China Popular Itineraries |
|
|
|
|
Gu Hongzhong (in the South Tang of the Five Dynasties) : Han Xizai Holding a Night Banquet |
Gu Hongzhong, born in the south of the Yangtze River, was a painter of the Southern Tang period of the Five Dynasties. Neither his birth date nor his death date is known, but he was active during the middle and later part of the 1oth century. An artist in the Southern Tang Art Academy, he gained his fame for portrait paintings. HanXizai Holding a Night Banquet is his only extant masterpiece. During the Five Dynasties, paintings on the subject of the life of the noble people took up a large proportion of figure painting. Especially the court painters, whose duty was mainly to paint for the royal nobles, made great efforts to reflect the luxurious and leisurely life of the noble ladies and their mood. Han Xizai had been the minister of the Southern Tang period, vice minister of the Ministry of War, secretary, etc. As he was rather ambi-tious, he became involved in the politics of the Southern Tang Government. He had been active in three dynasties. However, he couldn't give full play to his talent because of the internal fighting. Li Yu was helpless when he came into power. The situation became worse and he was doomed by failure. Han Xizai was so disappointed and despairing about the future of the Tang Govern-ment that he took on the behavior of a loose person, indulging himself in mu-sic, dance, drinking, and holding banquets at home. He escaped being ap-pointed. In order to have some knowledge about his life, Li Yu sent Gu Hongzhong, the painter, to his residence to make a secret observation. So Gu Hongzhong painted this picture from memory according to what he had ob-served. This is what we call a documentary figure painting based on memory.
Han Xizai Holding a Night Banquet ( picture No. 4, see p. 677 ) pre-sents five interrelated but relatively independent plots and scenes in the form of a long scroll picture story in which we can see people engaged in different activities: listening to music, watching dances, serving the guests, etc. There are over ten main characters in the picture. They keep reappearing in the five plots. The total number of the figures in the picture is 46. The majority of them were real people recorded in history, such as Han Xizai, the minister of the Southern Tang Government. The image of Han Xizai with his personality was accurately demonstrated in this picture. He appeared very detached and impressive but his gloomy and distressed mood, the result of his not being suc-cessful in his career, stands out sharply against the lively and pleasant atmo-sphere of the banquet. This is good indication of the painter's amazing obser-vation and understanding of the hero's fate and contradiction of thought. The other characters in the picture all show their state of mind by revolving around the five different plots through their expressions, movements, the coordina-tion, and relationship with each other, showing a unified environmental atmo-sphere. Of all these the uncoiled Listening to Music and the fourth segment Blowing are the best, reaching a high level in the application of the brush and color. The lines of the robes flow gracefully and softly but frugally and vigor-ously. There is flagrant contrast among the rich colors but they harmonise with each other. The patterns of the clothing are as delicate as hairs, and the objects and furnishings in the picture are ingeniously portrayed to set off the theme through contrast. Both the skill in realistic painting and the power in representation in this picture have reached a rather high level. It can be re-garded as one of the masterpieces of the Chinese ancient figure paintings on fine brush coloring. Han Xizai Holding a Night Banquet has deeper implica-tions when compared with other paintings relating to the life of the noble, since it describes the psychological contradiction of the bureaucrats and their outlook on life. |
|
