Chinese painting, referred to as "Chinese painting". It is a traditional painting art with distinctive national characteristics in my country. It uses brushes, inks and Chinese pigments to paint on special rice paper or silk, forming a unique system in the world of art. Due to the characteristics of techniques and forms of expression, Chinese painting can be divided into fine brushwork, freehand brushwork, ink and wash, and heavy color painting. Chinese painting has a long history and has formed different styles of the times during its development. Among them, the combination of painting with poetry, calligraphy and sealing is a unique feature of Chinese painting.
A good Chinese painting requires a good black and white layout plus good poetry, calligraphy and seals to perfectly display the unique beauty of a Chinese painting. Therefore, people often regard the poems, inscriptions (calligraphy) and seals on the pictures as the "three unique features" of traditional Chinese painting.
A good Chinese painting is interrelated with poetry, calligraphy, and seals and complements each other. The essence of the organic combination of painting as the main body and poetry, calligraphy and sealing is to give full play to their respective strengths, increase the depth of content and artistic realm of the work, and achieve the effect of "both form and spirit" and "vivid charm".
1. The combination of poetry and painting is a major feature of Chinese painting
Poetry and painting are two different arts. Poetry is the art of language and time, and painting is the art of shape and space. Art, they all require concise lyricism and rhythm, and pursue the creation of artistic conception to express the author's emotions and stimulate the audience's imagination and association, just as the ancients said: "Painting is difficult to paint, use poetry to compose it; reciting difficult to recite poetry , to complement it with painting. "For this reason, Chinese painting has always advocated the combination of poetry and painting, which is reflected in two aspects in painting: on the one hand, it is the integration of inner realm, that is, the poeticization of painting conception, composition, image, and color. There is no poem on it, but there is a poetic artistic conception. It is said that "there is poetry in the painting" and "painting is tangible poetry". As for writing poems on pictures, they only appeared in the Song Dynasty. The pursuit of the same realm of poetry and painting in Chinese painting extended to the pursuit of the integration of poetry and painting in the Song Dynasty. Poems were directly inscribed on the picture to form an integral part of the picture, and the content of the inscription gradually expanded to lyrics and prose. wait. When Su Dongpo of the Song Dynasty evaluated Wang Wei's poems and paintings, he said, "When you look at Mojie's paintings, there are poems in the paintings; when you taste Mojie's poems, there are paintings in the poems." It can be seen that many painters are both poets and painters.
2. Law and painting have always been integrated together throughout the ages
There is a saying in China that "a painter must be good at calligraphy." Zhao Mengfu, a famous painter in the Yuan Dynasty, once wrote a poem: "Stones are like flying white trees, and bamboos are like bamboos. If someone can understand this, they will know that calligraphy and painting are originally the same." Here "flying white" refers to a kind of dryness. Cang Bian's cursive writing style. "籀", also called Zhou script and large seal script, is the font used in the legendary "Shi Zhou Pian" and is characterized by round and calm seal script writing. "Human method" refers to the entire brushwork of calligraphy. It can be seen from the poem that he attaches great importance to calligraphy and the relationship between calligraphy and painting. He uses calligraphy to nourish painting and painting to nourish calligraphy. The two depend on each other for survival and are inseparable.
The role of calligraphy in Chinese painting is very important. The most basic reason why Chinese calligraphy can become an art lies in the particularity of Chinese characters and brushes. The brush is a traditional Chinese writing tool. It is soft and elastic, so it can write structures and stipples of different shapes and artistic conceptions such as thickness, hardness and softness, pauses, and shades. It is this special tool that makes it possible for Chinese calligraphy to become a unique art in the world.
Calligraphy places great emphasis on the importance of pen movement, focusing on the use of the pen in the lines. The same goes for painting. The methods of writing include center forward, hidden forward, back forward, side stroke, hand stroke, etc. For example: freehand painting is like Zhang Dian's wild cursive painting, while meticulous painting is like regular script. Some people even combine bamboo trunks to leaves and branches with calligraphy. Painting bamboo trunks is like writing seal script; painting bamboo branches is like writing cursive script; painting bamboo leaves is like regular script; painting bamboo knots is like writing official script. It can be seen that calligraphy and painting are inseparable. When appreciating a piece of Chinese painting, we must start from its inherent skill and see its merit by observing its shape. A good calligrapher is undoubtedly a good Chinese painter.
3. The inscription and seal play a great role in the layout of the picture.
The inscription is divided into two types: "long title" and "poor title". Those with many inscriptions are called "long inscriptions", which can be a few words, two lines of poetry, a poem, or even a longer poem. If there are few inscriptions, record the year, month, day and name, or just the name. This is called "poor money" or "short money". A style has a "style", and the position of the word, size and shape cannot be casual. The signature has the function of adjusting the focus of the picture, matching the rhythm, and complementing each other. In addition, the writing style of the inscription must be harmonious and harmonious.
For example, in Pan Tianshou's "Pomegranate", the artist's light and delicate brushwork in the inscription contrasts with the vigorous and vigorous brushwork of the painting, and sets off each other. He arranged the inscriptions in a horizontal format, divided the characters into two types: large and small, and wrote them in the upper part of the large space. In this way, the spaces on the picture were completely different, full of variety and originality. Some painters who are good at integrating calligraphy and painting often inscribe a large paragraph of text on the picture. Sometimes they inscribe several paragraphs of text in different fonts such as Xing, Seal, Li, Cao, etc., and sometimes they only inscribe a simple font size on the picture. , all of which are based on the needs of picture composition, black and white, rhythm, space and other elements, which viewers must know.
The seal comes from the inscription and signature. A small bright red seal plays an important role in the painting and is an inseparable part of the painting. Used well, it can liven up the picture. The style of the seal should be harmonious with the style of the painting, just like a first-hand painting. This requires the painter to know how to carve seals. Therefore, in Chinese paintings, painters usually engrave their own paintings, which requires the painter not only to be able to draw, but also to be able to write, to understand poetry, and to learn to engrave.
Although the seal looks small, it has a lot to say. Seal is also an art. The white text and red color make it look heavy and suitable for use in places where the sun wakes up. Zhuwenyin has less red color and appears to be light in weight. It is suitable for places with few white patches. Of course, where in the picture should be light (red seal) and where heavy (white seal) should be used, the size and shape of the seal, where to print, and how many to print, all should be considered carefully based on the overall needs.
The seals used in traditional Chinese painting generally include name seals and leisure seals. Name stamps are divided into name stamps and nickname stamps, which are usually printed below the artist's name or nickname. Xianzhang is a seal with poems or idioms inscribed on it. It is divided into "pressing corner seal" and "chaizhou seal". The corner stamp is usually stamped on the lower corner of the frame. There is a chapeau in the upper right corner of the calligraphy and painting, and the shape is mostly a vertical rectangle, echoing the name stamp in the lower left corner.
Although a good ink painting can be divided into six colors, if it can be stamped with a bright red seal, it will be even more interesting. Another example is when Pan Tianshou writes lotus flowers, he often adds seals in the gaps in the middle of the painting, so as to tighten the painting and create a connection between the spirit and the meaning. Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty liked to write densely packed inscriptions and seals in endless editions, which greatly affected the beauty of his works. Many people who are new to Chinese painting do not know the importance of the seal's seal position, which makes the seal's place inconsistent with the painting.
IV. Summary
The application of poetry and calligraphy seals is an important component of the national style of Chinese painting. How to apply poetry and calligraphy seals well so that the three can be organically combined and dialectically unified. The icing on the cake for Chinese painting. It is also an important task for those engaged in traditional Chinese painting to continuously enrich and develop the "three unique arts" of Chinese painting, poetry, calligraphy and sealing, and to carry them forward.
(Author’s unit: Ningxia Yanchi County Library)