The Comparison Of Shi Lu's Calligraphy And Painting In The Techniques

Shi Lu, one of the greatest artists in the 20th century, is regarded as the Oriental Von Gough. He has caused wonder and concern from millions of people with his outstanding talents and ups and downs of his career, but not much work on his artistic achievement is found. The research made so far is mostly holistic and general, or mainly on his painting style, but thorough studies of a certain aspect of his artistic values are few.The comparison of Shi Lu's calligraphy and painting in the techniques is a relatively new topic, though a few of such studies, mostly incomplete, are seen now and then, such as Wang Chuan's On Shi Lu, Zhou Shaohua's High Winds on the World, Zhuang Tianming and Zhao Qibin's Immortal Shi Lu.This thesis is divided into five parts. The first part makes a brief study of the similarities between his calligraphy and painting. The second part deals with the common feature, i.e. the line, which, being the shared carrier, as the master Li Keran stated, is used universally in the calligraphy and paintings. The next two parts include the originality of this thesis. The third part makes an analysis of Shi Lu's ideas about painting skills, through which an understanding of Shi's originality is achieved. The fourth part makes a careful study of the calligraphy and the painting styles in three periods of Shi Lu's career: the first period (1949-1959), the second period (1959-1964) and the third period (1971-1979). Before 1949, Shi Lu did not devote himself to calligraphy and the painting so the first period is not covered here. It was only after liberation that he started working on Chinese painting, with Through All the Fighting in Northern Shaanxi painted in 1959 as a turning point. After that, Shi Lu reached maturity in the art of calligraphy and painting. Through his painful experience during the Cultural Revolution, his painting style got a dramatic change after the 1970's, from being realistic to expressive. The last part makes a conclusion of the paper.This thesis intends to further people's understanding of Shi Lu by distinguishing the variations of style in different periods so that creation of painting work will be promoted.