Also known as "master painting". A Chinese painting. Generally refers to the paintings made by literati in China feudal society. Different from the paintings of folk painters and professional painters in the Palace Painting Academy, Su Shi put forward "literati painting" in the Northern Song Dynasty, and Dong Qichang advocated "literati painting" in the Ming Dynasty, with Wang Wei as the founder and the ancestor of Nanzong (see Nanbeizong). But in the old days, it was often used to raise the painting art of the literati class and despise folk painters and institutional painters. In the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Yanyuan once said in Notes on Famous Paintings of Past Dynasties: "Those who have been good at painting since ancient times are better than others without elegant clothes." This sentence has far-reaching influence. Modern Chen Hengke believes that "literati painting has four elements: personality, knowledge, talent and thought, and with these four elements, it can be perfected." Usually, "literati painting" takes landscape, flowers and birds, plum blossoms, bamboo, chrysanthemum, wood and stone as the theme. To express "spiritual spirit" or personal ambition, sometimes it also contains feelings of oppression to the nation or resentment against decadent politics. They admire "morale" and "one product", advocate algae interest, stress pen and ink interest, get rid of similarities, emphasize verve, and attach great importance to the cultivation of literature and calligraphy and the creation of artistic conception of painting. Mang Fu Yao's Preface to Scholars' Painting in China once had a high evaluation: "King Youcheng of the Tang Dynasty (Wei) helped poems to enter the painting, and then the pen became interesting, and the method changed at will. Needless to say, the palace merchants, the mountains and mountains are all rhyme, and the righteousness does not have to be more prosperous. " Literati paintings in past dynasties have a great influence on the aesthetic thought of Chinese painting and the development of ink painting, freehand brushwork and other techniques. The literati class, usually referred to as the "scholar" class, is a unique intellectual class between rulers and civilians in ancient China society. Their ideological values and their own cultural and moral cultivation were instilled in the field of painting, which inspired the development of literati painting and the emergence of "literati painting". The Northern Song Dynasty inherited the old system of Western Shu and Southern Tang Dynasty and established the Hanlin Painting Academy. At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, many painters in the Academy of Painting also came from West Shu and Southern Tang Dynasty. When they arrived in Song Huizong, painting was formally included in the imperial examination, and painting officials had professional titles. Painting criticism also pays attention to the identity of the painter.
Landscape painting in the Northern Song Dynasty is the most outstanding. Li Cheng and Fan Kuan represent the magnificent natural landscape in the north, and they are called "the three great masters, with a hundred generations of masterpieces" together with Guan Tong. Other painters with special styles include Guo who is good at towers, Zhao Linglong who is good at small lake scenes, and Wang Ximeng who inherits green landscape paintings. On the one hand, the accumulation of flower-and-bird paintings has developed. The landscape and painting style of the northern school has been fully developed, while the painting style of Dong and Ju in the southern school is lacking. Among the flowers and birds, there are paintings of Huangquan in West Shu and Southern Tang Dynasty, and there is a saying that "Huang is rich and wild", among which Huang's painting style is dominant. Flower-and-bird painters in the Northern Song Dynasty paid attention to imitating nature (sketching) and also noticed the emotional color (vivid) it evoked. Religious paintings are not as prosperous as those in the Tang Dynasty. After the temple murals were destroyed, of course, the famous pens were gone. Portraits of court figures developed, and Jiangnan began to be active among folk portrait painters. Figure painting and genre painting have been highly developed to achieve the purpose of "educating and promoting people's principles". For example, Zhang Zeduan's "The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival" has surpassed painting in today's value, and it is a masterpiece depicting rural life, such as Xu Qi's "Landscape Map".
Some bureaucrats, nobles and literati also participated in the creation, and the system they formed was called "literati painting" and later called "literati painting". In the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty, Su Shi, Wen Tong, Huang Tingjian, Li and Mi Fei made great efforts in literati painting, emphasizing that there are poems in paintings and paintings in poems, preferring simple ink and wash expressions, but going to painters to whitewash them. Literati painting is a comprehensive art, which integrates literature, calligraphy, painting and seal cutting. It is a concentrated expression of various cultural qualities of painters, especially in calligraphy. The combination of dots, lines and strokes in calligraphy is not only the basic element of artistic image, but also an important appreciation object with independent aesthetic value. The unique rhythm and rhythm formed by the weight of brush strokes and the density of dotted lines should reflect the painter's unique mentality, temperament and personality in the creative process, and organically combine these with the form and spirit of the things expressed, so that the heart and hand correspond, the strength is consistent, the traces are broken and even, and the pen is not thoughtful.
In color and ink painting, literati painting pays more attention to the use of ink painting and pays attention to the five colors of ink. The most important reason why Wang Wei was highly praised by Su Shi and Dong Qichang is that he created ink painting in his later creation. The reason why literati painters pay more attention to ink painting than color is directly related to the artistic concept and aesthetic concept of China's traditional painting, that is, traditional painting never takes the real representation of things as its creative purpose, but takes revealing the inner charm of things as its highest artistic pursuit. Based on this purpose, the unique aesthetic thought of this nation has been formed, that is, abandoning gaudiness, taking simplicity, paying attention to painting afterwards, returning to simplicity and simplicity, and so on, which has become the conscious pursuit of literati painters in art.
The formation of the characteristics and system of literati painting is also related to the fact that literati regard painting as a means of spiritual adjustment. For these painters, creation only plays a connecting role. In this way, the simplest tools (pen, ink and paper) and the most general language (black, white and gray) convey the deepest feelings and become creative, instead of serving things and being bound by law.