A Study Of Splashed-Ink Painting

Keywords:splashed-ink painting, xieyi (free sketch), yi (the untrammeled class), aesthetic valueInk splashing is one of the most important shuimo techniques of Chinese painting that epitomizes xieyi and yi aesthetics of ancient literati paintings. Although this technique has become prevalent since Tang, especially in Ming and Qing Dynasty, its early formation and development, aesthetic features, xieyi principles that underlie it, and its historical significance have rarely been comprehensively accounted.Initiated upon a study of splashed-ink painting of Tang Dynasty in reference to Tang history, regional features, aesthetic psychology, its contemporary literature and other art forms, this thesis traces the evolution and cultural circumstances of early splashed-ink painting, explores its impact on later xieyi painting, its cultural philosophy and aesthetic value.Splashed-ink painting came into being in the comparatively safe southern area of mid-Tang, when there was a great change in the literati's aesthetic preferences and cultural pattern due to the Tianbao Rebellion and the increasingly complicated political situation since mid-Tang. Splashed-ink painting is not featured by legendary providence and short-lived reception. Rather, it undergoes enduring evolvement with its own aesthetic principals and ideal. A look into the mid-Tang splashed-ink painting reveals how the process of splashing ink is literally the site where the spiritual communication between literati-especially between the poets and hermits-took place. When artists like Gu Kuang, Wang Qia and Zhang Zhihe painted their splashed-ink works, the spectators and dancers all became part of the ink splashing process so that painting comes to be the artists' and audience's cooperative aesthetic creation and discovery. This idea is of great consequences in the artistic principles of later literati painting. And it is right in Tang splashed-ink painting that the yi aesthetics which disregards the representation of an object's external appearance began to germinate and gradually paved the way for later xieyi shuimo painting.It is observed that the subsequent Chinese paintings inherit two prominent origins from Tang, one being the literati's "painting is in poetry and poetry is in painting" ideal, the other being the xieyi conception in ink-splashing.Ink-splashing of Tang is not only a painting technique, but more of a xieyi representation of Chinese arts and culture. With the most direct and immediate operation of ink-splashing, the poetic existence of the self is fulfilled; and with the spread of ink and water on xuan paper, boundless imagination and sensitivity is inspired. In light of its artistic freedom and spirituality, the xieyi expression of ink-splashing is precisely the value that the present-day Chinese painting should retain.