In traditional Chinese painting, some blank spaces are often used to show the water, clouds, wind and other scenes needed in the picture. This technique is more subtle and restrained than directly using color to render and express. Later, this technique was gradually applied to other paintings, which is what we call blank space. Blanking can coordinate the composition of the picture and reduce the sense of depression caused by too full composition. It is natural to guide readers to focus on the theme.

Painting needs blank space, artists are often masters of blank space, and the square inch of land also shows the width of heaven and earth. In Ma Yuan's "Fishing Alone in the Cold River" in the Southern Song Dynasty, I only saw a picture of a boat and a fisherman fishing. There is no trace of water in the whole picture, which makes people feel misty and the whole picture is full of water. It gives people room for imagination, so the art of leaving blank without victory has high aesthetic value, as the saying goes, "there is no victory here."

"Blanking" is one of the important manifestations of China's traditional art, which is widely used in the research of China's painting, ceramics, poetry and other fields. Blanking is to leave a corresponding blank in the works, and there are blanks in literary works, paintings and plays.

Extended information Looking at the landscape paintings handed down from China through the ages, we can see that the painter's handling of the blank layout shows his artistic conception composition ability; The ability to deal with the relationship between "uneven" images such as the size, shape, density and irregularity of blank space represents his skill in brushwork and modeling.

The ability to deal with the gray change of blank space and its contrast with the black and white of adjacent objects reflects his ink painting level and sublimation of thoughts and feelings; Blank space carries the dual functions of virtual and real images, that is, the clever use of virtual white in artistic conception and solid white constructed with ink lines and ink blocks to express a certain part of images, which represents the innovative ability of painters to integrate ancient and modern, learn from nature and keep pace with the times.

The "virtual white" mentioned here means nothing. Empty is ethereal, empty. Nothing can achieve anything. The ethereal nature of Chinese painting can accommodate the infinite imagination of authors and appreciators. From the perspective of Buddhism, "emptiness is color, and color is emptiness", and emptiness is the highest realm of Buddhist practice. The so-called "nothingness" is infinite, intangible, infinite and unforgivable from the traditional aesthetic category.

"Wu" is the embodiment of "Miao" in Laozi's aesthetics and an aspect of the so-called "Tao" that produces everything. Everything in heaven and earth is the unity of nothingness and existence, and the unity of emptiness and reality. The void is full of "qi", which can make everything move forever and endlessly. This air is nothing. This is similar to the "emptiness" in Buddhism.

From Wei and Jin dynasties to the present, landscape painting pays attention to the artistic beauty of vivid charm, virtual reality, infinite emptiness and rich imagination, among which "qi", "emptiness" and "imaginative beauty" are "nothing" and "far".

Guo's "Three Distance" in Song Dynasty, especially the "Far" mentioned in Han Zhuo's "Three Distance", is the artistic conception created by the painter through the image of pen and ink and blank space (mainly referring to emptiness). Here, the function of virtual white is to bear the illusory and ethereal image of the picture and the painter's feelings of detachment from things.

According to the analysis of modern visual theory, the artistic conception formed by this blank image and the resulting subjective thinking effect further reflect the scientific connotation of the combination of natural science and humanities and social science in Chinese painting.

reference data

Baidu encyclopedia _ blank