Ma Lin In The Changes Of Painting Styles From Song To Yuan Dynasty

The fierce argument between School of Wu and School of Zhe in Ming Dynasty can be traced back to the differences of painting styles between Song and Yuan Dynasties. Paitings of Song and Yuan can be classified into Professional Painters and Amateurish Paiters by the artists and scholars in Ming Dynasty. This classification displays greatly the social prejudice such as the Painter’s moral qualities, regional features, etc.in the late of Ming Dynasty. The changes of the study on the painting styles from Song to Yuan by recent scholars is the transformation from pursuing representional form to self-expression. Thus,how to understand the transformation is the key to understand the history of Chinese art. The greatest question in such understanding is:in the evolution of painting styles, to find an artist as the key-point in the transformation from Song to Yuan by study whose styles the causes of the change can be explored. Ma Lin, as a royal artist who lived in the exact period of the transformation, his painting style had built a bridge of communication and confusion between academy of Painting and literati Painting. This paper aims to conduct a tentative analysis to the development of both Ma Lin’s artistic style and the theory of literati Painting, and try to restore the true historical significance of Ma Lin’s art.There are more paintings of Ma Lin’s remained at present than any other painters at his time. Thus, by analyzing his paintings, we can learn his artistic style and even the source of his style. The Paintings called listening to the Wind of Pine(静听松风图)and the Rain Stopping in the Deep Spring(芳春雨霁图)are two great masterpieces of Ma Lin’s, which displays his visual form and poetic imagism. If we trace back to the source, we can know Ma Lin’s style is greatly influenced by School of Dong Yuan in both respects of calligraphcal drawing and theory of literati Painting. And the formation of Ma’s style has a direct source of theory which comes from the artistic communication between the royal drawing in the period of Song Huizong and royal drawing in South Song Period. According to the particular period in the history of art when Ma Lin lived, his style also displays the conception of the same sources of calligraphy and painting, the same rhymes of poetry and painting in traditional Chinese paintings. And also the artistic emotions of elegance and interests of taste in the royal household of South Song Dynasty also provide the freedom for the formation of Ma Lin’s artistic styles. Greatly influenced by Ma Lin’s exploration in artistic styles, the latter artists such as QianXuan, ZhaoMengfu also explore a new style of poetic expression of literati painters.