In the history of fine arts, a great painter always needs to meet an opportunity to achieve a leap in understanding and expression through a way close to epiphany.
Fu Baoshi in painting
For Fu Baoshi, a master of Chinese painting, this leap undoubtedly came from the eight years of life in Shu in the 1930s and 1940s.
Looking back at the history of Chinese painting in the past hundred years, the Sichuan landscape has actually become the "creation" that brings artists the most "heart source" on the land of Shenzhou. Huang Binhong, Fu Baoshi, Lu Yushao, Li Keyan... They all found the most suitable beauty for painting and the most suitable style for expressing their personal style in the Bashan Shu water.
As Fu Baoshi said in the "Self-Introduction to the Chongqing Painting Exhibition at Noon":
If the people who painted the landscape in Sichuan were not moved, they really failed to live up to the landscape of Sichuan.
Fu Baoshi Bashan Shushui made in 1943
But why shudi landscapes and not elsewhere? There are two reasons for this:
First, sichuan is rainy and smoky, and the expression of the flowing, humid atmosphere is the weakness of traditional landscape painting; second, Sichuan's lush vegetation and rich weather, with the traditional expression of rock texture of the dotted line rubbing is always not well reflected.
Aren't these conditions and factors unfavorable to the painting of traditional landscape painting?
In the "Self-Introduction to the Chongqing Painting Exhibition at Noon", he expressed his confusion and hesitation about the traditional landscape painting method:
I am afraid that the life of Chinese painting must always be pinned on the 'line' and 'ink', which is national. It is a merit or a crime, I dare not rush to conclude, but "line" and "ink" are determined by the Chinese cultural foundation of the text, tools and materials, thousands of years cultivated into the form of "line" and "ink" on today's Chinese painting, the use of this form to paint landscapes, is it all appropriate, or partially appropriate? I don't have much experience to report.
In order to confirm this doubt and practice solution at the same time, he made a painting of "The Fog of Early Summer":
Fu Baoshi The Mist of Early Summer, painted in 1942
Observing the sense of form of this work, it is not difficult to find that this is a production with a clear experimental nature, which is completely different from the style of his previous works, so let's make a simple comparison:
Fu Baoshi Bamboo Riding a Donkey made in 1925
Fu Baoshi in "The Fog of Early Summer" purely uses the rendering method, dyeing four hillsides, in order to use the ink color contrast to form a "boneless landscape", Fu Baoshi said to himself, "My impression of this painting is that the taste of 'line' is not easy to preserve, the paper can not be eaten, it should be reprocessed", it can be seen that Fu Baoshi himself is not satisfied with the results of this experiment.
However, it is also this contradiction between the "true landscape" and the dotted line rubbing that makes Fu Baoshi and other painters have the impulse to break the shackles of the old law, so Fu Baoshi's scattered brushwork appears, and his enhanced expression of rain, water, fog and gas appears.
What is the "Loose Edge Brushwork"?
The "Scattered Edge Brushwork" is also known as the "Bouldering", that is, it is the second important breakthrough of the traditional Chinese brush method since the Southern Song Dynasty Li Tang created the "Horizontal Edge" method.
Center, flanker
Many painters, scholars, and art historians have described Fu Baoshi's "scattered brushwork", and Mr. Sharp's interpretation of Fu Baoshi's scattered style is the most accurate and close in his article "On the Beauty of Fu Baoshi's Landscape Paintings".
According to him, in order to give full play to the performance and potential of the brush, Fu Baoshi "increased the pressure when transporting the pen, pressed the pen edge upside down, the pen belly and even the pen root touched the paper, and then slightly twisted the pen shaft, the pen was scattered by itself, and the front was divided into several fronts, forming a unique pen shape - the scattered flowering pen."
Readers can feel the unique charm of this brushwork through a few GIFs:
On the basis of this brushwork, Fu Baoshi created "Xiao Xiao Twilight Rain", a landmark work that marked the establishment of Fu Baoshi's scattered edges, sweeping pen expression and the majestic poetic style of "Wind and Rain Landscape".
Fu Baoshi XiaoXiao Twilight Rain, 1945
According to Luo Shihui, when recalling the state of bouldering painting, he said: "He used to spread out the paper, rub the paper with his hands, touch it, smoke a cigarette, look at the painting paper with his eyes, as if something on the paper was found out by him. ”
This kind of vitality and unstoppable creative passion is in line with Fu Baoshi's dionysian temperament, and the large-scale flying white brush undoubtedly enriches the texture of the pen and ink, and at the same time, it also fully preserves the flying speed and hazy infiltration of the torrential rain in the mountains.
It is worth noting that in the lower right corner of the picture, a clump of pine needles and random grass pressed out with a small brush, some researchers believe that Fu Baoshi realized the scattered pen from the pine trees on the Kongo slope, and there is a certain basis for this painting.
Fu Baoshi Wangan Smoke and Rain made in 1944
The appearance of the scattered front has indeed broken through the shackles of the center forward's use of the pen, fully mobilized the sharp, abdomen and root of the pen, and generated a new aesthetic personality.
This pioneering excavation of Chinese brushwork has given the picture a different look than before, and also showed new aesthetic characteristics:
With a more free change of speed and rhythm, Sanfeng broke through the aesthetic character of "quiet" characterized by detachment, tranquility and loneliness under the influence of the traditional literati painting under the influence of zen taoist concepts, and tended to the aesthetic tendency of "moving", and because of this, Fu Baoshi loved to paint rain, painting springs and waterfalls, and called it his "unique work".
Fu Baoshi Dadi Caotang, 1945
The emergence of Fu Baoshi's scattered pen and other special techniques broadened the restrictions on the types and use of media in ancient Chinese painting programs, and at the same time continued and developed the depiction of modern moods and fluid objects such as smoke and rain, fog, and flying waterfalls.
He is well aware that there is an inherent contradiction between the abstraction of pen and ink and the reproducibility of the depiction of objects, and the unique environment of Jingangpo in Sichuan stimulates his lyrical impulse of "true landscape", and his "wind and rain landscape" has both respect for "creation" - more realistic than ancient literati painting, and the creation from the "heart source".
What we read from "Xiao Xiao Twilight Rain" is the artistic conception from ancient poetry, and in the form of pen and ink, we will feel a strong modern style.
This is also what distinguishes Fu Baoshi from other painters.
Fu Baoshi does not distinguish between the sound of springs and the sound of rain
Color Length 81.8 cm On paper Width 49.6 cm 1962
Fu Baoshi Tianchi Flying Waterfall Axis
Color Length 105.6 cm On paper Width 60 cm 1961
Fu Baoshi Mao Zedong's "Butterfly Love Flower Answer Li Shuyi" Word Meaning
Color on paper Length 137.8 Horizontal 69 1958
Fu Baoshi Pingsha fell geese
Color Length 19.8 cm on paper Width 54.3 cm 1960s
Fu Baoshi was covered in green and shocked to raise the fan surface
Color 20 cm length on paper 53.8 cm width 60s
Fu Baoshi Smoke and Rain Misty Picture Album
Color Length 34.3 cm On paper Width 45.6 cm 1964
Fu Baoshi Rain flower terrace in the rain
Color Length 51 cm Length 71.2 cm width 1950s