CCTV International Channel (20051October 26th, 15:57)
[Introduction]: A woman's history is a famous ancient painting that many of us are very familiar with. We met in middle school textbooks. And we all know that it is the work of Gu Kaizhi, a famous painter in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. However, on 200 1, an expert from the Palace Museum questioned these seemingly certain conclusions. He is Yang Xin, an expert in calligraphy and painting.
[Explanation] Yang Xin, former vice president of the Palace Museum, is a famous appraiser of calligraphy and painting in China. During his 40-year appraisal career, he visited tens of thousands of ancient paintings and calligraphy. In 200 1 year, Yang Xin ushered in the most important appraisal in his life, that is, the painting A Woman's History, which has a great position in the history of China's fine arts, but the location is not in China, but in the British Museum in London, England.
Moderator: When you went to see this painting, how did they keep it?
Yang Xin: They, the British, have transformed this work according to the western style. He is like an oil painting, which should be hung on the wall, so he cut this picture of women's history piece by piece.
Moderator: Cut it off?
Yang Xin: Cut it off, because when we open the scroll, there is a wrapping hand in front, and then a guiding hand. These materials are designed to protect the painting core and are easy to roll up for collection, but westerners are not used to this form of collection. When they arrived in England, they felt that because foreigners didn't know Chinese characters, they could read pictures and understand them. So he cut out the picture, put it on a board alone and stuck it on the board. They usually don't show anything else.
[Explanation] Images of women's history were originally only hidden in the hands of nobles in the palace. As an emperor with countless national treasures, Qianlong regarded it as his favorite and left an inscription at the end of the volume. The name left on the scroll shows that everyone who has seen its true face was once a celebrity. But this rare treasure mysteriously disappeared from China under the plunder of Eight-Nation Alliance in 1900, and was later sold to the British Museum by a British officer for two pounds. By 200 1, this national treasure has lived abroad for a whole hundred years, which is an immeasurable loss for China.
Compere: How important is this painting in the art history of China?
Yang Xin: That's right. This painting has been handed down from generation to generation as Gu Kaizhi's work. Because we know that Gu Kaizhi was a painter in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Up to now, that is to say, the earliest painter we can find, and what works he has in the world, it is said that only Gu Kaizhi. Therefore, he is the most famous painter whose works can be verified in the history of China painting, so this painting can be preserved under the name of Gu Kaizhi and has a historical position.
Compere: You mean that Gu Kaizhi's name can be preserved, which means that because it is a painting by Gu Kaizhi, collectors of all ages have paid special attention to it.
Yang Xin: I especially cherish it. Whoever writes the history of China art, whether ancient or modern, or foreign in China, must be associated with this painting and study it as one of the oldest paintings.
[Explanation] In order to commemorate the centenary of the publication of this important book, the British Museum specially held an academic seminar on "Prospectus of Women's History", but what the organizer didn't expect was that this painting and calligraphy expert from China threw out a ground-breaking view at the meeting. The author of the Prospectus of Women's History, which plays an important role in the art history of China and is regarded as the treasure of the town museum, can't be Gu Kaizhi!
In the literature, the Song Dynasty's Xuanhe Huapu attributed the picture of a historical treasure to Gu Kaizhi for the first time, in which it was clearly recorded that the picture of a historical treasure was one of the nine works of Gu Kaizhi collected by Song Huizong.
Time has passed for thousands of years. As Gu Kaizhi's representative work, The True Picture of a Woman History has gone down in history and been accepted by scholars of all ages. In recent years, although there have been many controversies in the field of calligraphy and painting appraisal about The History of Women, it has never really shaken Gu Kaizhi's position as the author of the original painting.
Yang Xin: Many people have studied this painting in the past, and there are different opinions, but no one has ever doubted that this painting was not painted by Gu Kaizhi at first, only that it was painted by Gu Kaizhi himself, or that later generations copied it according to his manuscript.
Moderator: Will it be copied by future generations?
Yang Xin: Let's copy this question.
Moderator: Is this controversial?
Yang Xin: There is this argument. As for when it was copied, some people said it was copied in the Tang Dynasty, and it was copied in the Tang Dynasty. Some people say that it was copied by Song people, and opinions vary.
Moderator: But I believe no one doubts that the original painting of this painting was painted by Gu Kaizhi.
Yang Xin: I never doubted whether the original painting was painted by Gu Kaizhi.
Compere: But predecessors all said that he was Gu Kaizhi, or that he was a copy of Gu Kaizhi's paintings. So how did you design the topic for yourself when you did this research? What's the theme?
Yang Xin: We should date the generations first, and then study who is not who.
Moderator: Your friendship means that if you copy Gu Kaizhi, there must be times. Is the title of your original design: If you copy Gu Kaizhi, when is the time, and you don't want to overthrow it?
Yang Xin: I'm not trying to overthrow it. In the process of continuous investigation, I gradually changed my mind.
Compere: But since the predecessors have said that it belongs to Gu Kaizhi, no one doubts it.
Yang Xin: Then I don't care about him, which means I can't fully trust Chen Shuo, the established Chen Shuo, and then I will explore such a problem from a new angle.
[Explanation] Not superstitious about Chen Lun is a fine tradition passed down to his two teachers, the famous appraisers of calligraphy and painting in China, and it is also an important reason why he can write many important appreciation papers and put forward new opinions on works such as The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival. For him, it is a more difficult challenge to make textual research on the world famous paintings's The True Map of Female History.
He carefully collected the relevant materials of Proverbs of Women's History. The History of Women was originally 24.8 cm high and 348.2 cm long, and was colored with silk. The original picture was 12, and now there are only 9 paragraphs left.
This landscape painting is based on the truth that everything in the world goes from prosperity to decline, and exhorts female historians not to be proud and frivolous.
This picture of the queen being decorated advises the harem not only to pay attention to external decoration, but also to internal cultivation.
And this one is to persuade the harem not to deliberately compete for favor.
Before Yang Xin's appraisal, he found that many people had analyzed and verified the Picture of Women's History from the aspects of calligraphy style and figure painting techniques, but he wanted to find another way. However, where is the new breakthrough of this existing two-meter-long picture scroll? Based on years of experience in calligraphy and painting appraisal, Xin Yang fixed his eyes on the only landscape painting.
Yang Xin: A very independent landscape.
Moderator: Why did you choose this landscape as a breakthrough?
Yang Xin: Because I wonder why I can start with landscapes and figures, but figure painting is the earliest painting in China, so figure painting has a process of copying, and at this time I can learn from the ancients.
Moderator: That is to say, you think that in figure painting, it is possible that future generations will copy it very much.
Yang Xin: Very similar.
Moderator: It's not easy to see.
Yang Xin: It won't make much difference.
Moderator: But landscape painting appeared later.
Yang Xin: Because landscape painting started late, the real landscape painting should have developed from the Six Dynasties, which started late, so he didn't have a good reference when painting. For example, you can copy a landscape painting of the Song Dynasty.
Moderator: Because you can understand.
Yang Xin: That's understandable. It has a model.
Compere: Before Gu Kaizhi, there were few landscape paintings?
Yang Xin: Very few, there is no independent landscape painting.
Moderator: So you will choose it as a breakthrough.
Yang Xin: So I choose it.
Moderator: I think there is a meaning in this, that is, maybe this copywriter, if he really copied it, his technique would be unfamiliar.
Yang Xin: Yes, that is to say, whether it is the scenery left by later generations or the original author's own painting, because many problems are being explored, his imprint should be clearer and more accurate in this era than looking at figure painting.
[Explanation] This landscape painting only accounts for one ninth of the content of A History of Women. Where did Xin find the place that has been visited for thousands of years?
Yang Xin began to collect a large number of cultural relics unearthed in China. He wants to establish a historical coordinate with the help of archaeological excavations, and through mutual comparison, he can definitely find the historical destination of Proverbs of Women's History.
Looking through the History of Fine Arts Painting in China, a brick sculpture caught Yang Xin's attention. It was a portrait brick named Yanjing in the Eastern Han Dynasty, in which Yang Xin was looking for a very typical early landscape painting. Perhaps from here, we can compare how far the Proverbs of Women's History has gone.
Yang Xin: Look at salt wells, burning kilns, hunting and chopping wood. Such a vast social life must be in a big landscape and a big place.
Moderator: So he painted many mountains.
Yang Xin: So he painted many mountains.
Moderator: Separate this scene separately.
Yang Xin: Right, right.
Moderator: From the perspective of painting history, this is a relatively naive and early painting.
Yang Xin: Yes, yes, look at those two people crossing the Banqiao, carrying firewood.
Moderator: These two people basically flew there.
Yang Xin: Yes, actually, the painter asked him to cross the bridge, but we looked like we were hanging in the air, like flying over. Why can't he combine the two things? For example, just like our camera lens, I photographed the background of the mountains and rivers, and then photographed some social life content, and then the two originals were developed as soon as they overlapped, and that's it. He didn't solve a unified problem.
[Explanation] Yang Xin found that the proportion of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Mountain was obviously unbalanced, which did not solve the problem of the integration of man and scenery, but it was obviously more advanced than the salt well, because the mountain at this time had a three-dimensional sense, and there was only one line in the mountain in the salt well.
In constant copying thinking, an idea came into Yang Xin's mind. If we find the starting point where the mountains in landscape painting begin to draw a three-dimensional sense, then the time for the emergence of female historical proverbs is not far away. In the process of consulting materials, Yang Xin's eyes shine, and a major clue appears.
Yang Xin: This is a tomb mural unearthed from No.5 Tomb of Dingjiazha in Jiuquan, Gansu. In sixteen countries, it is a cool season. When we see this mountain, it still looks like a queue, and so do the trees on it.
Moderator: The tree is higher than the mountain.
Yang Xin: But there is one problem. What people didn't notice was that it drew two lines in the middle of the mountain.
Moderator: It's three-dimensional.
Yang Xin: Yes, there are two lines. I think adding these two lines together is a great discovery and invention of China's landscape painting.
Moderator: This shows that this painting is actually more advanced than this one.
Yang Xin: To make progress, although it seems simple, it has actually made great progress in concept. It drew a herringbone mountain peak, as if we were writing a word "man", but the word "man" looked like a word "brother", with a line added in the middle and even two lines added. He wants to draw it into a cone. Although his painting is immature, he has this idea.
Moderator: I think these things you noticed are too subtle for us. Did you notice that someone was studying these things before you?
Yang Xin: No, no.
Moderator: What conclusion did you draw at this time?
Yang Xin: I came to the conclusion that I didn't begin to draw this cone-shaped mountain until Beiliang. I began to draw the cone-shaped mountain.
Compere: That means this will not be earlier than Beiliang.
Yang Xin: No sooner than Beiliang. Very mature.
[Explanation] The historical starting point of the survey of A Woman's History is behind Beiliang. Beiliang was the last regime of sixteen countries. In 420 AD, the northern part of China was unified by the Northern Wei Dynasty, and Song, Qi, Liang and Kerwin Chen rose and fell in the south. Since then, the history of China has entered the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Buddhism is very popular at this stage. In a large number of Buddhist reliefs, Yang Xin found that the story of Jingbian has gone beyond the picture of women's history, and it has solved the unresolved proportion problem in the picture of women's history.
Yang Xin was very excited by this discovery, because it can be inferred that the production time of Proverbs of Women's History should be in the Southern and Northern Dynasties after Liang! This result denies the Millennium myth that Gu Kaizhi created a picture of women's history, because as early as 406 AD, Gu Kaizhi, who lived in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, died!
Moderator: Prove that this painting was not painted by Gu Kaizhi himself.
Yang Xin: He can't have created it. He can't draw it.
Moderator: But it is unlikely that future generations will copy it.
Yang Xin: No way.
Moderator: Because of the so-called copying of ancient paintings, he will copy them in strict accordance with them. He can't add these things created in the contemporary era too clearly. If that's not plagiarism.
Yang Xin: It's not plagiarism, it's creation.
Moderator: It is impossible to copy or be original.
Yang Xin: No way.
Moderator: But at this time, you should know that you have reached this conclusion is a very bold conclusion. Because no one said, I always thought it was Gu Kaizhi. ...
Yang Xin: Yes, it's unprecedented.
Moderator: But were you confident at that time?
Yang Xin: I'm not completely confident either. This is only one aspect. Still have to look at the painting comprehensively. Does it have anything to do with Gu Kaizhi? I felt very strange at that time. If it was painted by Gu Kaizhi, his landscape paintings could not be painted like this. It was painted by others.
Moderator: In fact, you have to answer in the end. Who painted this painting?
Yang Xin: The next step is to study why painting is needed.
Moderator: So where is the breakthrough at this time? Where did it start?
Yang Xin: This is the subject of discussion about this painting.
[Explanation] Judging from the text in the Picture of Women's History, it was created according to Zhang Hua, a writer in the Western Jin Dynasty. At that time, Zhang Hua wrote this article to satirize Emperor Jia Jinhui and persuade the concubines in the harem to abide by the ethical code. The picture of A Woman's History is also based on the original text. As a scholar, Zhang Hua admonished upward, but who is he and why should he turn this literary work into a picture of women's history?