Historical Development Before the Song Dynasty The origin of literati painting can be traced back to the Han Dynasty. Zhang Heng and Cai Yong both had painting names. Although the paintings have not been handed down, they are recorded in classics. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Yao Zui's "not learning to be a human being, just entertaining himself" became the central theme of literati paintings. It made literati of all ages respect it as the purpose of painting. Zong Bing used mountains and rivers to clarify his ambition, "to observe the Tao with a clear mind, and to lie down and swim around". It fully reflects the literati's self-entertainment mentality. Poetry was popular in the Tang Dynasty, and the great poet Wang Wei incorporated poetry into paintings. Later generations regarded him as the originator of literati painting. His paintings became models for later generations of literati painters. There is painting within the poem, and there is poetry within the painting. It has become a common practice and has been passed down from generation to generation. Before the Song Dynasty, Chinese painting had developed significantly, and the flower-and-bird paintings of "Three Family Landscapes" and "Xu Huang Tiyi" appeared. Song Dynasty The Royal Academy of Painting was established in the Song Dynasty. According to Deng Chun, the author of "Hua Ji", Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty personally presided over the painting academy, which emphasized "shape resemblance" and "standards". Standards meant learning from tradition, and shape similarity meant reproducing objective things in a true and detailed manner. Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty took realism and resemblance as his dominant ideas and developed a style of fine craftsmanship. The above-mentioned painting styles of the Xuanhe Painting Academy continued to develop in the Shaoxing Painting Academy of the Southern Song Dynasty. Painters pursued realistic images and refined compositions. Generally speaking, the court paintings of the two Song Dynasties pursued a high degree of "realism". Some art historians call the court paintings of the Two Song Dynasties "the pinnacle of oriental realism art". When realistic art develops to its extreme, it can easily go the other way. Some painters with extensive cultural accomplishments in the Song Dynasty discovered this shortcoming, and took a new approach in theory and practice, proposing the theory of literati painting for the first time. Su Shi was the first to comprehensively clarify the theory of literati painting, which played a decisive role in the formation of the literati painting system. First of all, he put forward the concept of "scholar paintings", "Looking at the paintings of scholars is like reading the horses in the world, and taking what they feel. But if you are a painter, you often only use the whip and the fur in the trough, without any subsequent development. You can only read a few feet before getting tired." ("Dongpo's Postscript to Song Dynasty Han Jie Paintings"). Secondly, he elevated the historical status of the painter Wang Wei and showed that he was a scholar painter and a professional painter. The wish to separate from the painter): "Although Wu Sheng is wonderful, he still judges it based on his painting skills. Mojie got it outside the image, just like the immortal Ge Xie Longfan." (Fengxiang Eight Views? Painting by Wang Wei and Wu Daozi) Once again, he advocated poetic and painting style The literati painting style is opposed to the painter's style that completely pursues similarity. "When you taste Mojie's poems, there are paintings in the poems. When you look at Mojie's paintings, there are poems in the paintings." From the perspective of painting practice, Su Shi's "Withered Trees and Strange Rocks" can be Seeing his aesthetic practice, Wen Tong and Su Shi also created the "dead wood, bamboo and stone" literati painting theme. The "white painting" creatively developed into white drawing. This kind of lines separated from color emphasizes calligraphy skills and abstract aesthetic taste, and is more in line with the aesthetic standards of literati. and "rice dot cracking", which marked the transition from simple to dense landscape painting. It was inherited and developed by Gao Kegong in the early Yuan Dynasty, and had a huge impact on literati paintings in the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. The literati in the Yuan Dynasty were in a very humble situation, and literati and officials gave up their official career and became sparse. In the Song Dynasty, literati paintings, which mainly served as the spare time cultural life of officials and literati, began to be transferred more and more into the hands of literati, and became their way to transcend the boring life and return to nature. The landscape in the artist's heart embodies the artist's ideal of leaving the world. , blending into the painter's free state of mind that was lost in nature, and also into the helpless depression and indifference. As the Yuan rulers absorbed the survivors of the Song Dynasty to participate in the construction of political power and culture, in the artistic exchanges between North and South America, there emerged paintings that influenced a generation of changes. Zhao Mengfu of the style. If Su Shi is an active advocate of literati painting, then Zhao Mengfu is the leader of the literati painting style in the Kaiyuan Dynasty. "It has ancient meanings" and "calligraphy and painting have the same origin", which laid a theoretical foundation for the creation of literati paintings; Dong Qichang said: "Zhao Wenmin (Zhao Mengfu) asked Qian Shunju (Qian Xuan) about painting, how can it be called morale? Qian said: "Li Ti Er, the history of painting can distinguish it, it can fly without ink, otherwise it will fall into the wrong path, and the more you work, the farther you will go." "It is also extended to: "When a scholar paints, he should use cursive script to mark the strange characters. According to the law, the trees are like bent iron, the mountains are like painted sand, and the sweet and vulgar paths are cut off, which is for morale. They all attach great importance to introducing the pen and ink flavor of calligraphy into painting, and the outlines of lines also have the elegant style of literati. In the practice of painting in the Yuan Dynasty, scholar-official painters represented by Zhao Mengfu and Gao Kegong in the early Yuan Dynasty advocated restoration, returning to the traditions of the Tang and Northern Song Dynasties, and advocated using calligraphy brushstrokes in paintings. Therefore, they developed a Yuan style that emphasized rhyme, light rhythm, and focused on subjective lyricism. Painting style. Painters such as Huang Gongwang, Wang Meng, Ni Zan, the Wuzhen Four, and Zhu Derun in the middle and late Yuan Dynasty promoted the style of literati painting, promoted the development of the painting world with the purpose of expressing their aspirations through freehand paintings, and reflected the reclusiveness of passive escapism. Landscapes, as well as themes such as plum, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum, pine, and stone that symbolize a noble and steadfast personality, are widely popular. Ni Yunlin, its representative figure, has a representative literati painting theory: "The remaining bamboos are used to describe the breath in the chest. How can we compare their similarities and differences, the number and sparseness of the leaves, the slant and straightness of the branches! Or it may be painted over for a long time. , Others regard hemp as reed, and servants cannot argue that it is bamboo. It is really helpless for anyone to see it." (Ni Zan: "Inscribed on Zhang Yizhong's Painting of Bamboo") The typical style of literati landscape painting was thus formed. In the early Ming Dynasty, painters were divided into two schools. One school was loyal to the tradition of literati painting in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and the other was the retro school, that is, Dai Jin and Wu Wei who inherited the "Ma Xia" style landscape painting tradition of the Southern Song Dynasty in the Royal Painting Academy revived in the early Ming Dynasty. et al.
However, the literati paintings of the Ming Dynasty represented by the "Wumen School" swept away the "courtyard" paintings of the "restoration" and pushed the literati ink painting style established by the Yuan people to a higher stage. Its main figures are Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, Tang Yinyu Qiu Ying. Most of the main members of the Wu School of painters were famous literati who excelled in poetry, calligraphy and painting. They were sensitive to or experienced the dangers of official career, so they were indifferent to official career, wandering in the forest, amusing themselves with poetry, calligraphy and painting. They valued interest, refined pen and ink, and inherited The Yuan people's painting tradition of "morale" expresses their own character and feelings. The emergence of Dong Qichang in the late Ming Dynasty opened up a new realm of literati landscape painting. At this point, literati painting has matured both in practice and theory, and Dong Qichang summarized it, thus bringing the traditional Chinese landscape painting, with literati painting as its main feature, to a fully mature state. Dong Qichang's greatest influence on painting is that he proposed the theories of "Northern and Southern School" and "literati painting" of landscape painting: literati painting began with Wang Youcheng, followed by Dong Yuan, Seng Juran, Li Cheng, and Fan Kuan, and Li Longmian, Wang Jinqing, Minangong and Hu'er all came from Dong Ju. Huang Zijiu, Wang Shuming, Ni Yunzhen and Wu Zhonggui were all the four great masters of the Yuan Dynasty. Wu Chaowen and Shen Ze took over the mantle. Ruoma and Xia, as well as Li Tang and Liu Songnian, are also members of General Li's sect, and they are not Cao Yixue. ("Essays on Painting a Zen Room? Source of Painting") The Northern and Southern Schools use Zen as a metaphor for painting, borrowing the characteristics of Zen Buddhism's "graduation from south to north" to compare landscape paintings. Southern School paintings advocate morale, simplicity, and emphasis on brushwork, while Northern School paintings are Painting skills and resemblance are emphasized; Northern and Southern sects emphasize the concept of literati painting and sort out its sect system. Judging from Dong Qichang's own painting practice, this means integrating calligraphy skills into painting practice. "Scholars should paint with the method of cursive and strange characters"; the charm of pen and ink replaces the principle of modeling. Dong Qichang also emphasized the "morale" of literati paintings. Dong Qichang's theory of Northern and Southern Buddhism and his painting practice nurtured a large number of landscape painters in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the best of whom should be Wu Yun, the "Four Kings" known in the history of painting. The Four Kings drew on Dong Qichang's theory of the Northern and Southern Schools to promote and introduce the Southern School movement of landscape painting. They systematically summarized the creative practice of the Southern School paintings in the name of imitating the past. In addition to the orthodox painting schools of the Four Kings, there is also the innovative school represented by Shi Tao, Bada Shanren and the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou. Bada Shanren's conciseness and Shi Tao's uniqueness. But in essence, although the paintings of the Four Kings, Shi Tao, Bada Shanren and others are different, they are all designed to express their respective tastes and unique personalities. Therefore, the Four Kings School and Shi Tao are two types of literati paintings. One path is to summarize and refine from creative practice and move Chinese painting toward stylization; the other path is to continue artistic experiments and bold innovations in brush and ink in order to further develop. Both have significant historical achievements. It reflects the dialectical relationship between change and inheritance. Qing Dynasty The Qing Dynasty reached the peak period of literati painting, and many top literati painters emerged, the most prominent of which were the "Four Monks". Among the "Four Monks", Bada Shanren and Shi Tao were the most prominent. As remnants of the late Ming Dynasty, they expressed the pain of the destruction of their country and family in their calligraphy and paintings. Their eight brushstrokes were unbridled, indulgent, concise and concise, with exaggerated shapes and cold artistic conceptions. Shi Tao worked hard to observe nature, and despised the painters who followed the same pace. He advocated that "the brush and ink should follow the times", "the law should be self-established", and "search all the strange peaks to make drafts" in the face of life. His ideas had a profound influence on later generations of "Yangzhou Painting School", "Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou", Xu Gu, Zhao Zhiqian, Ren Bonian, Wu Changshuo, etc. Modern times Since modern times, there have been three debates about Chinese painting. The core issue is how to treat traditional Chinese painting, which is characterized by literati painting, whether to inherit or abandon it, whether to westernize or completely inherit the tradition. In the first debate, Kang Youwei, Chen Duxiu and others demanded an art revolution and the complete use of Western realistic techniques to transform painting, while Chen Shizeng and others defended the status and value of Chinese literati painting and published an article "The Value of Literati Painting", which Chinese literati paintings have been theoretically and systematically summarized and explained. The second time was in the 1940s and 1950s when Xu Beihong proposed that "drawing is the basis of all plastic arts" and advocated that the study of Chinese painting in art schools must start with sketching. Pan Tianshou and others advocated the restoration of Chinese painting departments and that Chinese painting should get rid of Independent development and teaching influenced by Western painting. The third time was since the 1980s, when Wu Guanzhong put forward the concept of modern painting and revolutionized Chinese painting. From the perspective of creative practice, modern Chinese painting has three paths, and each has produced masters. The first is Wu Changshuo, Qi Baishi, Huang Binhong, and Lu Yanshao, who completely inherited traditional painting and continued to explore and innovate; the second is Liu Haisu, Pan Tianshou, and Li Keran, who are based on traditional Chinese painting and learn from Western painting techniques; the third is those who adopt Western painting techniques. Xu Beihong and Lin Fengmian also integrate various Chinese and Western schools. Representative Figures There are many contemporary painters in my country who are engaged in the creation of literati paintings and have achieved certain achievements, such as: Bian Pingshan, Zhu Xinjian, Wang Heping, Zhao Beixin, Beiyu, Yiran, Wang Weixin, etc.