Ancient Chinese painting, what is an important characteristic?

China has thousands of years of art history, and the Chinese paintings of different periods are different in their characteristics, which are the natural flow of people's aesthetic interests.

Chinese painting was born very early, almost from the Neolithic Age, at least 7,000 years ago.

More than 6,000 years ago, the Semipo people, who lived in the eastern suburbs of today's Xi'an, already possessed a high level of artistic cultivation, and they would use natural colored ores to draw patterns of birds, flowers, fish, and insects on the embryonic pottery, and then fired it, ultimately obtaining a tool that had both practical and artistic value.

The colored pottery patterns of the Half-slope People, characterized by simplicity and naturalness, have a kind of untouched primitive beauty, and can be regarded as very representative primitive paintings in the ancient period of China.

The real sense of China appeared in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods more than 2,000 years ago, because brushes were invented, and it was more convenient for people to draw, and the efficiency of creation was greatly improved.

Painting during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods was mostly done on silk fabrics such as damask and satin, commonly known as "silk painting", and only the nobility could afford to paint. The characteristics of silk painting to "line drawing" based on the first line outlines the shape of the object, and then fill in the color inside the line, with the painting of comic strips is more similar to the painting method. When filling in the colors, the "flat painting method" is used, in which the colors are evenly applied to the shape of the object.

After Cai Lun improved the art of papermaking at the beginning of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the materials used in Chinese painting underwent another radical change. Paper had many advantages over silk, and the price advantage was undoubtedly the most popular.

However, at this time, the calligraphy and painting paper is mainly "jute paper", the characteristics of jute paper is close to rice paper, but the surface is relatively rough, there is a sense of stagnation when writing and drawing on it. Writing calligraphy is not too big an impact, when painting is not good to use. Therefore, from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Three Kingdoms, Jin Dynasty and North and South Dynasties, the development of Chinese painting is quite slow in the past 400 years, but the development of calligraphy is more rapid, the emergence of Zhang Zhi, Zhong Yao, Wang Xizhi, Wang Xianzhi, and many other masters of calligraphy.

On the other hand, the lifespan of jute paper was only 150 years, and even if there were paintings passed down at that time, they could not be seen because of the natural dissolution of the paper.

Around the end of the Sui Dynasty to the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, after generations of craftsmen continued to improve the paper, and finally invented Xuan paper, which is soft, white and delicate, these characteristics of Xuan paper are very suitable for writing and painting on it, which greatly promoted the development of the art of calligraphy and painting.

The earliest written record of Xuan paper for painting appeared at the end of the Tang Dynasty in the writings of the painting and calligraphy critic Zhang Yanyuan's book, "Record of Famous Paintings Throughout the Ages," which reads, "It is good for a good family to set up a hundred pieces of Xuan paper to be copied with the use of the method of wax.

This sentence shows that in the middle and late Tang Dynasty, it was already very common for literati to store Xuan paper and use it for painting.

From the middle and early Tang Dynasty to the Sui Dynasty, people painted on silk and paper, and many great masters of painting such as Zhan Ziqi, Wu Daozi, Li Siqun, Yan Liben, Cao Ba, Han Gan, Han Hwang, Zhang Xuan, and Zhou Fang appeared, which pushed Chinese painting to its first peak.

Chinese painting in the Sui and Tang dynasties exhibited two distinctive features.

One, the modeling was mainly realistic.

Secondly, the colors were bright, delicate and gorgeous.

During the Sui and Tang dynasties, whether it was landscape paintings, bird and flower paintings, saddle-horse paintings, or custom paintings and boundary paintings, the modeling was strictly in accordance with the proportions of the objects, and the realism was very high, for example, Han Gan's Horse Ranching Picture, Han Hwang's Five Cattle Picture, Zhang Xuan's Wu Hau Walking from the Picture, and Li Si-Xun's River Sail and Pavilion Picture, to name just a few.

In terms of coloring, the painters were both careful and bold, giving the viewer an aura of opulence. Careful because of the meticulous coloring, with a delicate brushwork a little bit of tracing up. Bold because they like to use bright colors, such as red, orange, purple, give full play to the artistic impact of color.

The reason why the Tang Dynasty paintings look rich and magnificent, elegant and noble, with self-confidence and tolerance, positive, pioneering and enterprising "Tang weather" has a lot to do.

Tang Dynasty painting is characterized by this court (court) painters and folk painters **** with the support.

To the Song Dynasty, "literati painting" gradually developed, the most important features of literati painting: the pursuit of resemblance, ignoring the resemblance of the form, weakening the color, the calligraphy brush into the painting, the importance of the pen and ink interest in the play, advocating that painters use ink and brush to express their emotions, to express the heart of the interest and aspirations, and the courtyard painting and folk painting is a completely different painting system. The system of painting is completely different from that of the Academy Painting and the folk painting.

Through the promotion of influential literati such as Su Shi, Wen Tong, Huang Tingjian, and Mi Fu, literati painting developed rapidly at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, quickly surpassing both courtyard painting and folk painting to become the mainstream of Chinese painting.

After that, in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, painters continued the characteristics of literati painting in their creations and blended the ancient with the modern, giving birth to such masters of Chinese painting as Zao Zi'ang, Wang Meng, Huang Gongwang, Ni Zan, Wen Zhengming, Xu Wei, Shitao, Bada Shanren, Jin Nong, Zheng Banqiao, and Wu Changshuo, which wrote a brilliant chapter in the history of Chinese art.