What is the style and development of figure painting in Tang Dynasty?

From Sui Dynasty to Tang Dynasty, China's painting art gradually entered a prosperous stage. Sui dynasty has the function of connecting the past with the future, and Tang dynasty gradually formed its own style, and figure painting made brilliant achievements, and landscape painting and flower-and-bird painting also matured one after another. Many famous artists have emerged in the painting world, each with its own characteristics. The mid-Tang Dynasty is an unprecedented and prosperous era in the history of China's painting development, and it is also an era with a brand-new style. Religious paintings turned to secularization, and the theme turned to major political events at that time. The combination of painting methods in different regions and the interaction of Central Plains style and Western Region style have produced a very popular new style. The Central Plains style figure painting, represented by Yan, inherited the traditions of the Southern and Northern Dynasties and Zhang Sengyou, and developed in grasping the figure modeling and temperament, with elegant colors. Realistic women, who are fashionable in obesity, come into the picture. The portraits of ladies, represented by Wu Daozi and Natalie, have changed from depicting political events in the early Tang Dynasty to depicting daily life. Their shapes are more accurate and vivid, and they have surpassed previous painters in psychological description and detail description. The paintings in the early Tang Dynasty were mainly religious Buddha statues and noble figure paintings. Famous artists include Yan Lide and Yan Brothers. The existing Map of Emperor Taizong and the Map of Emperors in Past Dynasties are both representative works of Yan.

After the prosperous Tang Dynasty, with the development of the civilian landlord economy, the subject matter was greatly broadened and the painting method was also created. Figure painting began to pay attention to secular life, and landscape painting became more and more prosperous. The most successful painter is Wu Daozi (also known as Wu Daozi). He is a painter with high attainments in figure painting and landscape painting. He is known as a "painting saint". The existing Born of Gautama Buddha is said to be his work. In terms of painting skills, Wu Daozi created the brushwork of water shield strips in addition to the traditional orchid leaf painting and western iron line painting. He also developed the shading method (that is, the concave-convex method) used by Zhang Sangyou in the Liang Dynasty, and applied different colors to the burned ink marks to distinguish the shades and make the painting full of three-dimensional sense. Li Sixun and Li Zhaodao are famous for painting gold and blue landscapes. They are the ancestors of the northern landscape painting school, with colorful, meticulous description and realistic scenery. The poet Wang Wei created ink landscape painting. His landscape paintings are exquisite, elegant and poetic. He is the ancestor of the Southern School landscape painting, which has a great influence on later generations. The painting in the middle and late Tang Dynasty, on the one hand, perfected the style of the middle Tang Dynasty, on the other hand, opened up new fields. During the Five Dynasties, the subject matter of figure painting became wider and wider, and religious myths, historical stories and literati life all became the subject matter of description. Painters pay attention to the description of facial expressions and psychology of characters, and their ability of vivid description has improved. In terms of technical style, it develops in two major directions: meticulous coloring pens are more varied and richer in color tones than those in the Tang Dynasty; In addition to the deformation and development of ink painting, there is also freehand brushwork of ink painting.

Chinese painting has a long history. As early as 2000 years ago, silk paintings appeared in the Warring States period, before which there were primitive rock paintings and painted pottery paintings. These early paintings laid the foundation for later Chinese paintings to take lines as the main modeling means. During the Han, Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the society changed rapidly from a stable unity to a split, and the impact and integration of foreign culture and local culture made painting mainly religious, while local historical figures and literary works took a certain proportion, and landscape painting and flower-and-bird painting also sprouted at this time. At the same time, consciously grasp painting in theory and put forward evaluation criteria. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, social economy and culture were highly prosperous, and painting also showed all-round prosperity. Landscape painting and flower-and-bird painting have matured, religious painting has reached its peak, and there has been a tendency of secularization; Portraits mainly show aristocratic life, with characters with characteristics of the times. By the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty, it was more mature and prosperous, figure painting had turned to depicting secular life, religious painting had gradually declined, and landscape painting and flower-and-bird painting had become the mainstream of painting. The appearance of literati painting and its development in later generations greatly enriched the creative concept and expression method of Chinese painting. During the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, ink and wash landscapes and freehand brushwork flowers and birds got outstanding development. Literati painting and genre painting have become the mainstream of Chinese painting. With the gradual stability of social economy and unprecedented prosperity in the field of culture and art, many great painters who love life and admire art have emerged. Painters of all ages have created famous paintings handed down from generation to generation.

Sketch is the earliest and simplest form of human painting. In ancient China, it was called "line drawing" or "line drawing". For example, the two earliest silk paintings unearthed from Chu tombs in the Warring States period are represented by sketches. Early line drawing techniques were mainly based on uniform and smooth lines. It was not until Wu Daozi in the Tang Dynasty that the line drawing developed to the change of thickness, which could vividly show the sense of movement and thickness of clothes pleats. Li, a painter in the Northern Song Dynasty, can be said to be a representative figure of line drawing. The picture below is Li's "Wei Mo Yanjiao Map", which shows the characteristics of lines to a perfect degree. In the Five Dynasties, Shi Ke's "Two Ancestors' Mind-regulating Map" used the brushwork of weeds to depict works with profound Zen meaning. Liang Kai, a painter in the Southern Song Dynasty, developed figure painting with reduced strokes, created a large number of splash-ink methods before starting the trend, and became a representative painter of freehand figure painting. His works "Painting the Immortal with Splash Ink" and "Li Taibai's Singing Painting" both use bold and concise pen and ink, vividly showing the charm of the characters. Since the Eight Eccentrics in modern Yangzhou, there have been many painters who are good at freehand brushwork figure painting in ink and wash, and gradually formed a major trend of figure painting in China. When drawing freehand figures, the original paper should be used. Usually, outline the outline gently on the drawing paper with charcoal pen (if you are skilled, you don't need to tick the outline with charcoal pen), then dip in ink to draw the main line first, and then draw the sub-lines and colors gradually, so as not to undermine the overall unity.

China figure painting has a long history. According to records, there were murals in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. Gu Kaizhi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty specializes in figure painting, and China's painting is the first one in the world to put forward the idea of "writing God with form". Yan was also good at figure painting in Tang Dynasty. And Wu Daozi, Han Wo and so on. He has made outstanding contributions to figure painting. After the Tang Dynasty, there were many painters who painted figure paintings, and there were all previous dynasties. China's figure painting is a major branch of Chinese painting, which appeared earlier than landscape painting and flower-and-bird painting. Generally, it can be divided into Taoist painting, lady painting, portrait painting, genre painting and historical story painting. Figure painting strives to portray the character's personality vividly, with vivid charm and both form and spirit. His vivid techniques are often reflected in the environment, atmosphere, characters, and the performance of characters in dynamic rendering. Therefore, Chinese painting is also called "vivid" in theory. The famous figure paintings in the past dynasties include Gu Kaizhi's The Goddess of Luo in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Wen Yuan in the Tang Dynasty, Han Xizai's Banquet in the Southern Tang Dynasty, Wei Mo by Li in the Northern Song Dynasty, Wei Tu by Li Baixing in the Southern Song Dynasty, Yin Tu by Li Baixing and Yang Zhuxi by Liang Kai in the Yuan Dynasty. In modern times, it emphasized "imitating the law" and absorbed western techniques, and developed in modeling and color distribution.

China's figure painting advocates describing the spirit with form, which has both form and spirit. Grasp the vivid eyes, gestures, postures and important details, and emphasize the facial expressions with clear priorities and rough details, which convey feelings but are slightly in clothes, and the details are in people's activities and their expressions and reactions but slightly in environmental description. In terms of the relationship between characters' activities and environmental scenery, lyric works often set off the characters' modality by creating an artistic atmosphere. Narrative works are especially good at dividing space from environmental scenery or indoor furnishings in the form of banners or long scrolls, and using the method of repeated appearance of main characters to describe events in the process of time one by one, breaking through the limitation of unifying time and space. The pen and ink skills and techniques used in figure painting pay more attention to the basic role of brushwork in meticulous color setting, line drawing and small freehand brushwork, thus creating eighteen brushworks. On the one hand, brushwork or description obeys the structural texture, sense of quantity and expression of the image, on the other hand, it also conveys the author's feelings and embodies the author's personal style. Freehand figure painting, pen and ink use each other. There is ink in the pen, pen in the ink and pen on the paper. It is not only vivid, but also lyrical and vivid, and it also shows personal style, which is far more difficult than landscape flower-and-bird painting. Portraits of people, known as music and pleasure maps, always put people in the specific scenery that is the easiest to express their temperament and personality, which is different from ordinary portraits. In the combination of color application and poetry printing, figure painting has the characteristics of general Chinese painting.

In China's traditional painting, the object of creation of figure painting and figure painting is people, and both take objective people as observation objects and creative materials. However, when it is transformed into an artistic image, portrait painting has more realistic and specific requirements than figure painting. First of all, portraits emphasize authenticity. Portrait must depict an objective, concrete and concrete person, a real person who really exists in real life or history. Figure painting can create non-specific, typed and even fictional characters through generalization, synthesis and even imagination. Ancient portrait painters in China attached great importance to "real people". In ancient times, they called portraits "portraits", "portraits" and "shadow writing". Many theories of portrait painting are based on observing and depicting real people. For example, Gu Kaizhi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty said that "the reality and the reality coexist", Sheikh in the Southern Qi Dynasty said "the pictographic representation of things", Su Shi's "taking pictures under the lamp" in the Song Dynasty, Wang Duo's "the secret of portraits" in the Yuan Dynasty and Jiang Ji's "the method of taking the gods" in the Qing Dynasty. The social function and function of portrait painting is mainly to shoot real people, reproduce objective reality, give play to cognitive function, and at the same time serve as images for commemoration, sacrifice and warning to achieve the purpose of education. Zhang Tang and Yan Yuan pointed out in History of Famous Paintings: "Loyalty and filial piety are all in Yuntai. Those who are fierce and respected all go to the Lin Pavilion. Seeing good is enough to abstain from evil, and seeing evil is enough to think good. Leave it to the description, and it's Zhao Shengde's business. Inheriting the past has its successes or failures. " Figure painting requires "likeness" (2) Painting method and expression method of figure painting: In order to draw a good figure painting, besides inheriting the tradition, we must also understand and study the basic shape, proportion, anatomical structure and the changing law of human movement, so as to accurately shape and express the shape and spirit of the figure. There are several ways to express characters, each with its own advantages, such as line drawing, cross filling, ink splashing, cross dyeing and so on.

Six Methods of Painting was written by Sheikh, a painter and art theorist in the 5th century A.D., and recorded in the preface of his book Catalogue of Ancient Paintings. The six methods mentioned are:

So is vivid charm. One way is to express vividly, and the other way is to express the painter's character or use pen and ink skillfully.

The same is true of using a pen in the bone method, that is, the skill of using a pen should have "bone strength" when expressing the poke, which is related to the inseparable relationship between calligraphy and painting at that time.

The same is true of the pictograph of an object, which is to feel the structure of the object and then draw the shape of the object.

It is also right to use class coloring, that is, according to the color of the object itself, add appropriate tones to show a sense of hierarchy in the work.

The business post is also thinking about the composition and depth of the work.

The same is true of copying, that is, adding or deleting one's own draft, and then drawing it again to complete the work. In addition, it also refers to learning by imitating ancient works.

Ink painting has its own obvious characteristics. Traditional ink painting, according to the ancient paintings of Sheikh in the Southern Dynasties;

Pay attention to "vivid charm", not stick to the appearance of the object, but emphasize the expression of the author's subjective interest. Chinese painting emphasizes "expressive form" and pursues a feeling that "beauty lies between similarity and difference"

Pay attention to the charm of pen and ink, and the requirements for brushwork are: flat, round, staying, heavy and changeable. Ink method requires ink to be divided into five colors, thick, light, broken, splashed, dyed, burnt and lingering.

Pay attention to the "brush bone method", don't perspective the focus, and don't influence the environment on the light color change of the object.

Pay attention to the blank layout and the "momentum" of the object.

It can be said that western painting is an art of "reappearance" and Chinese painting is an art of "expression". Chinese painting is not just a stippling sketch on rice paper. Chinese painting is to express "verve" and "realm", which is actually the final expression of a systematic ideological integration. Meaning, knowledge and spirit are complete, poetry, book and painting are integrated, poetry is the meaning of painting, and book is the bone of painting. The familiarity of technology can be manifested in the chest; Outside the picture, you can leave your thoughts, which is also the essence of judging the artistic value of China's traditional paintings and calligraphy works. Chinese painting embodies the traditional philosophy and aesthetics of the Chinese nation in terms of observation and understanding, image shaping and expression techniques. In observing and understanding objective things, we adopt the method of seeing the big from the small and seeing the big from the small, and observe and understand objective things in activities, and even directly participate in things, rather than appearing locally or being limited to a fixed point. It permeates people's social consciousness, thus making painting have the cognitive function of "learning to paint after a thousand years of solitude" and the educational function of "warning the world with evil and showing the future with good". Even the purely natural objective images such as landscapes, flowers and birds are consciously related to people's social consciousness and aesthetic feelings in observation, understanding and performance. The combination of interests, lyricism with scenery, and ambition with things embody China's concept of "the unity of man and nature". Chinese painting pays attention to conception, conception writing and image thinking, and the unity of subjective and objective artistic images. Modeling is not limited to superficial similarity, but emphasizes "beauty lies between similarity and difference" and "difference". Its image-building aims to convey the expression and emotion of the object and the painter's subjective feelings. Therefore, we can abandon those parts that are not essential or have little connection with image characteristics, and those parts that can reflect the five senses can be portrayed through exaggeration or even deformation. In composition, Chinese painting emphasizes management. It is not based on fixed space or time, but breaks the limitation of time and space in a flexible way. According to the painter's subjective feelings and artistic creation rules, it recombines objects in different time and space to build a space-time realm in the painter's mind. Thus, rain and snow, four seasons, ancient and modern figures can all appear in the same painting. Therefore, in perspective, it is not limited to focus perspective, but adopts multi-point or scattered perspective, moving up and down or left and right, moving back and forth, viewing objects and framing, and managing composition, which has great freedom and flexibility. At the same time, in the composition of a painting, we should pay attention to the contrast between reality and reality, emphasizing "sparse and easy to move" and "airtight", with reality in the virtual and reality in the real. Chinese painting, with its unique pen and ink skills, depicts the shape, skeleton, texture, light and shade and modal charm of objects and images in the form of points, lines and surfaces. The pen and ink here is not only an object, a skill to express feelings, but also a carrier of objects. At the same time, it is a meaningful form, and its traces reflect the interest of China's calligraphy, which has independent aesthetic value. Because it is not very similar to the surface of an object, Chinese painting can use all-black ink, or it can use color or ink color combination to describe the object. Later, the greater the proportion of ink painting, and now some people even call Chinese painting ink painting. The ink used is divided into five colors to adjust the amount of water, the speed and length of strokes, which leads to the ever-changing pen and ink skills and the rich and varied shades. At the same time, ink can also be combined with color, but ink does not hinder color, and color does not hinder ink, forming the diversity of complementary ink and color. However, in Chinese painting with color as the main factor, the emphasis of "color matching with class" is the inherent color of the object, and the color of light source and environment is not important, so it is generally not considered. But for some special needs, sometimes we can boldly use some exaggerated or hypothetical colors. Chinese painting, especially literati painting, emphasizes the homology of painting and calligraphy in creation, and pays attention to the painter's personal character and cultivation. Emphasizing the organic combination of poetry, calligraphy, painting and printing in specific works, expressing the painter's understanding of society, life and art by writing poems and inscriptions on the screen not only plays a role in deepening the theme, but also is an organic part of the screen. After the prosperous Tang Dynasty, with the development of the landlord's economy, the theme was greatly broadened and the painting method was also created. Figure painting began to pay attention to secular life, and landscape painting became more and more prosperous.

There were many painters who were good at painting flowers, birds and animals in the Tang Dynasty. For example, Xue Ji painted cranes, Cao Ba and Han Gan painted horses, and Han Yun and Dai Song painted cows, all of which are world-famous.

Murals in temples, grottoes and tombs are an important aspect of painting art in Tang Dynasty. There are an unprecedented number of murals in the Thousand Buddha Cave in Dunhuang, with Buddhist stories as the main theme, but they also reflect the production and life of Tang society in large quantities, such as ploughing, harvesting, pulling fiber, logging, hunting, corner arrival, music and dance, etc. The paintings of those patrons are even more portraits of history at that time. The anonymous authors of these murals described the real life at that time in a vivid style, leaving valuable information for us to study the social history at that time. The flying sky and the pattern of the ceiling caisson in the mural are also works of art with original spirit and national characteristics.

The Tang Dynasty in China was a period of all-round development of ancient painting in China. Sui and Tang Dynasties, especially in the middle Tang Dynasty, is the most important historical stage in China's painting history because of national unity, political stability, strong national strength, economic prosperity, harmonious relations among ethnic groups at home and active cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries.

At that time, a large number of famous painters emerged and there were more than 200 recorded artists. Painters continue to absorb the influence of western regions and foreign cultures, and their artistic expression techniques are richer and their creative themes are wider. Figure painting pays more and more attention to reflecting real life and depicting the spiritual temperament of characters; Landscape painting is divided into cyan and ink painting systems, resulting in different regional styles in the north and south; Flower-and-bird painting has created many ways of expression, such as meticulous painting, plain ink painting and boneless painting, and religious painting has also become more colorful. It can be said that the painting achievements of the Tang Dynasty surpassed those of the previous generation, which influenced the eastern countries at that time and became a peak in the history of painting in China.

Wu Daozi's characters are very distinctive. Different from Gu Kaizhi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, he changed the "iron line drawing" with the same thickness and was good at rhythmic "orchid painting". Break through the artistic form of the Southern and Northern Dynasties and form a unique style. Wu Daozi is good at grasping vivid characters, paying attention to the overall image-building, and his female murals are wonderful. His style has influenced Japan, South Korea and other places.

Chang 'an (now Xi 'an, Shaanxi), the capital of the Tang Dynasty, was full of talents. Yan Lide and Yan Brothers in the early Tang Dynasty, Wei Chi and his son, monks in the western regions, Lu Lengga and Sun Wei in the middle and late Tang Dynasty are all famous. Zhou's masterpiece "The Flower Lady" depicts a fragment of the leisure life of aristocratic women in the Tang Dynasty. There are five ladies-in-waiting and one maid-in-waiting waving Gong Shan in the painting. The faces and hairstyles of these five ladies are very similar. Some of them are teasing the puppy, some are looking at the flowers picked in their hands, and some are strolling, which is a true portrayal of the emptiness, loneliness and tranquility of court life. The clothes on women are very colorful, and Zhou's paintings are very realistic. Even the tulle clothes worn outside are painted with textures. Han was an accomplished figure painter in the Tang Dynasty, who was good at painting cattle and sheep. His works include: Map of Wen Yuan, Tianjia Migration Map, Tianjia Custom Map, etc. The existing work "Five Cattle Map" depicts five bulls with different expressions, some are grazing, some are licking their tongues, and some are walking slowly, with rich brushstrokes and vivid expressions. As an important part of figure painting, the artistic level of murals in the Tang Dynasty is also very high. The figure shapes change from coarse to fine, and the appearance is accurate and vivid. Men are graceful and women are plump and colorful. Bodhisattva, dignified and quiet, gentle and kind. All these show that the paintings in the Sui and Tang Dynasties are closely related to real life, and people's attention to worldly feelings has surpassed their belief in the Buddhist paradise. With their own realistic hot pillow, the painters created exquisite and gorgeous scrolls, extraordinary creativity and superb realistic skills, which gave full play to the realistic factors of religious paintings in Sui and Tang Dynasties. There were many painters who were good at painting flowers, birds and animals in the Tang Dynasty. For example, Xue Ji painted cranes, Cao Ba and Han Gan painted horses, and Han Song and Dai Song painted cows, all of which are world-famous.

Murals in temples, grottoes and tombs are an important aspect of painting art in Tang Dynasty. There are an unprecedented number of murals in the Thousand Buddha Cave in Dunhuang, with Buddhist stories as the main theme, but they also reflect the production and life of Tang society in large quantities, such as ploughing, harvesting, pulling fiber, logging, hunting, corner arrival, music and dance, etc. The paintings of those patrons are even more portraits of history at that time. The anonymous authors of these murals described the real life at that time with vivid brushstrokes, which left valuable information for us to study the social history at that time. The flying sky and the pattern of the ceiling caisson in the mural are also works of art with original spirit and national characteristics.

After liberation, a large number of murals were unearthed in the tombs of Huai Lishou, Prince Zhang Huai, Prince Li Zhongrun of Yide and Princess Li Xianhui of Yongtai in the Tang Dynasty near Xi 'an, Shaanxi. These works are colorful, magnificent, lively and rich in content. For example, Niu Geng, uncle, cowshed, ox cart and handyman in Li Shou's tomb vividly reflect the production activities and life scenes of the working people in the Tang Dynasty. The travel map and hunting map in the tombs of Li Xian and Li Zhongrun show the extravagant life of feudal nobles, while the guest map depicts the intimate relations and friendly exchanges between various ethnic groups at home and abroad, and vividly records the polo scene when playing Ma Qiutu at that time. These murals have high artistic value and historical value.