China's landscape painting uses ink to express everything in the universe, and reflects people's feelings and perceptions of natural images through ink. In the process of its own development, landscape painting gradually merged into traditional cultural thoughts, endowed it with profound cultural connotation and internal vitality, and began to interpret the humanistic spirit of China's art in a unique form of expression. China painting art is constantly enriched, perfected and developed under the nourishment of national cultural spirit. As an important part of national culture, Chinese painting's internal consciousness structure is based on Confucianism's people-oriented basic moral connotation, the pursuit of truth, goodness and beauty as its moral mission, and the idea that heaven and earth coexist with me and everything is integrated with me. This aesthetic thought constructs the creative thinking mode of the artist's "expressing feelings with images" and "blending scenes". In the development of China's painting for thousands of years, painters and theorists have summed up rich and profound aesthetic propositions of painting, such as "free spirit", "recumbent swimming", "business position", "three distances" and "artistic conception", which have played a positive role in the spatial development of landscape painting. In the history of China painting, countless painters are constantly looking for a spatial language family where painting art expresses ideas and aesthetic forms coexist. Mr. Wen Fang, an honorary professor at Princeton University in the United States, once pointed out, "From the 4th century to the 9th century, from the 4th century to14th century, the graphic nature of natural images in space has become a clearly identifiable stylized theme. It also evokes artists to conquer the depth of painting and the illusion of natural movement by mastering performance skills, and the structural changes in performance norms have also made clear progress. " [Note: [America], translated by Li, "Heart Seal-Analysis of the Style and Structure of China's Calligraphy and Painting", Shaanxi People's Fine Arts Publishing House, 2004, p. 1 1 page. After the development of China landscape painting to a certain stage, on the one hand, painters began to explore the spatial layout and painting form of landscape painting. On the other hand, expressing emotions through painting is a way to communicate with nature.
First, the aesthetic origin of the sense of space in landscape painting
Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties was a turbulent era, and the rise of the gentry played a positive role in the development of culture and art at that time. Nobles enjoy special rights politically and economically. They are engaged in artistic creation, received handed down education, have enough time and have a living environment suitable for their requirements. Therefore, the literati and painters in this period actively participated in painting and calligraphy activities, and at this time, their artistic thoughts were extremely active. All kinds of paintings were recorded and their traces were recorded in an orderly manner, which laid the foundation for the development of art.
During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, China's aesthetics underwent profound changes. It is generally believed that metaphysics rose in this period, and the popularity of Laozi's philosophy and Buddhism changed the face of culture, and "making nature more civilized" became a universal pursuit. From Shi Shuo Xin Yu, it can be seen that the figures admired by people at that time were quite different from the "gentleman" image in Confucius' mind in the Spring and Autumn Period. At that time, people were no longer concerned about the perfection of personality, but the charm of character style. For example, "People look at Wang Youjun, floating like a cloud and agile as a dragon". Some people sigh the appearance of the prince and say, "Like a willow tree in spring." At that time, people's eyes were too early and bright as the sun and the moon. Ji Kang is seven feet eight inches long and has a unique charm. The audience sighed: "Sue, hearty." Or the cloud: "Su Su is like a scattered wind, high and Xu Yin". [Note: Ye Lang's Outline of the History of Chinese Aesthetics, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1985, p. 168. As can be seen from the above articles, the aesthetic trend in the Wei and Jin Dynasties was to face nature, go towards nature and return to nature as the universal pursuit, so the aesthetic style changed greatly. Mr Zong Baihua once concluded: "Wei and Jin Dynasties were the most chaotic period in China's politics, but they were the most free, liberated, intelligent and enthusiastic times in the spiritual history, so they were also the most artistic times. Words of Wang Xizhi and his son, paintings of Gu Kaizhi and Lu Tanwei, sculptures of Dai Kui and his son, Guangling San by Ji Kang, Cao Zhi, Ruan Ji and Cao Zhi. [Note: Zong Baihua's Aesthetic Walking, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 198 1 Edition, p. 177. The development of literature and poetry laid the foundation for the formation of painting style and interest. In the expression of painting forms, the ideas of love the water, a wise man, and Leshan, a benevolent man, coincide with the spirit of tasting algae pursued by scholars in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, making landscape painting an expression of humanistic thoughts.
Zong Bing, a painter of Southern Song Dynasty (A.D. 372-443, a little literary talent, was born in Nieyang, Nanyang, and now Zhenping, Henan), was a hermit who was proficient in calligraphy, painting and music. In the Book of Song Dynasty, Wang Xiangcheng recommended Bingzhou, but he didn't, so he asked him why, and replied, "I have lived in the mountains for thirty years, how can I bow down to the court and be an official?" Jason Wu in the west and Heng Yue in the south, so he settled in Yuheng Mountain and returned to Jiangling due to illness. Zong Bing's Preface to Landscape is closely related to his life. The society in the Eastern Jin Dynasty was extremely turbulent, with class contradictions and ethnic contradictions intertwined, and the ruling classes conflicted with each other, and the promotion of honor and disgrace was unpredictable. Most intellectuals are also silent, hiding in the mountains, talking about Zen and painting poems in order to get rid of it. With the development of society, after Liu and Song Dynasties, the atmosphere of talking about metaphysics declined, and the atmosphere of expressing affection for landscapes flourished, and landscape poems and landscape paintings also developed. As Liang said, "In the early Song Dynasty, the writing was sung, and the body changed because of the leather. Laozi and Zhuangzi excused themselves, and the landscape was graceful and restrained. Choose a hundred words and compete for a strange price. Your feelings will be wonderful, and your words will be full of new ideas. This is what the modern world does. " ("Wen Xin Diao Long? Zong Bing, like many literati, spent his whole life interacting with piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, enjoying the scenery and forgetting to go home, remaining aloof from the world and being indifferent to fame and fortune. Zong Bing's thought of "recumbent swimming" and the "free spirit" of landscape painting came into being in this environment.
Zong Bing is a devout Buddhist. He believes in reincarnation and his spirit is immortal. His theory of landscape painting is integrated with the way of Laozi and Zhuangzi, coupled with metaphysics in Wei and Jin Dynasties, which liberates people's emotions from the space of painting. The "Tao" put forward by him in the preface to painting landscapes (the sage contains Tao to reflect things, and the sage is sincere and elegant) is the general outline of the article. Zong Bing put landscape, Taoism and sage in the same position, indicating that landscape can express Taoism through form and spirit, while Taoism has the perceptual aesthetic characteristics of "form", "interest" and "rhyme" in landscape painting, showing dynamic, pleasing, fascinating and charming poetic meaning. Understanding such "Tao" in landscape painting will make people "full of interest and thoughtful", thus obtaining great aesthetic happiness. The highest aesthetic value of landscape painting is that it can show the vitality of aesthetic creation and the mystery of natural creation. Experiencing this mystery is the highest spiritual realm that scholars in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties yearn for. The so-called sage, according to Buddhism, is a "confused and upright person" and a homo sapiens who understands the laws of the world. Zong Bing's "On Buddhism in Ming Dynasty" said: "Everyone's heart is blessed with knowledge, and everyone's eyes will see it every day." In other words, people can only understand things under the enlightenment of saints, just as people can only see things with the help of sunlight. When the sun goes down, it becomes dark and nothing can be seen. An old friend can only see what he feels. The so-called feeling person should be a saint to communicate, which can be said to be feeling first and then responding. Zong Bing's "Tao" is consistent with the "Tao" in Laozi's philosophy, and both refer to the mysterious spirit of the universe. To contain Tao is to contain the universe, and to reflect things is to reflect everything. Zong Bing believes that everything in the world is the result of spiritual externalization, the inclusive Tao in the sage's heart reflects everything, and the sage remembers the image reflected by the sage with a quiet heart. Nature is not a pure object completely isolated from people's spirit, and the relationship between nature and people is not antagonistic, but things are with me, and hearts and things set each other off. The formal beauty of landscape means that the landscape can express the spirit of debut emotionally with beautiful and colorful shapes. The rocks, streams, trees and grass in life are endowed with new life through the artist's perception, and at the same time, the viewer can also understand the spirit of nature and the law of creation, thus obtaining spiritual pleasure and psychological satisfaction. In the form of painting, Zong Bing put forward the viewpoint of "painting three inches high and one thousands of feet vertically, and painting a few feet wide and one hundred miles horizontally", which not only depicts the scene of thousands of miles in a short distance, but also gives an overall idea of the momentum of the screen space.
Wang Wei, a painter who is a little later than Zong Bing, also has his own personal experience on the setting of painting space. The function of Wang Wei's landscape painting is to "effect different mountains and seas", and the creation of landscape painting is "whether it refers to what is contained alone or entrusted by God, the feeling of this painting is also". Therefore, landscape painting can't be "not based on the case, arguing the cabinet, marking the town and harbor, and painting the flow" like drawing a map. At the beginning of landscape painting creation, Wang Wei put forward that we should not learn from nature, but "descend from God" and attach importance to the role of emotion in landscape painting. This is very valuable. In order to express artistic conception, Wang Wei also proposed that painting needs to "melt the spirit", melt into the painter's unique feelings and show the painter's true feelings. The painter is the spokesman of the landscape, and painting should show "looking at the autumn clouds, the gods fly;" Facing the spring breeze, thinking is fascinating. The painter was moved by external objects, and he integrated the moved mood into his works, thus moving the viewer. Zong Bing and Wang Wei provided theoretical guidance for the conception of landscape painting space, and at the same time formulated formal rules for the space, composition, momentum and realm of landscape painting.
Second, lying and swimming: the transcendence of spiritual space
The ancients' understanding of landscape painting is neither purely objective mechanical imitation nor purely subjective expressionism and empathy, but "swimming with eyes open" in the realm of "lying and swimming", leaning over the way of observing nature and coexisting with everything through the care of meditation. This aesthetic way of appreciating mountains and rivers and the philosophical thoughts related to Laozi and Zhuangzi laid the aesthetic foundation of China's landscape painting space, and decided that China's landscape painting tends to "write the gods of mountains and rivers", and get the artistic style of "image" without saying anything in "meaning".
In his later years, Zong Bing said, "Because of his age, it is difficult to travel all over the famous mountains. He should just keep an open mind and lie down and swim. Every time he travels, he draws a picture on the wall and then lies down to face it. " Zong Bing said, "If this is the case, both the beauty of relaxation and the spirit of Xuanzang can be realized in one painting. A husband who understands with his eyes and his heart, if his class becomes skillful, his eyes will respond with his heart and he will feel the spirit. Although he searched for a secluded rock in vain, why bother? He also died, living in a sense of class and operating in the shadow. He writes well and sincerely. So I lived leisurely, the Buddha sang the piano, wore your portrait, sat in the wilderness, and went into the wilderness alone. " From this, we can cultivate temperament, get rid of spirit and understand the mystery of nature, that is, visit the true mountains and waters. How can you have such fun? God itself is invisible, but it stops in form. Painting expresses its god in the same form, so it also contains rationality. Can be completed satisfactorily. So sit at home leisurely, recuperate, drink, play the piano, unfold the picture scroll, lie leisurely in the universe, and walk alone without risking the cold and heat. Towering peaks and boundless clouds are the transcendental realm that ancient sages yearn for, because without the interference of the world, everything is integrated with meditation, and life is alive, only the freedom and happiness of the gods are refined; Nothing can make the spirit free and happy like mountains and rivers. On the one hand, Zong Bing's viewpoint is a summary of his practical experience in landscape painting creation, on the other hand, it is also influenced by Buddhism. For example, Hui Yuan, his teacher, thinks that the whole landscape is a Buddha's shadow in Inscription of Buddha's Shadow and Tales of Lushan Mountain, and the immortals in Lushan Mountain are ethereal. Zong Bing also put forward that "the husband's spirit is four-fold, flowing in infinity, reaching the sky and moving underground, and the saints are poor and the saints are humble." Advocating the immortality of spirit, combined with the theory of Buddha nature, proves the theory of immortality of God. This philosophy made him regard landscape nature as the ontological expression of a certain spirit in landscape appreciation and landscape painting creation. Xu believes: "The reason why mountains and rivers can become the image of sages' taste is because sages see their interesting spirit in the shape of mountains and rivers, and see that they can be used as the support of the Tao that people pursue, that is, they can meet the requirements of spiritual freedom, thus making mountains and rivers the object of beauty and painting." [Note: The Artistic Spirit of China by Xu Zhu, East China Normal University Press, 200 1 edition, p. 142. The reason why landscape can attract saints to travel is that it is "rich in quality and interesting in spirit", which embodies the inner charm of spiritual ontology. "Yunlinsen mysterious, sages beautiful, fun. What is a jade symbol? Just relaxing. God's place is smooth and there are familiar precedents. "The beauty of Songshan and Huashan, as well as the charm of nature, can be shown in a painting. After the painting is finished, the pictures people see can also be seen and reflected. As a matter of understanding, they feel the same, because in a real mountain and water.
Regarding the transcendence of the spiritual space of recumbent swimming, we can get enlightenment from Zen master Wei Xin's understanding of the third phase of landscape in Tang Dynasty. He said: "When Lao He is not in Zen, the mountains are mountains and the water is water. Seeing knowledge with your own eyes, mountains are not mountains, and water is not water. Now I must have a place to rest. According to the previous point of view, mountains are just mountains and water is just water. " ("Five Lights Meeting Yuan"). The first is to look at the mountain from the perspective of "goodness". The second is to look at the mountain from the perspective of "truth". The third is from the perspective of "beauty". It can be considered that Zong Bing's landscape refinement is the expression from "image" to "meaning" and finally to "form". The emergence of landscape painting has something in common with Zen master's perception. Before learning painting, the understanding of mountains was limited to the external image. When I first learned to draw, I saw mountains, mountains and water, which is an intuitive feeling of objects. With a certain painting theory, we can grasp it from the perspective of "truth" of landscape. Facing the object, how to move the real landscape to the screen can form a formal language to express self-emotion. There are countless landscape painters looking for this unspeakable emotional expression between landscapes. Gao Juhan thinks: "In the materialization process of landscape painting, making landscape trees form meaningful forms on plain silk can cause different emotions in the viewer's mind, and the picture has the power to replace the real scene." [Note: [America] Gao Juhan, translated by Li Yu, History of Painting in China, Taiwan Province Lions Club Book Co., Ltd., 1985, p. 29. In the pursuit of the idea of "Tao can be Tao but not constant, and fame can be name but not constant", painters feel the Tao of heaven and earth with pen and ink, and reach the spiritual realm of expressing feelings with things.
Zong Bing's observation of nature takes the form of "wandering around, preparing for a rainy day, writing in form and watching in color" to look at all things in nature with flowing eyes, which is not a fixed focus, but a pursuit of "playing the piano to make thousands of mountains ring", with musical landscape space, rather than a fixed scenic spot. China's landscape painting observes the space with the feeling of the soul, and the space consciousness expressed in the painting does not use color and light and shade to shape the real space like western realistic painting. What China painters pursue is the way to observe the universe, that is, to describe the space momentum of a hundred miles and the height of Wan Ren with a few strokes, and to achieve the image space of "lying and swimming" and "leisurely".
Third, distance: the formation of visual space theory
As to how to express the distance relationship of spatial objects through painting, China and the West have formed different perspective methods. Western landscape paintings make good use of focus perspective, while China landscape paintings make good use of scattered perspective. Our people have long discovered the most common and important sensory phenomenon in vision, that is, the near is big and the far is small, which is the visual law that people can best understand and recognize under natural conditions. Because painting has the function of recording the visual image of objective things, when dealing with the problem of distance, it basically follows the law of near-large and far-small, and transforms a one-dimensional plane into a multi-dimensional space, which is the difference between Chinese and western painting. China's classical literature put forward the concept of space long ago. As early as the Spring and Autumn Period, Confucius recorded the story of "two sons competing for grandchildren" in The Analects of Confucius. One of the children judged from visual experience that the sun is near him in the morning and evening and far away from him at noon, which shows that even children can judge the distance between objects and viewpoints. Xun Kuang in the Warring States Period wrote in Xunzi? "Jiemao" says: "Those who look at cows from the mountain are like sheep, but those who seek sheep are far bigger; Those who look at the wood at the foot of the mountain, if the wood is thousands of miles, but those who seek it are not removed, they will cover it. " Wang Chong of the later Han Dynasty wrote in Lun Heng? "Talking about Japan" talks about the record that "things are big when they are near, but small when they are far away". The ancients observed the phenomenon of "near big and far small" produced by visual perspective, and these theories had an impact on the painting space. Gu Kaizhi said in "Yuntai Mountain Map": "The mountain has a face and a shadow on its back. In fact, up and down reflect the sun to the west, and the mountains are not fine. " Zong Bing said in "Preface to Painting Landscape": "Draw three inches vertically, when the height is one kilometer, the horizontal ink is several feet, and the body is hundreds of miles away." Yao Zui's "Continued Painting" comments on Liang Xiao Ben's landscape painting "In the Square Inch, we can see the preciseness of Chihiro". Painters in this period were able to create a sense of space depth on a piece of paper with pen and ink, which made people feel far away from Wan Li in a short distance. It can be seen that the painter's understanding of the spatial law of painting is gradually improving.
In the early stage of the development of China landscape painting, the visible materials can be traced back to the brick and stone reliefs in the Eastern Han Dynasty. In the works, people, animals, houses and trees are arranged together to form a beautiful picture. For example, fishing and hunting in lotus ponds and yards. The most representative is the portrait brick in Go Shooting and Harvest. A brick is divided into two pictures. The picture above shows Shooting, which depicts the scene of shooting birds in the wild. Fish in the pond shuttled between the lotus flowers, and birds flew in the air. There are two people on the left who bow and shoot birds, focused and vivid. The picture below shows the scene of farmers harvesting. On the right side of the picture, there are two people harvesting grain with sickles, and there are three people harvesting ears of grain in the middle. A man on the left is carrying ears of wheat and a basket in his right hand. The picture shows the tension and happiness of harvest. From the perspective of screen space, the performance of flowers and trees is extremely simple and clear, and the images depicted in the screen are arranged in order from near to far. Although the scenery of this period has not yet become the object of separate description, we can know from the pictures that the method of near-big and far-small has been used in painting. However, the visual principle of "near big and far small" put forward by Zong Bing in "Preface to Painting Mountains and Rivers" has aroused widespread concern among painters. He said: "Besides, Kunlun Mountain is big, with small pupils and long eyes, so you can't gamble. If you are a few miles away, you can surround your eyes. " If you go wider, you will find it is very small. "This sentence means that Kunlun Mountain is very big, but people's pupils are very small. If you are close to the mountain painting, you can't see the whole picture. If you look back, you can see the whole mountain. This article is the first paper on landscape painting in ancient China. In his article, he talked about how to take pictures. " Today, Zhang Kun can be seen from a distance, so the shape of Lang Kun can be surrounded by square inches. "This is the near-far framing method invented by Zong Bing, which has played a positive role in promoting the spatial management of landscape painting. The attempt and discovery of putting a piece of transparent raw silk in front of your eyes to show the scenery that the viewer wants to choose is very outstanding. Liu Dun thought for a moment: "It is no accident that Zong Bing put forward the perspective space. The reasoning is to use the half-overlooking overlapping method and the far-near method to complete the arrangement of the picture space from the stone reliefs in Qin and Han Dynasties. From the data of brick and stone reliefs in Qin and Han Dynasties, it can be seen that objects are arranged in the order of near big and far small to show the depth of space. It can be seen that during the Qin and Han Dynasties, the formation of Zong Bing's perspective theory was due to the great efforts made by painters in dealing with the perspective relationship of objects. [Note: Liu Dunyuan's article "On Perspective in China's Ancient Paintings", Art History, Journal of China Academy of Fine Arts, No.4, 1988, p. 16. In fact, the painting in Qin and Han Dynasties opened the space of the picture by the method of "near the big and far from the small". Zong Bing's space thought also contains another meaning, that is, it laid the foundation for the formation of the internal structure of the landscape.
In Gu Kaizhi's work "Ode to Luoshen" in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, landscapes have begun to appear. Although it is the embellishment of meticulous figure painting, it has not formed its own style and system in technique and theory, but the spatial composition of landscape painting is relatively clear and complete, and it is also the earliest model of spatial style of landscape painting in the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty. The initial development of landscape painting reached its peak in Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties and Song Dynasties, which was related to the inheritance of traditional culture. Zong Bing first regarded landscape painting as an independent artistic language, and put forward a series of aesthetic propositions, such as landscape spatial layout and expression techniques. Zong Bing promoted landscape painting to a new height, making landscape painting the main painting theme of the later development of Chinese painting. Zong Bing's Preface to Landscape Painting occupies a very important position in the history of painting. Without the management concept of Zong Bing's painting space, landscape painting may be just a decorative object or a background, and it will not rise to the status of mainstream art.
Gu Kaizhi wrote in "Praise for His Paintings in Wei and Jin Dynasties": "People have their own strengths and weaknesses. Now, since their distance is empty to predict their rights, they cannot change their position (width and width) and misplace their strength (distance). " In The Goddess of Luofutu, the characters have reached a high level, but the proportional relationship between people and mountains is not in harmony with other scenery. Chen Nanyao's most "Continued Painting" said: "The painter is small, tastes the round fan, surrounded by mountains and rivers, a stone's throw away, and looks at Wan Li from afar, which is rigorous in argument." Xiao Ben is an early painter who can show far and near perspective in the history of painting. In his paintings, he uses the methods of "seeing the big from the small" and "from the near to the far". On the plane, he can overlook Wan Li, which is magnificent. From then on, the distance between distance and distance in landscape painting has been fully expressed, and a new understanding of the sense of space in landscape painting has been gained, which can show three-dimensional on the plane, which is a great progress in painting. In the development of the art form of landscape painting, the painting space is constantly developing in the process of dealing with distance. Such as: "Far people have no eyes, far trees have no branches, far mountains have no stones, light as eyebrows, far water has no waves, and heights are in harmony with clouds. The distant mountain shall not be connected with the near mountain, and the distant water shall not be connected with the near water. Where trees are painted, the far ones are flat and the near ones are dense. " ([Tang] Wang Wei's Landscape Theory). "Far mountains have no ridges, far waters have no traces, far forests have no leaves, far trees have no branches, far people have no eyes, and far pavilions have no foundation." (Landscape Festival in Hao Jing in the Five Dynasties). The above is the painter's perspective of objective objects from far and near, which brings different visual feelings to people. The painter paints a close-up view and leaves the distant view to the viewer to imagine. The treatment of vision makes the picture broad and the artistic conception far-reaching. In Song Dynasty, Guo put forward in Lin Gao Quan Zhi that "the mountains are not far away, but their veins are hidden", and the contrast and hiding of distant and far scenery can expand the depth of the picture. In You Chuntu written by Zhan Ziqian in Sui Dynasty, we can see the nearby hills with clear trees, while the trees on the distant hills are blurred. Combined with the spatial expression of "near big and far small" and "up and down position", the effect of mountains and rivers separated by thousands of miles is achieved. This painting is more mature than the landscape in the background of Gu Kaizhi's Luo Shen Fu. People are not as big as mountains, and water can also be used for boating. The spatial arrangement of landscape painting in Song Dynasty, the treatment of far and near scenery adopts the method of approaching reality and being far from imaginary, the close shot is to depict the image, and the long shot is to express the meaning. The vividness of objects is conducive to the interest of viewers, and the prospect is more conducive to the expression of meaning, which shows that the mastery of the size ratio of objects in painting in Song Dynasty has made a leap compared with that in Sui Dynasty.
Since the Renaissance in Europe, many masters have been engaged in the study of perspective, and Giotto, a famous oil painter, used the focus perspective to make the depicted scenery truly reappear in the picture space. However, China landscape painters did not use this focus perspective method, but adopted the expression of looking up and looking down, wandering in the wilderness, creating a landscape painting with an open realm. However, after discovering this law, the West insisted on the law that the near is big and the far is small, insisted on the positioning of the viewpoint and the visual field, and how to focus the figure's outline on the "vanishing point", that is, the "focus" on the screen, thus showing a body that conforms to the law and establishing a very strict and scientific artistic law.