There is pain in strangeness and obscurity.
Because of his special life experience and background of the times, his paintings can't be shown directly like other painters, but through his obscure poems and strange deformation paintings. For example, his paintings of fish and birds are only a few strokes, either stretching or tightening, which is specious. Especially those eyes, sometimes oval, are not the eyes of fish and birds we see in our lives. In life, the eyes of fish and birds are round and don't move in the middle of the eyeball. Eight fish and eight birds can turn their eyes and sometimes roll their eyes and stare at people. The rocks he painted are not like those painted by ordinary painters. They are dirty and round, big and small, and top-heavy. He can put them anywhere he wants, whether they are stable or not. The tree he painted is old and dry, with only a few branches and leaves. Tens of thousands of trees in the forest can't pick out such a tree. The scenery, mountains and bare trees he painted are staggering and desolate. If there is such a place, I don't think anyone will settle here.
Besides, his poems, signatures and seals are all very strange. For example, he called himself "Badashanren", many people have explained it, and scholars still have different opinions. He has a seal engraved with a seal. Some people say that it is composed of the words "Badashanren", while others are cautious and call it "Clog Seal" because it is shaped like a clog. As for the poems he painted, many sentences are even more puzzling.
However, the Eighth National Congress clearly told us: "When the world is in turmoil, coconut trees will be left for Lin Wen to ponder." He also said, "People can understand pictures when they want to see them." He really wants people to understand the meaning of his paintings. Therefore, many scholars have found many real news from his paintings and words after careful study. For example, he has a calligraphy style, which has long been called turtle-shaped calligraphy style, because it is particularly shaped like a turtle. Later, I learned that it was originally composed of the words "March 19", which happened to be the day when the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Chongzhen, committed suicide, marking the demise of the Ming Dynasty. Then this painting also means to commemorate the national mourning.
In the twenty-first year of Kangxi, he painted an ancient beauty, in which the trunk is hollow, the roots are bare, and a few bare coconut branches are dotted with flowers, like weather-beaten lightning survivors. There are three poems engraved on it. The first one reads: "Divide plum blossom and Wu Daochang, and have a blind date. In the north and south of Shan Zhinan, the old fish sweeps the dust. " "Plum Blossom Taoist" refers to Zhenwu, a painter in Yuan Dynasty, who calls himself "Plum Blossom Taoist". The words in the box were obviously deliberately dug out by collectors at that time or later to avoid the disaster of the literary inquisition. It is not difficult to guess that the word is either "Hu" or "Lu". Manchu in the Qing Dynasty was the founder of the Central Plains, and these two words were the most taboo. To sweep away the "Chen Hu" in "the south of Nanshan and the north of Beishan", Badashan people have clearly expressed their thoughts of anti-Qing and restoration. The second poem wrote: "It is not a day to get the money back. No land becomes thin and fat. In plum blossom painting, the thinking is simple. How can a monk choose Wei? " There are two allusions in this poem. First of all, Zheng Sixiao, a painter who died in the early Yuan Dynasty, lived in seclusion in the martial arts after the demise of the Southern Song Dynasty. Asked why, he replied, "Don't you know that the land was robbed?" Second, the adherents of Yin, Boyi and Shu Qi, were ashamed not to eat after Zhou destroyed Yin, and lived in seclusion in shouyangshan, picking Wei and eating until they starved to death. It turns out that Gu Mei's eight paintings are all exposed, and they don't draw sloping soil. They imitate Zheng Sixiao's intention of painting orchids, suggesting that the land was plundered by the Qing Dynasty. As a descendant of the imperial clan of the Ming Dynasty, he became a monk and, like Boyi and Shu Qi Cai Weishou Yangshan, refused to submit to the new dynasty. The country is ruined and there is no hope of rejuvenating the country, which makes him have to "tear a thousand points."
Eight Poems on Paintings is the key to unlock his painting meaning, but they are obscure and puzzling, and many scholars have made great efforts to explain them. For example, in Jiazi Flower and Bird Book (now in Princeton University Museum) written in the 23rd year of Kangxi, the seventh page depicts a myna standing on a dead branch, and the poem reads: "The kingfisher calls my brother, and my brother has changed. Starling can speak three languages, and few partridges fly south. " After textual research and classic interpretation, Professor Tsung i Jao of the Chinese University of Hong Kong summed up the meaning of this poem: "This poem and this painting are a mockery of the death of' Guo' (pointing out), and it is rare for a loyal minister to cherish the south as a partridge." In other words, the works of the Eighth National Congress sometimes refer to some specific things besides the general emotional expression of national destruction and death. Gua Yue Tu is also a meaningful work. After the poem was inscribed, he recorded "I have painted it on the night of August 15th". Facing the full moon in the sky and eating moon cakes with every family in the world, his heart was touched, so what is his "income"? The poem on the painting reads: "Look at the side of the cake, when the full moon is on the watermelon. Each refers to moon cakes, and the year is ripe. " Some people say that the custom of eating moon cakes comes from the folk story that the anti-Qing rebels sent the signal of uprising, saying that the Eighth National Congress is looking forward to this day. However, when will it be the year of the donkey? "The year of the donkey is the month of the horse" is a common saying, which means there is no fixed time in the distance. If this is the case, then the hearts of the Eighth National Congress will be more than just the pain of national destruction.
The representative of the peak of ink freehand brushwork
Ba Da is good at freehand brushwork in ink and wash, which is a painting method rising since Song and Yuan Dynasties. There were many masters of freehand brushwork in Ming and Qing Dynasties, and eight of them were epoch-making figures.
In ink freehand brushwork, there is a difference between being good at landscapes and flowers and birds, and the eight majors are good at both. His landscape painters studied under Dong Qichang and studied under Dong Yuan, Guo, Mi Fei, Huang and Ni Zan. For example, the Book of Books (collected by Shanghai Museum) written in the forty-first year of Kangxi drew six sketches of landscapes, which shows that it was deeply influenced by Dong Qichang, and its long pen was rounded with traces of Dong, Ju and Huang, and the ink method referred to Mao Yunshan, while some tree and stone combinations were obviously taken from Ni Zan. However, when we appreciate these works, we strongly feel the personality of Badashan people. The law of the ancients mentioned above is what he painted to serve himself. Those mountains, stones, trees, grass, pavilions, houses and so on. It seems that you take it casually, but it is dry and wet, dense and false, far and near are outside the statutes, and the artistic conception is all in the statutes. This lawless state is a high combination of emotion and skill, which makes artistic creation enter a free kingdom.
Compared with landscape painting, the eight flower-and-bird paintings can better reflect his style and personality. Biography Sketch written in the 16th year of Shunzhi (collected by the National Palace Museum in Taipei) and Ink Picture Scroll written in the 5th year of Kangxi (collected by the National Palace Museum in Beijing) are eight early works, from which we can see that his ink-and-wash freehand flower-and-bird paintings are deeply influenced by Shen Zhou, Chen Chun, Xu Wei and others, and their brushwork is tough, and the theme and layout have not deviated from the previous model.
The most prominent feature of the eight flower-and-bird paintings is "less", which is "not expensive" in his words. Less, first, fewer objects are depicted; Second, use less pens when shaping objects. For example, the Book of Flowers, Birds and Insects, written in the thirty-first year of Kangxi, only drew a petal, but only seven or eight strokes made a painting. In the Eighth National University, every time you don't draw a fish, a bird, a chicken, a tree, a flower, a fruit or even a pen, only one seal can form a complete picture, which can be said to be indispensable. As the predecessors said, "cherish ink as gold" and "win more with less", only the Eighth National Congress really achieved this, which can be described as unprecedented and unprecedented.
Maybe few people can do it, but few are not thin, few are not poor, few are not monotonous, few are tasteful and few are interesting. It is difficult for some people to give readers unlimited ideological space by giving less, but the Eighth National Congress has the above requirements. There are many articles here. The first is his skill in using pen and ink. His pen has changed from square hard to round hard, and the combination of saturated ink and pen lifting gives people a rich feeling when he writes. He was the first painter to make full use of the characteristics of raw rice paper to strengthen artistic expression. Raw rice paper has strong water absorption and is easy to spread ink. This was originally a shortcoming, but the Eighth National Congress turned it into an advantage, which not only opened up a broad prospect for freehand brushwork in ink painting, but also created a new concept of freehand brushwork in ink painting, and its achievements were immortal.
Secondly, the shaping of image. The eight flower-and-bird shapes are not simple deformation, but the close combination of shape and interest, cleverness and meaning, so you won't feel thin and lonely when you appreciate them. Third, his layout pays special attention to the position of a few objects in two-dimensional space. The trick is to make full use of the blank, which is called "black hours and white hours". At the same time, the balance, symmetry, density and authenticity of the title, inscription and seal are fully mobilized. Unlike ordinary painters, he doesn't draw a good picture first, and then inscribe and print it in the right place. Instead, he has an overall planning idea, so that every point plays a decisive role in the layout, no more, no less, no extravagance and no economy. For example, in the 33rd year of Kangxi's Flowers and Birds Landscape Volume (collected by Shanghai Museum), the first picture only depicts a chick. The chicken is placed at the lower right of the picture, and the center of gravity in this position divides the picture into four large spaces, each of which is different in size and balanced. Because the chicken's head is facing left, the poem is in the second largest space on the right, which makes the empty background suddenly active and visually plays a role in breaking through the balance and enriching the content. The depiction of the chicken is vivid and vivid, dynamic like a toddler, stumbling and cute. Staring at the big eyes and being alert to the front, especially adding three curls behind the eyes, like radio waves, as if there was a voice coming from the front, which frightened the chicken. We can understand the surprise and vigilance of this chick to the world when it just came out of the eggshell. It can also be understood as losing the group, not finding the mother, feeling lonely and afraid. How to understand it, let people fly the wings of imagination, so sometimes they draw less, but they have more thinking capacity.
Less is not an end but a means, otherwise less is better, and art will go to another evil road. Less is relative. For example, The Bath of Willow Birds (collected by the Palace Museum in Beijing) written by Kangxi in the 42nd year is "more" than the above works, but much less than the works of ordinary painters dealing with similar subjects. For example, his treatment of willow branches, about twelve strokes, occupies the space in the upper part of the whole picture, which not only shows the quality of willow branches, but also shows the direction of branches facing the wind. In the cold spring breeze, myna is washing feathers and preparing to fly. This little life scene shows unlimited business opportunities. The Flower Map on the River (Tianjin Art Collection) written by Kangxi in the 16th year is a long masterpiece among the eight major works, and it is also the one with the most pen and ink and the most complicated layout, but it still embodies the principle of less. For example, a bunch of open-book lotus flowers can't have more than 30 strokes, so the number of strokes is reduced and the meaning is complicated. It's fascinating when you open it.
The Eighth National Congress made the past serve the present, and there were successors. The old man Baishi once said in a poem: "The Ivy (Xu Wei) and the Snowman (Badashanren) are far from being born, and the old man (Wu Changshuo) was not talented then. I used to be a running dog of Jiuquan, and three families got off the wheel. " Its dumping is like this. In today's cultural exchange between East and West, more and more people appreciate and understand his art.