Ink and Culture: Ming and Qing Dynasty Painting and Calligraphy Exhibition

Address: 5th Floor, National Art Museum of China This is my second time seeing this exhibition. Today, I was lucky enough to listen to a teacher's explanation, so I looked at it more carefully. The first thing I saw was Chen Rui's cockscomb flower, painted with a flat technique, with only the veins of the leaves outlined with a few strokes, capturing the characteristics of the cockscomb flower. The banana tree is painted boldly, with ink dripping. Wu Ruilong's long scroll features double-petaled peonies in varying shades. At first glance, I thought they were chrysanthemums, which would probably bring the painter back to life. Hahaha. The peony leaves are painted naturally and with a sense of depth. In the Guangdong collection, I mainly looked at two landscape and bamboo stone fans by Wen Zhengming, who probably inherited the painting genes of his mother, Qi Shoudan. The colors are elegant, and the brushwork is delicate. Wen Zhengming's disciple Qian Gu's work, "Shangfang Temple Scroll," is a copy of Wen Zhengming's original, depicting the rolling hills of Shangfang Mountain, the majestic Zhiping Temple (Shangfang Temple), and the vast Shihu Lake from a bird's-eye view. The teacher explained the painting technique in detail, which is roughly to use azurite, malachite, and ochre to create a gradient, then outline the contours of the rocks with lines, and finally add fine dots, showing the achievements of Ming Dynasty blue and green landscapes in combining ink outlines and blue and green gradients. There is also Wen Jia's "Lin Quan Gao Yi Scroll," which inherits his father's painting style well. Qiu Ying's "Listening to the Qin and Ruan Scroll" depicts the imagined scene of Ji Kang playing the qin and Ruan Xian playing the ruan among the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. 2024 marks the 1800th anniversary of Ji Kang's birth. What a clever arrangement, this exhibition is so thoughtful! I won't say much more, friends who like it can go and enjoy it when they have time.