A Study On The Differences Of Flower-and-bird Fine Brushwork Of Song And Yuan Dynasties-from "No Me" To "From Me"

The development of the style of flower-and-bird painting reached its peak from late Song to early Yuan dynasty. The prosperity of flower-and-bird painting, on the one hand, benefited from the establishment of royal painting academy and the start up of painting research. The needs of the aristocracy for artworks surged up. In the early establishment of Song dynasty, painting academy of literary officers was founded and official positions were granted, and these officers worked to create paintings for the royal court and got paid. Thus the saved paintings of the court could be observed and studied, benefiting the enhancement of painting skills. While during the rule of Song Huizong, the painting scholarship was founded to foster scholars specializing paintings for the need of the court During these periods, arts was given great importance and pushed on by the ruling class. On the other hand, in Song dynasty, the ruling strategy of dispersing military power and laying stress on literary officer made the literary officers possess high art accomplishment. As a result, the scholar-bureaucrats swarmed to pursue in creation and appreciation of artworks, propelling the development of paintings of scholars. The prosperity of business in cities also gave impetus to the citizens’ needs for paintings, and the secular paintings also prospered, catering for the need from the civilians. All in all, the flower-and-bird painting, based on the Tang dynasty, strode a great step toward and expanded the scope of its contents. The flower-and-bird paintings further diversified in themes, styles and expression skills. From philosophy thoughts, wisdom and knowledge are admired in Song dynasty, the Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism and Lu-Wang Xin Mind Philosophy were the ideological symbol of this period. Whether the "obtaining knowledge by investigation of things"-to rationally understand the nature, or the direct enlightenment proposed by the Mind Philosophy-to observe "Universe is my heart, my heart is the universe", drew eyes of people on the natures and human affairs. All of the above influenced the creation of flower-and-bird paintings, and formed the rigorous style of flower-and-bird paintings of Song dynasty.In Yuan dynasty, the ink play flower-and-bird painting of scholars of South Song dynasty developed and matured in all aspects. The style preferred nature fun and discarded the style of refinement and rich of two Song dynasties. They were mainly ink paintings, stressing on subjective interest, literariness and the interest of pen and ink, and they further combined poetry, books, paintings and prints and pushed the scholar paintings to a climax. The paintings of scholars took an important place in the painting history, indicating great change of the flower-and-bird painting of Yuan dynasty. From the development and change of the style of flower-and-bird painting from Song to Yuan, we can find such trend and phenomenon:based on rational observation, the paintings of Song strived to appreciate the interest of all things of nature with the subjective spirit reflecting weakly and secretly information hard to perceive. While the play pen paintings of scholars of Yuan dynasty illustrated us an ink and wash painting with hearty pleasure. The subjective spirit was expressed with every single line, the thickness, light, wet and dry of which cross expressed the "concept" and "interest" that can be called. It had evolved into a beauty appreciation form that surpassed the abstract of nature. The life of these artworks was mostly based on spirit expression, rather than the shape, color and philosophy of things. This is the substitution and presentation of the subject with "me" of an artwork.