Study On The Art Collection And Appreciation Of The Scholar-bureaucrat Of The Northern Song Dynasty

There are many kinds of works of art collected by scholar-officials in the Northern Song Dynasty,which can probably be divided into ancient utensils,calligraphy and painting,study utensils and strange stones.These works of art have formed a market,but scholar-officials mostly through private trade,exchange of the way to obtain the beloved.Some of these works of art came from ancient ruins,excavated by the willing people,into the hands of scholar-officials.Some are forced to make a living by future generations,who sell art collected by their predecessors to others.The ways in which literati and officialdom obtained works of art varied.In order to express their friendship,they often give each other works of art or buy them directly with money.Some ministers also received gifts from the emperor,while others would trade works of art they had collected in order to get beloved works of art.These methods promote the circulation of works of art to a certain extent,reflecting the trend of art marketization.The literati and officials of the Northern Song Dynasty liked to identify and appreciate the works of art they collected.For the identification of works of art,scholar-officials mostly hold an open-minded attitude,do not care about the authenticity of works of art.The appreciation activities between scholars and officials are mainly carried out in the form of poems and essays,or two people are rewarded for writing poems,or many people sing and appreciate,reflecting their aesthetic appreciation and love for works of art through literary creation.From the early to the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty,scholars and officials unconsciously took Confucian morality as an important evaluation standard in the process of appreciation.It emphasizes the function of ancient artifacts and inscriptions to convey the ways of the saints,praises the calligraphy works of moral gentlemen,and criticizes and reminds oneself of the behavior of collecting strange stones frequently.In the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty,it gradually changed to the evaluation of the artistic value of the painting and calligraphy works,emphasizing the "meaning" and "rhyme" contained in the painting and calligraphy works.In addition,the appreciation of the utensils of the study emphasized its practicality,which also reflected the expansion of the aesthetic range of scholar-officials in this period.