Wen Zhengming, who resigned his official post and returned to his hometown in 1527, drew a circle outside Suzhou in the spring of that year, and gathered a group of literati, where the art circle in Jiangnan rose. Wen Zhengming can be called the most important leading figure of the "Wumen School", the spiritual leader of the Jiangnan art circle 500 years ago.
The Wumen school of painting is generally believed to have begun in Shen Zhou and became in Wen Zhengming. Wen Zhengming specializes in hermit landscape paintings that are clean and deep and beautiful. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the "Wu School" gradually replaced the position of court painting and the "Zhejiang School" under his leadership.
He dominated the Jiangnan literary circle for more than thirty years during the Jiajing period, which not only revitalized the Wumen school, but also changed the ecology of the entire art circle at that time, making the art circle evolve from the thick lines of the "Zhejiang school period" to the colorful "Wumen period".
《Huishan Tea Party Map》
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" > 50 years of nostalgia for the world, and finally disillusioned in the officialdom</h1>
Despair is sometimes the key to opening another door, and the desperate Wen Zhengming is like this. The so-called political ideal of helping the people through the world is only the values and ideals imposed on Wen Zhengming and the literati of his time by the outside world, and being a reclusive literati who swims in the landscape is in line with the hearts of Wen Zhengming and his comrades.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the royals, nobles, and clans headed by Zhu Yuanzhang were all born in the poorest lower class, and they could not appreciate the introverted, subtle, and personally sad literati painting style at the end of the Yuan Dynasty. Emperors and aristocrats who were about to win the world liked magnificent and fierce paintings. With the support of the royal family and the nobility, the majestic atmosphere, thick ink rendering, strong and majestic, and unrestrained Zhejiang school painting occupied the mainstream position in the painting world.
In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the Zhejiang school gradually showed a decline. One of the reasons for the decline of the Zhejiang school is that the talent of the Zhejiang school painters has withered. The second is that the power of literati painters led by Wen Zhengming gradually controlled the entire art circle. The aesthetic interest of the entire cultural circle has undergone a fundamental change under the influence of the Wumen School.
Wen Zhengming,Ming Bi (名璧), courtesy name Zhengming ,字征明,born in a family of officials and eunuchs, entered the dynasty as an official, and was the highest ideal of this Confucian literati. But he took ten township exams, all of which failed, and at the age of 53, he had not yet passed the examination. In the second year of Jiajing, on the recommendation of his father's old friend, Wen Zhengming entered the Hanlin Academy.
《A Thousand Forests Dragging Staff Diagram》
In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, for the civilian officials on the road, painting was after all a side road. In the three years that Wen Zhengming was in Hanlin Academy, he painted only 11 paintings. His life at Hanlin Academy was also unpleasant, and the political struggle was far more brutal and complicated than he had imagined. Wen Zhengming was once ridiculed by the two leaders in the Hanlin Academy, when did the Hanlin Academy become a painting academy? The painters were recruited.
Wen Zhengming only stayed in Beijing for 3 years and 9 months. The Confucian ideals that have been cherished for 50 years have finally been shattered in the official power struggle. After resigning from the government, Wen Zhengming's outlook on life has completely changed, and he no longer has the luxury of showing his ambitions in politics. At the age of 58, he returned to his hometown in Suzhou and began his life of seclusion, devoting himself to the creation of literati paintings.
He once said:
The capital city in February according to the march, this day to stop the cloud a relief. The road is as good as the hometown, and the piano book can be returned by the owner. Having passed the age of sorrow, he dared to ask Bishan when he dared to bear the light. Pepsi does not sleep beautifully, and the rain is spotted during the yellow flower season."
At this time, Wen Zhengming's pen name had spread all over the world, and people who bought him Danqing flocked to him, so that "Haiyu admired, and The Silk Mountains were accumulated". However, due to his own personality, he never sold paintings to the likes of the powerful, did not seek money and fame, which was the concept of human life that he pursued.
《Tea Tasting Map》
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="49" > inherits the style of his master Shen Zhou, presenting a thick and detailed style</h1>
Shen Zhou's painting style has been summarized by painting historians as coarse shen and fine shen, and his disciple Wen Zhengming also has two types of painting styles in the history of painting, "coarse text" and "fine text".
At the age of 26, after Wen Zhengming visited Shen Zhoumen, his painting techniques and realm began to advance by leaps and bounds. In terms of painting style, like his teacher Shen Zhou, he draws a lot of nourishment in his creation. The paintings not only have the personality and lyrical painting style of the painters of the Yuan Dynasty, but also the literati painting tradition of the Fifth Tang Dynasty and the Northern Song Dynasty. This kind of cross-era reference to the paintings of the ancients constitutes the characteristics of Wen Zhengming's paintings.
Wen Zhengming's creation of "rough text" is also the stage of the "revival" of the socio-economic and civic classes, and he urgently needs fresh blood to cater to the aesthetics of people during the revival period. The quiet, lonely, and cold in traditional literati paintings are mostly the emotional tones that the literati turn to seek inner peace after being frustrated in the official arena. The atmosphere of human liberation injected new vitality into the urban life of the Ming Dynasty and the literati paintings, and they began to have an interest in real life.
His "coarse text" paintings are mainly derived from Shen Zhou and the painters of the Yuan Dynasty, the painting method is more open, the pen is also good at thick ink drying, the lines are more white, the pen speed is faster, hairy, astringent, clumsy, heavy, those dry pen light ink lines are very varied combination. This kind of painting works originating from the Yuan Fourth Family and the Fifth Dynasty "Dong Ju" integrate mostly the emotions of the ancients, the specific innovative elements are not many, and the inheritance of the rules makes Wen Zhengming's works contain not many personalities and characteristics.
"Imitation of Miyun Mountain Scroll"
There is an inscription at the end of the volume, the original "Mi Yun Shan Picture Scroll" is the spiritual embodiment of Mi's artist's natural interest, and this painting is not very similar to his Mi's painting style, and the brush and ink in the painting will exert the aesthetic realm of "Yi" to the extreme. Compared with this one, Wen Zhengming's other paintings are slightly restrained, and the combination of rigorous law and simplicity, vigor and freedom is perfect. Mainly due to character or adherence to personal principles. This painting is old and spicy with a pen and rich in ink color changes, which took three years to make it a rare rough text masterpiece of Wen Zhengming.
"Guanshan Snow Map"
This painting uses the technique of relying on the words and aspirations of the object, and uses the snow scene to express the noble and pure heart. The composition of the picture is magnificent and imposing. Although attention is paid to the depiction of details, it is not cumbersome. The use of cinnabar and floral blue to dye houses, maple leaves, and the characters' clothing, trees, and cliffs form a sharp contrast, showing a kind of vitality and interest. Almost all of the pictures are drawn in a line, which is quite the empty and leisurely state described by Sikong Tu.
《Ancient Wood Cold Spring Map》
Wen Zhengming's rough-text style paintings made by the 80-year-old are more vigorous and the ink method tends to be smooth compared to Shen Zhou's rough shen, and the left half of the picture depicts a pine coiled on a stone, climbing upwards, occupying two-thirds of the picture. The right half of the picture is a waterfall flowing down, and the moss on the cliffs on both sides is swaying vigorously. The combination of pine trees, stones and waterfalls makes the overall picture majestic and quite Confucian.
Wen Zheng changed the style of "coarse text" painting to "fine text" in the next year, and this period also became the peak period for Wen Zhengming to create fine text paintings.
Wen Zheng had painted two "True Appreciation Zhai Picture Scrolls" tomorrow night, both of which belonged to the fine text style works, the picture of pine cypress, green bamboo, Xiqiao, Taihu stone set off the master's integrity and conduct and elegant living conditions, the characters with vitality depicted in the picture and the dense and deep pine and stone bamboo on the right side are real, and the two white walls of the middle study constitute a virtual, so that the overall set and pen of the picture are left and right, and the virtual reality is between the virtual and the real, which is a typical "fine text" work.
The painting method of the water pavilion and pavilion painting of Wen Zhengming Garden is to directly absorb the "boundary painting" painting method of song dynasty painters Guo Xi and Liu Songnian, and express the structure of the building with a rigorous attitude. But he was more influenced by Zhao Ziang, his pen was fine and strong, calm and quiet, and his turquoise color was not as strong, loud and heavy as the courtyard body painting, but light and elegant, ancient and clean. Due to the relatively thin color, mineral pigments such as stone blue, stone green and ochre are not able to hide the performance of the line. This combination of this kind of green and green color painting technique originating from Zhao Ziang and the fine text painting method enables Wen Zhengming to delicately express the subtle details of the real life he loves, get rid of the painting style of the Literati painting "Yi Brush Cursive Grass" in the Yuan Dynasty, and the painting works contain the feelings of the literati in the courtyard paintings, which opens up a precedent for the era of combining literature and academy.
《Orchid Bamboo Diagram》
epilogue:
Wen Zhengming has both the rough style of traditional literati pen and ink and the style of fine text with distinct personality. He also tried the unbridled flamboyant style of "MiJia Ink" more than once, which promoted the progress of freehand flower and bird painting. His freehand brushwork of trees, stones, wenxiu orchids, ink dripping, dots of ink flowers and plants, all paved the way for the emergence of the ink freehand painting school in later generations.
——END