Page 137 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

Those of Middle Antiquity who can compare ~ rf
with those of High Antiquity are Gu and Lu.
fill
Gu Kaizhi (ca. 344-ca. 406) and Lu Tanwei

(ca. 440-ca. 500) are cited as representative painters

of Middle Antiquity. In volume 6 Zhang Yanyuan
explicitly endorses the high assessment of Lu
Tanwei by Zhang Huaiguan' during the Kaiyuan
years of the Tang dynasty (713—741):

Lu infuses his soul marvelously into his work.

He combines motion with spirit, and his brush

strokes are powerful as if chiseled with a knife.

The elegant bones of his figures seem almost

alive; they leave one in awe, as if in the presence

of a god, yet though the image is wondrous it is

conceived in nothing more than ink. In Fig. 6. Gu Kaizhi (ca. 344-ca. 406). Admonitions to

painting figures . . . Lu gets the bones right, the Court Ladies (last section). Song dynasty copy.
Handscroll, ink and color on silk. British Museum.
Guwhile [Kaizhi] gets the spirit. . . .Yanyuan

considers this an appropriate assessment.

From this we know that representative painters of Fig. 7. Seated Buddha. Dated to 437. Gill bronze. Wanjo
the Jin and Liu Song dynasties strove for an artistic Temple site, Chengdu, Sichuan Province.

style that stressed "spirit," or a sense of life, and central Yangzi River basin during the period of the
Liang dynasty. For instance, the images in the wall
"bones," or refined physiognomy. The human
figures in the extant Song copies of Gu Kaizhi's paintings and the earthen tomb figures from the
brick tomb in Xuezhuang village of I )eng county,
Admonitions to the Court Ladies (fig. 6) and Goddess I lenan Province, which is on the west bank of the
of the Luo River* do indeed emphasize "spirit and Tuan tributary of the Flan River, are primarily of
bone." Other figures with elegant physiognomy are the slender type (fig. 9).' Hut some of the pottery
the Pure Land (school of Buddhism) stone carvings tomb figures from a slightly later painted brick
of 425, which were found at the Wanfo Temple site
in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, and the two extant
gilded bronze seated Buddhas of 437 (fig. 7) and
45 1. These typical stylizations are similarly found in
depictions of people from contemporary tombs of
the Six Dynasties in the lower Yangzi BJver basin,
such as images of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo
Grove and Rong Qiqi, painted on bricks embedded
in the walls of a tomb beneath the north face of

Mt. Gong in Xishanqiao, Nanjing. These, as well as
earthern figures of men and women from this
tomb, probably date from the Liu Song dynasty, and

their style is markedly refined and attenuated (fig.
8). s Such figures were particularly in vogue during
the Liu Song and Southern Qi dynasties. Hence

the contemporary writer Xie He of Wu, in his

Giihuti pinlu ("Classification of Ancient Painters"),

ranks Lu Tanwei first among painters:

He goes to the limits of understanding and

nature, and there are no words to describe his

achievements; he encompasses the past and

bears the seeds of the future, yet stands out

among both past and present; he cannot be

praised by mere effusiveness, yet (his work) is of

the greatest value. There is nothing to say

except that he is the best of the best, but the

most I can do is place him in the first 1

rank.'

Slender images were even more popular in the

ORIGINS AND TRENDS IN THE DEPICTION OF HUMAN FIGURES 135