Lifelike Ink and Wash Figures: The Images and Gods in Freehand Figure Paintings in Ming and Qing Dynasties
- show time：2019-10-25 to 2019-12-15
- Organizer：Palace Museum, Zhejiang Provincial Museum, Guangdong Provincial Museum, Chongqing China Three Gorges Museum, Tianjin Museum, CAFA Art Museum, Guangzhou Museum of Art, Beijing Fine Art Academy
- venue：Beijing Fine Art Academy
On October 25th, 2019, following “The Less that I Am Known, the More Leisurely I Feel—Expressions from Figure Paintings by Qi Baishi: Part II”, Beijing Fine Art Academy cooperated with the Palace Museum, Zhejiang Provincial Museum, Guangdong Provincial Museum, Chongqing China Three Gorges Museum, Tianjin Museum, CAFA Art Museum and Guangzhou Museum of Art, worked together to present “Lifelike Ink and Wash Figures: The Images and Gods in Freehand Figure Paintings in Ming and Qing Dynasties”. This is the sixth special exhibition of the “Research Series on Ancient Chinese Painting and Calligraphy”. The exhibition starts from the perspective of freehand ink and wash paintings, aiming to find the inner spirit of Chinese painting for thousands of years, thus further to provide reference and thinking for the current figure painting creations.
“Lifelike Ink and Wash Figures” is derived from a poem inscribed by Luo Pin on the painting entitled “Portrait of Ding Jing” in this exhibition. “With a respectful portrait of Ding Jing whose style name is Longhong, a vivid figure of him was portrayed”, it describes the character’s temperament and spirit with freehand figure painting. The exhibition takes style and school as the research perspectives, systematically sorting out the “freehand” spirit in Chinese figure paintings. Through four sections of “Conveying All Appearances with Ink and Brush—Diversified Ideology”, “Strange States of Human Skeletons in Paintings—Style of Painting School of Zhejiang”, “Weird Appearances Different from the Ordinary—Painting School of Yangzhou”, “The Finishing Touch Should Be Sublime—-Painting School of Shanghai”, the exhibition outlines the development of freehand figure painting in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
Since 2017, Beijing Fine Art Academy has combined the two major brand exhibitions of “Qi Baishi Art Series” and “Research Series of Ancient Chinese Painting and Calligraphy” to jointly strengthened an academic themed year. From the literati heritage of Qi Baishi and He Shaoji from Hunan province in 2017, to the relations between Qi Baishi and paintings in Ming and Qing Dynasties in 2018, and to the freehand spirit of Qi Baishi and ancient figures, we trace the nutritional source of Qi Baishi’s art, and think about the modernization of ancient paintings. Through various themed research, we try to show the audience a deeper evolutionary context of art.
Especially with the form of multimedia, the exhibition puts its research into the context of Chinese paintings and international paintings, to enable the audience to think about the artistic causes and facial features of freehand figure paintings in Ming and Qing Dynasties.
