Recently, Zhao, a famous seal engraver in the late Qing Dynasty, sold his own seal of "Yu Wu Men Fan" at Guardian Auction House for more than 654.38+0.2 million yuan, making it the most expensive lithograph in history! This scene is in great contrast with the life predicament of the seal engraver who "runs around all the year round, selling clothes and food", which has aroused widespread concern and heated discussion in the industry.
Bend the waist with five buckets of rice is a mature work of Zhu carved by Zhao, a famous seal engraver in the late Qing Dynasty. This paper attempts to interpret this masterpiece from three aspects: seal cutting, composition and knife method, and why it is so concerned and hotly debated in contemporary times.
"Bowing down to five buckets of rice" was engraved by Zhao Ren in Poyang County, Jiangxi Province in the early years of Guangxu. At that time, although Zhao was honest and honest, diligent and loving the people, he was trapped in the darkness of officialdom and could not realize his political ambitions. Because he had to support his family, he was forced to bow to power, and his heart was full of contradictions and suffered setbacks. So he remembered Tao Yuanming, who lived in seclusion but didn't bend his back for five buckets of rice, so he carved the seal of "bending his back for five buckets of rice" to show his predicament and anguish.
From the perspective of seal cutting, Zhao's mature Zhu seal cutting method was deeply influenced by Deng and Wu Xizai, and he practiced their seal cutting ideas of "book printing in" and "book printing out", striving to perfectly reproduce the meaning of calligraphy, such as the thickness change of lines, the treatment of the turning point between starting and closing, and the approximate ink painting effect at the intersection of lines. At the same time, on the basis of Wu Xizai's graceful and elegant printing style, Zhao further made the lines more vigorous and changeable, forming a feature closer to the ancient Chinese and Indian style. When we look at the seal script of "bending the waist by five meters", we can see that the printed characters are treated with the standard seal script font, and the font is getting longer, the upper part is tight and the lower part is loose, and the arc is straight, which makes the printed lines more vigorous and elastic, and can fully feel the original face of Zhao's brush cursive seal script.
In terms of composition, this seal is a typical seal composition-that is, from right to left and from top to bottom. Looking closely at this seal, Zhao exhausted his ingenious thoughts on the composition of the seal, which is mainly reflected in diagonal echo, density contrast, displacement between edges, broken edges and so on. Zhao's seal pays great attention to changing with the trend, and it is vivid and elegant, and it is extremely beautiful under close examination. This seal is a classic: the word "Wu" and the word "Wei" are misplaced, the strokes below the word "Wu" and the word "Mi" are interspersed and adhered, and the characters below the word "Dou" are interspersed with the characters above the vertical pen of the word "Mi". This idea is very clever. At the same time, Zhao Zhu pays great attention to the change of line thickness, and even after the line thickness is strengthened, he pursues its rich line effect with the intention of breaking the pen. In order to achieve the harmonious unity of printing edge, printing line and vision, Zhao often carries out a lot of breaking treatment on printing edge, and integrates the whole printing style through clever breaking. For example, every word of the seal "Bend over five buckets of rice" is broken, and all four sides are broken. For the sake of overall coordination, the whole seal style has an ancient and broken beauty.
In the knife technique, Zhao carved with a blunt knife, which is characterized by vigor and strength. When he holds a knife, his wrist is full, and the blade goes deep into the crevice, not shallow, so as to achieve the effect of rigid, simple and old-fashioned lines. It can be clearly seen from the seal of "bending over for five bushels of rice" that the angle of the carving knife into the stone is almost vertical. Because of this way of transporting knives, this seal looks magnificent and full of vitality. Finally, to appreciate Zhao's seal, it is best to combine the specific background of his seal cutting.
Because Zhao's prints have an obvious feature of "expressing feelings by printing", seals are often an important carrier for him to express his feelings and experiences. He often gives supplementary descriptions of the scenes, emotions and experiences when he carved this seal. Many of Zhao's prints can even be read as titles and borders as lyric essays or whole articles. When we read Zhao's seal, it will help us to appreciate his seal better and gain more.
This time, "bending over for five bushels of rice" became the most expensive stone seal in history, precisely because this self-use seal embodies the above aesthetic characteristics of Zhao Yin. (Shi An)
Source: Xi Evening News