Chinese traditional art seldom contains characters in its paintings, though China is famous for its abundant population. That seems baffling. Traditional art has two main genres: landscape, with mountains and rivers, and flower-and-bird, brief for paintings that focus on vegetation and animals, in which flowers and birds are always the protagonists.
Flowers and birds, being the leading figures since Neolithic ceramists painted their works, have conveyed the metaphors and images of artists for more than a thousand years. Take Guanju , the most archaic love poetry, for example. The scene of two birds singing in the central inland of a lake was reflection of human love. Love is not the only one part of the themes in traditional literature and art. Every branch of human feelings was expressed in Chinese art.
Unlike the fish hawk, the literary forefather of painterly nonhuman figures, flowers and birds in traditional drawings were more vivid, colorful and expressive, while their language was so modest and quiet that a spectator would pay much more attention to it.
The Nonage (Before 960)
Flower-and-bird paintings are believed to have originated from decoration craft designs before 7 century AD. It has become an absolute study of art since the Tang Dynasty (618-907). And good drawers came forth at the age of Five Dynasties (907-960), in which Huang Quan from Xishu region and Xu Xi from Jiangnan region were regarded representative.
Huang Quan was comprehensive in different types of drawing, and chosen to be a court drawer when he was only 17. He is famous for exquisite sketching and lifelike paintings. Story was told that he had once drawn six cranes on the wall of palace, and a cluster of live cranes dwelled, taking the drawing for their kind.
Xu Xi was born a peer but refused to pursue the life of the court. He admired the country lifestyle, choosing wild birds and village plants as the theme of his art. His natural way varied from that of Huang, and contemporaries regarded them as “the luxuriant Huang and the wild Xu”.
In the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1271-1368) Dynasty
One of the emperors of Song Dynasty, Song Huizong, was a fine drawer and connoisseur himself. Due to his favor of art, the flower-and-bird paintings entered its golden age. It was the age of “literati drawing.” The literati, intellectuals of the time, were a group of people who devoted their whole lives chasing the essence of human morality and dignity. They were versatile, extending spiritual value into every field they had laid hands on. On flower-and-bird paintings, they especially preferred the “four men of honor,” referring to the anthropomorphized figures of plum, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum. These figures were accepted to represent the literati men themselves, or the ideal of them. For an instance, Zheng Sixiao, who lived through his own country’s destruction by the Yuan Dynasty, drew orchids without describing the earth at their roots. When asked why, he answered,” My earth was raped by pillagers, how could I keep them on?”
At the time Zen Buddhism was introduced to the country, some gifted monks began to add Buddhist beliefs into their own artwork. One of them, the monk Fachang, was excellent. He used ink and wash to describe animals and vegetation. His painting was rather more an impression of the objects and the exhibition of their motions than a copy of the image. A lot of his paintings were found in Japan. Researchers are convinced that his paintings, the original “Zen Art”, had a profound influence on Japanese art.
The copy-like, careful drawing style had declined during the Yuan Dynasty, and a freehand brushwork genre had been coming to stage. The best drawers of the age were Wang Yuan, Zhang Zhong, Zhao Mengfu, Wang Mian, Ke Jiusi, and Wu Zhen.
The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)
Contrasting with Yuan style, there was a renaissance of magnificent drawing, while freehand brushwork kept developing. The best drawers of the time often tried both the styles during their careers. Take Lin Liang and Lv Ji for examples. Lin turned from the flowery type to a rougher manner in painting, and eventually became a famous “eagle drawer.” Lv kept a combination of both the styles in his painting, and the effect was expressive and moving. Since he was a court drawer, Lv made his work allegoric in order to expostulate the emperor. Knowing his thought, the emperor wrote a poem in return to thank him.
Late-Ming art flush with romanticism, and one of the best artists ever was born this age. Xu Wei, the freehand brushwork painter, started a new age of the flower-and-bird paintings. He was talented in poetry, letter, calligraphy, drawing and even drama. He challenged the official career only to be thrown back by painful failures, and his whole life was full of frustration. Some aspects of his life remind spectators of Vincent van Gogh, and his achievement in the Chinese art history may be regarded like Vincent’s in western art history. One of his magnum opuses, the ink grape drawing, was completed without a single stroke of line, the basic sketching unit of a traditional Chinese drawing, but all in ink altered between different chroma of black color. He had developed a set of brand new skills for flower-and-bird paintings.
In the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)
The freehand brushwork style of drawing kept advancing in the Qing Dynasty. Zhu Da, Shi Tao, “the eight odd men of Yangzhou”, Xu Gu, Zhao Zhiqian were among the most famous artists of the time. Their successors, Qi Baishi and Zhang Daqian have retained a reputation of the best traditional Chinese artists until now.
Zhu Da was considered the best of them. He was egotistic. Born at a time when the country was poor and undignified, he drew all his drawings of animals with the figures walleyed to express a sense of a cold eye. On his famous work “the peacock,” Zhu attached a poem mocking an official at the time. Lin Shuzhong, a historian of art, considered it the earliest Chinese caricature.
By Liu Rong