the introduction of western colors made the mural works in this period more colorful and rich, such as the murals in Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, whose figures have religious characteristics, and because of their rich and bright colors, they are still vivid. At the same time, in the form of painting, Wei and Jin Dynasties created tomb murals, brick paintings, temple murals, large stone carvings, lacquer paintings and other painting forms, especially tomb murals and temple murals, which presented the religious culture of the folk funeral cultural relics at that time to us well and had high historical and cultural value. In terms of the types of painting, with the rise of landscape poetry, landscape painting began to become an independent kind of painting, and flower-and-bird painting slowly appeared. In Chinese history, the first batch of painters and professional painters who were well-known for their painting skills also appeared in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, while Gu Kaizhi, Lu Tanwei and Zhang Sengyou in the Southern and Northern Dynasties represented the rapid development and mature figure painting art in the Han Dynasty. There is such a comment that "Zhang gets his flesh, Lu gets his bones, and he cares about his spirit", which shows that Gu is a master of figure painting, and his representative works include "A Picture of Women's History" and "A Picture of Luoshen"

Grottoes sculpture art, during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Buddhist grottoes were excavated from west to east. During this period, after four centuries of unification in Qin and Han Dynasties, China fell into a state of separatism. The social unrest made foreign Buddhism have a broad social foundation, and the rulers took the lead in worshipping Buddhism, which was widely spread. The 48 temples in the Southern Dynasties were the most vivid portrayal. At that time, with the prosperity of Buddhism, there was a large-scale activity of building cave temples. Several large grottoes in China, such as Dunhuang Grottoes, Yungang Grottoes, Longmen Grottoes and Maijishan Grottoes, were all excavated during this period. The statues in Dunhuang break through the limitation of the form and content of Buddhist art, and reflect the real life in twists and turns. The implicit beauty and knowing smile of those painted bodhisattvas profoundly show the unique solemnity of women. The face of the Buddha also has transcendental wisdom, and the subtle dynamics of the eyebrows and eyes show a quiet and serene state of mind. With the support of the Northern Wei regime, Yungangshang Grottoes are the largest statues in the whole grottoes. Their stone sculptures are magnificent and rich in content. The early statues come from complex sources, such as heavy clothes, protruding clothing lines and huge bodies, which reflect the costume and modeling characteristics of Gandhara and Central Asia. The Yungangshang Grottoes were excavated by Emperor Xiaowen in the later period, and the statues at this time have a delicate, elegant and magnificent style. Bodhisattva also wears a treasure crown, and the clothes worn by the carving patrons are also wide-ranging Chinese-style clothes, which reflects the China process of Yungang Grottoes art, the influence of real life and fashion on art, and the great ability of China traditional art to integrate and transform foreign art.

? During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, China people's minds were colorful and brilliant. Apart from artistic achievements in painting, calligraphy and carving, there were Tao Yuanming's "leisurely seeing Nanshan" and Ji Kang's "Guangling San", which together formed a brand-new aesthetic taste and outlined aesthetic artistic conception such as "charm", "character", "spirit" and "wonder" for us, which were called by scholars.