The Aesthetic Character Of The Art Of Wu Chen

Wu Chen was the famous literati painter in the Yuan Dynasty. Landscape painting and ink bamboo works created by him had reached extremely high artistic achievements and won wide emblazonment from posterity. Brushwork of Wu Chen on landscape painting was mainly derived from Ju Ran in the Five Dynasties. At the same time, Wu Chen made an integration of different painting methods from Jing Hao, Dong Yuan, Li Cheng, Fan Kuan, Xia Gui and other great masters and he finally formed a unique gloomy but elegant style of ink painting. His landscape painting was not only reflecting the majestic and heavy style and features of landscapes in the Five Dynasties and Northern Song Dynasty, but also was revealing fresh spirit of faction represented by Ma Yuan and Xia Gui in Southern Song Dynasty and elegant beauty of landscape in Yuan Dynasty. Among the Four-Masters of Yuan, Wu Chen was outstanding at creating wet and heavy momentum on his paintings. In addition, Wu Chen was in favor of hermit fishing topic which could match perfectly with his recluse experience. The series of Fisherman Father Drawing had been the works with typical meaning in Chinese Art History. There is a saying, "Zhonggui used painting to cover up its bamboos". The ink bamboo painting of Wu Chen was having much less influence than his landscape paintings did. But Wu Chen still got a high achievement on ink bamboo paintings, especially his "Clump of great number of jade"----"Ink Bamboo Spectra" was getting increasingly attention and affirmation in this academic world. The paintings of Wu Chen’s ink bamboo mainly absorbed the brushworks from Su Shi, Wen Tong and Li Kan and he derived an open & leisure aesthetics quality and style by himself. The ink bamboo of Wu Chen was simple and strong, fresh and vigorous. Under the blooming background of ink bamboo painting in Yuan Dynasty, his painting showed a distinctive style feature.Wu Zhen was known as having three stunts. His poetry and calligraphy both reached high attainments. He used many cursive writing forms in his prefaces of paintings, and the flowing beauty of cursive writing injected vivid elements to the pictures. The cursive prefaces of Wu Chen were not only reflecting his true sentiment, but also formed an organic supplementary and echoing relationship with the paintings. By reading the prefaces of Wu Chen, we could understand his art opinions, personality pursuit, and creative motivation pf his paintings. There were two important parts of contents in his picture poems, in which one kind was "Fisherman Father Poetry" and one kind was inscribing ink bamboos in poems. The former was corresponding to Fisherman Father Drawing by describing the slow life of Fisherman Father to convey his recluse ideal. While the latter echoed ink bamboo drawings by delineate character of bamboo to implicate integrity of his life. In the aspects of integration on poetry, calligraphy and drawings, Wu Chen acted a mature model in relatively early times.His standing in history of drawings was established until Ming Dynasty. Some masters in Ming Dynasty such as Dong Qichang, Shen Zhou and Wen Zhengming all learned painting skills from Wu Chen, and they gave extremely high appraisal on his art attainments. The Four-Wang in the beginning of Qing Dynasty also learned from Wu Chen to varying degrees. The painting style of Wu Chen, though was not widely inherited by posterity comparing with Ni Zan or Huang Gongwang, still maintained his influence among the artists. It is particularly severe in modern times that the works of Wu Chen being neglected. There are many people knowing him but only a few inheritors which does not match his historical position. Such kind of landscape painting style based on the Five Dynasties and Northern Song Dynasty fall into oblivion among posterity, which is a very important question worth our careful thinking and makes us feel pity.