I Look for Ancient Traces in Ink and Wash Paintings—Connotations in Ming and Qing Landscape Paintings
- show time：2018-11-03 to 2018-12-06
- Organizer：The Palace Museum, Suzhou Museum, Guangzhou Museum of Art, Beijing Fine Art Academy
- venue：Beijing Fine Art Academy
Beijing Fine Art Academy has launched the “Research Series of Ancient Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy” since 2015. This series of exhibitions has been highly praised in the art circle and greatly acclaimed among the audience. “I Look for Ancient Traces in Ink and Wash Paintings—Connotations in Ming and Qing Landscape Paintings” is the fourth exhibition of this series. The exhibition brings together more than fifty masterpieces by 35 calligraphers and painters from Ming and Qing dynasties collected by important cultural institutions in China, providing a valuable opportunity for the audience to learn about the inheritance and innovations in ancient Chinese paintings and calligraphy. This exhibition emphasizes on the value and significance of “imitating the ancients” in landscape paintings while highlighting the importance of learning from the ancients in traditional paintings.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, with the prosperity of urban commercialization and the pursuit of meditation and contemplation by literati and scholars, literati painting had occupied the mainstream of the painting circle. Painters paid much attention to absorbing the ancients’ brush and ink techniques and integrating the ancients’ affection, spirit, heart and mind. Imitating the ancients became a way for literati painters to communicate with the ancients. Due to the strong tendency of retrospecting the cultural formation in Ming and Qing Dynasties, many painters had done their best to imitate the ancients. In the Qing Dynasty, the great achievements of “Four Wangs” in paintings were to sort out and summarize ink and wash art of Chinese landscape painting, make it specific and subtle, and they modified the imaginary and mysterious images of Zen and realized a “exquisite and capable” state by editing and summarizing. This exhibition systematically present masterpieces of ancient landscape paintings by Wumen painters such as Shen Zhou and Wen Zhengming, Songjiang Painting School led by Dong Qichang, and the “Four Wangs” in the early Qing Dynasty.
