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Chinese Ancient Figure Painting |
Figure painting, earlier than landscape painting, birds and flowers paint-ing, mainly focuses on portraying people' s life and activities, directly reflect-ing the reality of society. Of all the types of Chinese paintings, it has the most cognitive value and instructive significance, for it not only embodies the aes-thetic consciousness of the Chinese nation, but also presents an overall view of social ideology in politics, philosophy, religion, ethics, art, etc. Chinese an-cient figure painting covers various aspects of the feudal society as far as morality and human relationships, feudal ethics and rites, historical stories, legends and fairy tales, social customs, religion, Buddhist monks and Taoist priests, pretty ladies and portraits, etc. are concerned. It involves the differ-ent figure painting techniques of fine brushwork, simple sketch, freehand brushwork, outline drawing, paint splashing, etc.
Chinese ancient figure painting, ever since it came into existence, has proved a necessity for feudalism and the feudal society, because of its didactic function. Feudal ideology, Confucious morality and virtues, the philosophy of being faithful to one' s ruler as well as the "doctrine of the mean" were all propagated in the highly harmonious form of art. It had created various kinds of sacred images and produced an aesthetic effect of beauty for the rectification of one' s mind and for one' s abstinence. Observed carefully, a strong sense of national sentiment can be perceived suffusing most of the Chinese ancient fig-ure paintings. The ancient Chinese painters used their superior painting tech-niques and rich imaginative qualities to portray social ideology, historical events and represent the spiritual and material life of people of all ranks. All their figure paintings on different subjects had the underlying purpose of teaching correct principles.
Chinese ancient figure painting conveyed Confucious aesthetic and artistic ideology. It created specific images that possessed such human virtues as "hu-manity, " "justice, " "wisdom, " "courage, " "selflessness, " and "goodness" so that one's moral sentiment could be fostered and shaped into a perfect harmo-ny of man and nature.
Chinese ancient figure painting can be traced back to the historic figure frescoes of admonitions of the Zhou Dynasty. Up to the period of the Warring States Period, the Qin and the Han dynasties, paintings based on history, re-ality, stories and activities of mythical characters emerged in large numbers. "People with Dragon and Phoenix" and "People Riding a Dragon", paintings on silk from the Warring States Period are known to be the earliest indepen-dent figure paintings in China. Many paintings on silk, frescoes, and brick and stone reliefs from the ruins of later periods indicating a flourishing period of figure paintings were excavated. The important period for figure painting development should be credited to the Wei and Jin dynasties, the Southern and Northern dynasties and the Sui and Tang dynasties. During the Wei and Jin dynasties, refined instead of sketchy paintings in figure profiling thrived through the proliferation of religious art, the emancipation of the mind, the introduction of Buddhism, the prevailing metaphysics, and the founding of a professional painter rank. The first group of figure painters represented by Gu Kaizhi and their figure painting theories contributed to the foundation of the important tradition of the Chinese figure painting. In the Tang Dynasty, the subject matter broadened. Figure painting, in bright colors and varied styles, shifted its emphasis from merely appealing to the court politics and propagat-ing feudal morality and rites to expressing the real life of the royal aristocrats, showing that art could be created to reflect the prosperity of society. Included in the figure paintings of the Tang Dynasty were not only the imposing images of emperors but also the likenesses of leisurely and carefree pretty ladies with the typical bearings of the Tang Dynasty. Painters attached great importance to expressing the character's individuality, disposition and the well-developed graceful manners. While religious painting in the Tang Dynasty became worldly, Wu Daozi brought religious figure painting to a more lively, touching and new state. Figure painting was further developed during the Five Dynas-ties(namely the later Dynasties of Liang, Tang, Jin, Han, and Zhou) and the Two Songs. (One is a state in the Zhou Dynasty, and the other is the Song Dynasty). Figures painted with fine, delicate strokes and colors became more polished as more and more imperial art academies sprang up. And outline drawing became an independent painting approach as the paintings of literati became popular. Owing to the political and economic development of the Song Dynasty, genre paintings and historical story paintings blossomed. Artists in the Song Dynasty advanced rapidly in representing social attributes expressing complicated inner feelings, and in their ability to compose a picture. The free hand figure paintings of the Zhao Xing literati in the Southern Song Dynasty emphasized aesthetics over educational function, and expressed the painter's sentiment rather than producing a life-like object. Paintings of pretty ladies, gentlemen, ancient people, etc. constituted the main part of the literary fig-ure paintings of the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties.
Over a long history of development, Chinese ancient figure painting had come into its own as an art form. Depiction of figures went beyond their for-mal beauty, penetrating into their different characters and personalities, their inner nature and social attributes, yet presented a standard for appreciation. It took advantage of expressive eyes, gestures, motions as well as important de-tails with emphasis on the distinction between the primary and the secondary, the detailed and the sketchy. To be detailed is to pay more attention to the fa-cial expression, gestures, and movements in sketching the hats, clothes, sur-roundings, and other property. In lyrical paintings, the imagery were con-trasted with the artistic conception. In narrative paintings, in either the hori-zontal scroll or the long scroll, space was sectioned according to landscape or building interiors. Events happening in the course of the time were shown by the repeated appearance of the subject figure, breaking through the limit of u-nified time and space. More attention was paid to the brush strokes in the fig-ure painting technique for which eighteen outlines were canonized to repre-sent, on one hand, the formal structure, the quality and quantity perception and the facial expression; on the other hand, created to express the painter's emotion and his style. |
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