Cheng-Zhu's Neo-Confucianism Enriched By Jing Shi Zhi Yong

Huang Binhong is often referred to as the "master of landscape painting",but his reputation rose and fell during his lifetime,especially in his later years,when his works were only appreciated by a few confidants,such as Fu Lei.Since the mid-1980s,the study of Huang Binhong has been rising,and auctions of his works have continued to set sky-high records.From the perspective of academic research,Huang's personal experience,theories in calligraphy and painting,intertwines with the issue of brush and ink",as well as the ethnicity and modernity of art,are far more complex than other painters of his generation.Even many professionals claim to have difficulty comprehending his works.Is Huang's life and achievement merely an accidental phenomenon?To overcome the limitations of studying Huang Binhong from the art history perspective,this paper combies the method of history of thoughts and history of concept.Through the analysis of Huang Binhong's ideal type,not only can we locate his thought structure from Jing Shi Zhi Yong"(Pragmatism and Statecraft)of Cheng-Zhu's NeoConfucianism,but also analyze his interaction with important social trends such as the Anti-Manchu Revolution,the New Culture Movement,and the Revival of Chinese Painting.Huang was a traditional Confucian scholar.Followed by the Sino-Japanese War,the traditional Chinese society gradually disintegrated,his thought also underwent a transformation from Anti-Manchu nationalism,Cultural Nationalism,to Cosmopolitanism.His faith in traditional culture and his ambition to "save the nation through art" embodied the moral ideals of Cheng-Zhu's Neo-Confucianism.Huang's viewpoint in his later years,�The rising during the Tianqi and Chongzhen period,and the resurgence during the Daoguang and Xianfeng period",actually corresponded to two phases of the rising of the thought of "Jing Shi Zhi Yong" in the late Ming Dynasty and late Qing Dynasty.With the historical semantics and keyword research methods,this paper analyzes keywords such as "Jin Shi Ru Hua "(the Epigraphy of Calligraphy in Painting),"Qi Yun"(Rhythmic Vitality),"Inner Beauty","Xu Shi","Zaohua"(the Creation of Nature),"Hun Hou Hua Zi"(Obscure and Lush)and so on,and finds that they all point to the metaphysical "Cosmic Rule" of Cheng-Zhu's Neo-Confucianism.The idea of "Jin Shi Ru Hua" not only establishes an "orthodox" genealogy of painting and calligraphy with textology of Hui-style,but also strengthens the operation of the "Qi" with techniques of seal character.After the reform of "Jing Shi Zhi Yong",Cheng-Zhu's Neo-Confucianism attributes higher significance to the fullness and fluxion of "Qi" rather than the realm of "Cosmic Rule",which is void and peace without"Qi".Huang Binhong put the concept of Taiji and Yin-yang in the�One stroke",and used "Flat,stay,round,heavy,change" as the key to self-cultivation in brush-ink.In order to reverse the course of formulaic and vulgarity caused by the "mimic" and"imitation" of landscape painting in the Qing Dynasty,he proposed to "learn from present people,learn from ancient people,learn from Nature" as the order of learning.He also suggested painters to understand the moral and magnanimity of universe in the real mountains and rivers.Undergoing the anti-traditional baptism of the New Culture Movement and being shrouded under the revolutionary utopian ideology,the inner core of self-cultivation and realization of "Cosmic Rule" through landscape painting,which used by the literati since the Song and Yuan Dynasties were completely relinquished.It was the key reason that Huang Binhong was not understood for a long time.In his later years,Huang's works had a certain abstraction due to "ignoring the form",which made the landscape paintings somehow coincide with modern Western paintings.Followed by the disenchantment of ideological and the gradual revival of cultural undertakings,how shall we embrace the "tradition" and adapt it to the Western modernity with national culture as the basis?That is the significance of research into Huang Binhong all about.