Wu Daozi: the line incarnation of the weather in the Tang Dynasty
In the east corridor of Zisheng Temple in Chang’an City, a middle-aged painter is splashing ink on the bare wall more than a foot high. He held an ink bowl in his left hand and a bald pen in his right hand, sometimes galloping, and sometimes holding his breath. As the clothes flipped, an immortal outline gradually appeared in the ink color. The wide robe and sleeves swelled with the wind, as if they would break through the wall at any time. There was a low exclamation in the crowd. They didn’t know that what jumped under the painter’s pen was not only gods, Buddhas and monsters, but also the soul of a prosperous dynasty at its peak.
I. The visual spokesperson of Shengtang Weather
Wu Daozi was born in 685, and this time node happened to be embedded in the most gorgeous historical scroll of the Tang Dynasty. During the Kaiyuan Tianbao period, Chang’an City gathered caravans from the western region, international students from Silla, and Japanese envoys to the Tang Dynasty. Buddhist statue art and the aesthetic tradition of the Central Plains collided fiercely here. Wu Daozi grew up in such a diverse cultural melting pot. When he was a teenager, he followed Zhang Xu to learn calligraphy, but he showed amazing talent in the field of painting. Before he was 20 years old, he was famous for his “the beauty of poor Danqing”.
When the folk painter was summoned to the court by Emperor Xuanzong, his artistic career ushered in an important turning point. According to historical records, during the Tianbao period, Wu Daozi was edicted to draw 300 miles of landscapes of the Jialing River in the Datong Hall. This artist, who is used to improvising, was able to pour all the hills in his chest on the wall in one day. This majestic spirit forms a wonderful exchange with Li Bai’s poem “The Water of the Yellow River Comes from the Sky”, which together interprets the unique majestic atmosphere of the art of the Tang Dynasty.
II. Deconstructing the divine pen and ink revolution
The religious figures written by Wu Daozi completely subverted the paradigm of the previous generation. The “Wu family-like” Buddha statue he created, the lines of the clothes are like being blown by the wind, and the skirt hem is rolled up as if there is an air flow surging. This expression technique known as “Wu belt when the wind” injects the solemn image of the god and Buddha since the Wei and Jin Dynasties into the vivid charm of the mortal world. In “Hell’s Disguised Map”, he boldly abandoned the traditional hell-like torture tools, creating a suffocating atmosphere of horror with only the characters’ frightened and distorted facial expressions.
The essence of this artistic breakthrough is the deconstruction of the sense of ritual of religious painting. When Wu Daozi painted “Hell’s Disguise” in Jingyun Temple in Chang’an, butchers and fishermen changed their lines one after another. This was not the victory of indoctrinization, but the power of art to penetrate the soul. Su Shi’s words, “New ideas are in the law, and the wonderful reason is in the outside of luxury”, accurately summarizes the perfect balance of rationality and passion in Wu Daozi’s art.
III. Eternal Shengtang in the Line
The calligraphy technique created by Wu Daozi injects the rhythm of the calligraphy into the painting lines. Looking at the pattern of the god’s clothes in the “Sending Son King Picture”, you can see that the “folding the reed drawing” at the beginning of the pen is strong and powerful, and the “orchid leaf drawing” at the turning point is soft and elegant. This kind of rigid and soft line aesthetics is just like the dialogue between Zhang Xu’s wild grass and Yan Zhenqing’s calligraphy. In the mural “Vimaqi Statue”, the beard of the sick scrite is actually outlined with sharp thin lines, forming a wonderful tension with the soft robe.
The influence of this line revolution has been for thousands of years. The immortals floated in the “Chaoyuan Immortals Map” of Emperor Wuzong of the Northern Song Dynasty, the strange figure modeling written by Chen Hongqi in the Ming Dynasty, and even the ink splashing color of Zhang Daqian in modern times, can all show the continuation of Wu Daozi’s artistic genes. More importantly, he established the aesthetic standard of “vivid charm” of Chinese painting, so that later painters have always pursued the open, inclusive and vigorous soul of the Tang Dynasty outside the brush and ink program.
Today, when we face the copy of “Eighty-seven Immortals”, we can still feel the breathing and trembling of the lines written by Wu Daozi. Those flying belts are not only the peak of painting techniques, but also the visual crystallization of the spiritual energy of the whole Tang Dynasty. In this sense, Wu Daozi is not only a painter, but also a visual poet who uses lines to create images for the prosperous world. Every trace of his bald brush across the plain wall is the most moving epic fragment under the moon in Chang’an.