"Girl Sichun" is a precious work in the contemporary embroidery world, and its creator is Yang Shouyu, an embroidery master from Changzhou, Jiangsu.
In addition to her exquisite embroidery skills, Yang Shouyu is also good at painting, poetry and calligraphy, and is an all-round artist with profound literary accomplishments and solid artistic skills.
The regular embroidery (also known as chaotic needle embroidery, brocade embroidery) founded by her is a unique embroidery process, which is unique among the four famous embroideries in China and is known as the treasure of the embroidery altar with its exquisite artwork effect.
In 2007, regular embroidery was included in the first batch of intangible cultural heritage list of Jiangsu Province, and its artistic value and historical significance have been highly recognized.
On June 26, 1896, Yang Shouyu was born in a scholarly family in Changzhou. Her mother, Liu, was the aunt of Liu Haisu, a master of Chinese painting.
The Liu family is in the Yang family's compound in the Gu family lane on Juqian Street, while Liu Haisu's family is in Qingyunfang, and the two families are about a mile apart.
The Liu family's family runs Qingyunfang No. 28 Liu Jiaqian Zhuang has a solid family, and his mother Hong Shuyi is the granddaughter of Hong Liangji, a scholar and poet in the Qing Qianjia period.
In a strong family atmosphere, Liu Haisu and Yang Shouyu have laid a solid foundation in traditional culture since childhood. The courtyard of the deep house of the Liu family is five in front and back, and the buildings are majestic, which is the style of a wealthy gentry.
The large garden behind the house, planted with strange flowers and trees, dotted with rockeries and strange stones, is a pleasing garden, but also a pure land for reading and painting.
The "Embroidered Girl of the Tang Dynasty" by the famous Chinese painter Zhao Guojing and Wang Meifang shows the deep friendship between Liu Haisu and Yang Shouyu, two cousins. They grew up together, and despite their own misfortunes, their childhood was full of friendship and love.
Both Liu Haisu and Yang Shouyu have a strong interest in painting, and their parents also supported them in learning to paint. So, the Liu family hired a tutor to teach them painting.
Their talents were further developed, and the two cousins became closer because of their shared hobbies.
Zhao Guojing Wang Meifang, a famous Chinese painter. Her "Ming Dynasty Embroidered Girl" Yang Shouyu envies the wisdom of the ninth brother. The picture of "Crab" drawn with one stroke is vivid and childlike.
Liu Haisu loves her cousin's delicate spirit, and the embroidered picture of "Starling" is extremely expressive, as if talking to people. At the age of thirteen, Liu Haisu went to Baxian Bridge in Shanghai to study Western painting at the set painting institute of modern art educator Zhou Xiang, which was the starting point for his contact with Western art.
The following year, he returned to Changzhou and founded a painting workshop at home, where he became a teacher and taught his relatives' children to draw. Yang Shouyu was his most loyal student.
In the morning they copied or sketched, and in the afternoon, they studied painting theories and commented on each other, and the teaching method was a combination of the old shoin and the study center.
Getting along day and night and having similar interests gradually made the cousins gradually develop a deep love between them.
The love between Liu Haisu and Yang Shouyu is like plum blossoms and red apricots out of the wall, and they can't hide it. Liu Haisu's sister Mu Ci noticed their feelings and decided to help them.
When Liu Haisu's father proposed to marry him, his heart was full of joy, because he knew that his father also liked Cousin Xiang. Yang Shouyu heard these rumors, and her heart was full of expectations, she hoped that the Liu and Yang families could be close to each other, paint with Liu Haisu, and live together.
Their love story is like a beautiful picture scroll that makes people look forward to their future.
*The Embroidered Girl is a masterpiece of art and love, created by the famous Chinese painter Zhao Guojing and Wang Meifang. In the story, the Liu family is very satisfied with the Yang family's cousin Xiang and plans to choose a wedding date according to her birthday.
Both families were happy about this, but fate played a joke on them. The unopened birthday shows that Yang Shouyu has a husband's life, and if he marries the man, the woman's talent will overshadow the man, making it difficult to achieve his fame.
Even if the two are reluctantly married, they may not be able to grow old together. This situation forced the Liu family to change the marriage contract and take Miss Lin Jia, the daughter of the Lin family in Danyang, as the new spouse.
Yun'er, you've grown up**......Brother Jiu, he has already proposed ......"With whom? Yang Shouyu asked eagerly. "It's Miss Lin from Danyang. Mother Yang replied, her voice full of helplessness and sadness.
Ah-" After hearing this, Yang Shouyu turned around and ran into the boudoir, closed the door, and cried in a low voice.
The Modern Embroidered Girl by the famous Chinese painter Zhao Guojing and Wang Meifang depicts Liu Haisu's struggle in the face of the injustice of fate. He rushed out of the house with tears in his eyes and went straight to the Yang family's compound, hoping to say what was in his heart to his cousin Yang Shouyu.
However, he was told that Yang Shouyu had gone to study in other places, but he didn't believe it, so he stepped into the courtyard gate, but he couldn't find anyone anywhere. The rockery pine and bamboo in the courtyard are still verdant, but the lotus flowers in the lotus pond have withered, looking very desolate, as if they are haggard with the sad people in the west wind.
Yang Shouyu and her mother knew that Liu Haisu would come to the door, and since they couldn't stop the flowers from withering, they didn't want to let the autumn wind and showers aggravate the sadness.
They know that people's words are terrible, and Yang Men is a family that pays attention to reputation, so it is better to avoid it as much as possible. So, Yang's mother asked Yang Shouyu to go to Shi Pingsan, the father of Shi Liang, a famous social activist in modern times, to learn ancient Chinese from Shi Pingsan, so as to sweep away the shadow of his soul and forget the tragedy of love.
Liu Haisu, the ninth son of the Liu family in Changzhou, a small city in the south of the Yangtze River, married Lin Jia, the daughter of a wealthy businessman surnamed Lin in Danyang, at the end of 1911. Lin Jia's rich dowry made many people envious.
However, on the wedding night, Liu Haisu had feelings for her cousin, refused to be with Lin Jia**, and fled the wedding to Shanghai. When Lin Jia's father learned of this, he rushed to Shanghai with anger to find Liu Haisu's theory.
However, the wealthy merchant who served as a passage platform was very reasonable, and left quietly after leaving a few dozen silver dollars. Liu Haisu's first marriage ended like this.
Although Liu Haisu's behavior may surprise many, his story also teaches us that everyone has the right to pursue true love.
Yang Shouyu escaped marriage for love and founded the Picture Art Institute, and Liu Haisu was deeply moved. In order to leave her loyalty and innocence, she changed the thin jade to the shou jade, and was determined not to marry for life and dedicate herself to art.
Although she and Brother Jiu can't be a partner, she hopes to be his bosom friend artistically. In 1914, 19-year-old Yang Shouyu was admitted to the drawing class of Changzhou Women's Normal School to learn painting and embroidery.
She is taciturn, quiet and reserved, humble and modest, diligent and studious, and full of self-improvement and perseverance. Despite her excellent academic performance, she seemed to lack the cheerfulness and liveliness of a young woman.
*The girls' outfits of the period attracted the attention of Mr. Lu Fengzi, a picture teacher and class teacher. One day, Mr. Lu called Yang Shouyu to his office. He asked with concern: "Student Yang, young people should be lively and cheerful, why do you seem to be silent?" ”
Yang Shouyu bowed his head and was silent, with a sad face. Seeing this, Lu Fengzi changed the subject and asked her if she had ever studied painting and embroidery. Yang Shouyu said that he had studied painting with his cousin Liu Haisu, and also learned embroidery from his cousin Zhuang Zhucheng, and his words were soft, but he was not arrogant or impatient.
Lu Fengzi nodded and praised: "Your foundation is very good, and you have to continue to study hard." After graduation, I recommend you to Danyang Zhengzheng Girls' School to become a teacher, how about it? "Of course! ”
Yang Shouyu smiled and was grateful.
Yang Shouyu, a needlework artist who was deeply influenced by his mentor Lu Fengzi. Lu Fengzi is a famous Chinese painter and art educator in China, and is as famous as Qi Baishi and Xu Beihong, and is well-known in China for his advanced ideas and superb artistic attainments.
In 1910, he founded the Shenzhou Academy of Fine Arts, the earliest art college in China, and in 1912, he founded the Zhengzheng Girls' School in his hometown of Danyang. Lu Fengzi had a deep influence on Yang Shouyu's personality, knowledge, and cultivation.
Under his careful guidance, Yang Shouyu's artistic level continued to improve, and eventually became his protégé. After graduation, Lu Fengzi hired Yang Shouyu and other 6 students to teach at Danyang Zhengzheng Girls' School, of which Yang Shouyu was mainly responsible for painting teaching, and also served as the teaching of sewing and embroidery.
In 1919, Lü Fengzi took over as the dean of his brother Lü Cheng's Shanghai Art College, and often traveled between Shanghai and Denmark.
Yang Shouyu's creative inspiration was inspired by the Western album that Lu Fengzi brought back, and she saw that the lines on the sketches were like silk threads, so she began to think, why can't she use a needle instead of a pen to embroider the effect of a sketch on the cloth?
The strokes of the sketch are free and flexible, the length and thickness of the lines are different, and the stitching method of embroidery requires smoothness, alignment, flatness, evenness and cleanliness, which restricts the creativity and expressiveness of embroidery.
Yang Shouyu began to study embroidery needles painstakingly, silently exploring on the road of art, trying to make embroidery an independent plastic art, and making full use of the diversity and creativity of embroidery needles.
After several years of experimentation and research, Yang Shouyu successfully integrated the brushstrokes and color theories of Western painting into the embroidery process, thus creating the chaotic needle embroidery method.
In 1928, the first work of needlework in the history of embroidery, "Portrait of an Old Man", came out, which attracted great attention from the art world. Subsequently, she further refined the technique of chaotic needlework.
The use of long and short staggered lines and layered and colored techniques make the work "Taishan Black Dragon Pond" bright colors, clear layers, lively stitching and smooth lines, bringing people a new visual experience, and also causing widespread shock in the painting and embroidery world.
Yang Shouyu's Needlework: "The Male God" opens a new chapter in the traditional Chinese embroidery art. Yang Shouyu broke through the embroidery needle method of more than 2,000 years with the chaotic needle embroidery technique, and the lines in the flat needle embroidery became staggered.
She uses layers of intersecting threads to create optical illusions and create rich and vivid colors and images. This not only broadens the boundaries of embroidery art, but also opens up a new artistic world for traditional Chinese embroidery technology.
Yang Shouyu's chaotic needlework "Uyghur Old Man" amazed Mr. Lu Fengzi, whose exquisite skills transformed the traditional flat embroidery into a three-dimensional visual effect, and the color and light and shadow expression were comparable to oil paintings.
In order to commemorate that this unique embroidery method originated from the regular girls' school, Lu Fengzi obtained the consent of Yang Shouyu and named it regular embroidery. The good news was conveyed by Lu Fengzi to Liu Haisu, and Liu Haisu also congratulated Yang Shouyu.
At the same time, Yang Shouyu's success in his artistic career did not prevent Liu Haisu from falling into a series of difficulties in Shanghai.
Liu Haisu, a giant of modern painting, is the principal of Shanghai Art College. He created his own mannequin sketching course, which was a precedent for art and injected new vitality into the Chinese painting world.
By chance, Liu Haisu met Zhang Yunshi and was attracted by the charm of Yang Shouyu on her body.
The two met and fell in love and had a wonderful time together. Their love story has aroused widespread discussion in the art world and has become a good story in the art world (link: The daughter of the Chinese painting master Liu Haisu - becoming a family and biography).
The quintessence of embroidery - "Peony" Yang Shouyu and Liu Haisu's artistic concept is the same, they insist that sketching is a necessary process of artistic creation, despite many accusations and **, they still adhere to the truth of art.
The emergence of needlework provides a larger space for their creation, and they use embroidery to express the true meaning of human beauty and show the charm of art. This is not only the progressiveness of Liu Haisu's artistic thoughts, but also a kind of promotion and promotion of ** art.
Yang Shouyu's Random Needle Embroidery: "Girl" In 1931, at the art exhibition of Zhengzheng Girls' Vocational School, Yang Shouyu exhibited six embroidery works from start-up to maturity, "Beauty and Goose", "Portrait of the Old Man", "Girl", "Wooden Row", "Kuanglu Short Waterfall" and "Taishan Black Dragon Pond", which caused a sensation again.
In 1935, the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education issued a decree to commend Yang Shouyu's embroidery, highly praising the perfection of its embroidery method that is unparalleled in China. In 1937, Yang Shouyu was invited to participate in the second National Art Exhibition held in Nanjing, and his work won the first prize of the competition.
After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Yang Shouyu moved to Bishan, Sichuan Province with the Zhengzheng School, and later taught at the Chongqing National Art School and was hired as an associate professor. After the victory of the war, Yang Shouyu's masterpiece "Roosevelt Embroidered Portrait" was presented to Roosevelt in the United States as a national gift.
Today, the work is still in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.
Yang Shouyu's chaotic needlework: "Roosevelt Portrait" 5, self-reliance and self-improvement, silent dedication After the founding of New China, Shanghai Art College merged with the newly built East China Art College, and Liu Haisu served as the principal.
When considering the setting of the department, Liu Haisu suggested that the painting and embroidery department should be set up in the art school, which was presided over by Yang Shouyu. The Ministry of Culture of East China agreed, and officially issued a letter of appointment, inviting Yang Shouyu to Shanghai to engage in embroidery research.
However, after receiving the letter of appointment, Yang Shouyu fell into hesitation. Although going to Shanghai to engage in embroidery research is a good opportunity to promote needlework and develop the art of embroidery, the still water in her heart is rippling, because behind this invitation letter is the recommendation of Brother Jiu.
The confidant of the master of Chinese painting Liu Haisu - Xia Yiqiao's biography). Although the Ministry of Culture of East China issued an invitation and Liu Haisu also sincerely invited them, Yang Shouyu politely declined their proposal after careful consideration.
She chose to work as a consultant at the Suzhou Embroidery School instead of the principal. Since then, she has continued her educational career and artistic pursuits at Suzhou Embroidery School.
57-year-old Yang Shouyu, although his eyesight is gradually decreasing, his admiration for *** and Stalin has become stronger. In order to pay tribute to the upcoming Regional Peace Conference for Asia and the Pacific in Beijing, she devoted herself to embroidering the colossal statues of Marshal Stalin and *** in half a year in her spare time.
However, she didn't know how to get the piece to the conference, so she thought of Liu Haisu, who has traveled extensively with people from all walks of life. This was the first and last time she asked for Brother Nine's help after parting with Brother Nine.
She believed that Jiu Ge would be able to find the best way to help her show her respect for the leader.
The quintessence of art - chaotic needlework embroidery, "Elderly" stitches and threads, presenting exquisite artistic charm. Artist Yang Shouyu has made the integration of painting and embroidery with her whimsical and creative ideas, and has achieved a new peak in embroidery art.
Liu Haisu was amazed and recommended her works to participate in the conference, which was well received by the participants. In particular, Stalin's embroidery was given to the Soviet Union as a gift.
Yang Shouyu's creation not only shows the Chinese people's desire to defend world peace, but also is a treasure of Chinese embroidery art.
*The Girl: Suffering and Perseverance in Artistic Careers Liu Haisu and Yang Shouyu's artistic lives are full of ups and downs and challenges. Despite the adversity they faced, they never gave up on their artistic pursuits.
Liu Haisu in the anti-rightist struggle and"Cultural Revolution"In the midst of the catastrophe, he still maintained his passion and dedication to art, and his artistic career became more colorful.
Although Yang Shouyu was forced to stop teaching and artistic creation, she was accompanied by needlework in loneliness, and spent those difficult years alone. She knows that as long as she has a little freedom, she can't give up the pursuit of art.
Their artistic career has not been smooth sailing, but they still hold on to their beliefs and love for art. Their stories teach us that no matter how hard life is, we can't give up on the pursuit of art.
Art is the spiritual sustenance of human beings and an indispensable part of our lives. Like Liu Haisu and Yang Shouyu, we should stick to our beliefs and love for art to make our lives more colorful.
The work "Welcoming Spring" by the famous Chinese painter Zhao Guojing and Wang Meifang shows the wanderer's deep longing for his homeland and relatives and friends. The wanderer revealed his desire to meet his cousin Yang Shouyu, and the receptionist Xiao Jin enthusiastically helped arrange it.
On a sunny afternoon, they came to Gujia Lane on Juqian Street. Liu Haisu was excited, straightened his clothes, and gently pushed open the door of the small courtyard. When he walked into Yang Shouyu's living room, he saw a neat and clean environment, which reflected Yang Shouyu's poor and self-disciplined character, which made Liu Haisu respect him more.
He looked up and saw a slightly yellowed black and white ** hanging on the wall, in which his cousin Yang Shouyu was young, handsome, delicate and dignified, exactly the same as the appearance in his memory.
Chinese painting master Zhao Guojing and Wang Meifang's "** works" have been separated for more than 60 years, and this meeting is undoubtedly a rare reunion. When Yang Shouyu learned that she was about to meet her cousin Liu Haisu, she was both excited and nervous, she couldn't sleep at night, she was watching every day, staring at the courtyard gate, looking forward to meeting her cousin again.
However, when Liu Haisu anxiously waited for Yang Shouyu to appear, Xiao Jin told him that Professor Yang might not be able to come out to see him because he was in a state of agitation and unwell.
Yang Shouyu fell into deep pain after Liu Haisu left in disappointment. Although she finally agreed to meet Brother Jiu with the persuasion of her family and friends, when she stood in front of the mirror, she found that her face was old, which made her hesitate.
She wanted Brother Jiu to remember what she looked like when she was young, but her thoughts were flying.
In the end, she still decided to go to see Brother Jiu. Although she didn't have a few decent clothes, she turned out the blue woolen jacket and blue pants, and cleaned them up plainly and neatly.
Urged by the sound of the car's horn, she got into the car with a mixed feeling.
In"Near the park"In the Red Mansion, Liu Haisu waited at the door early and warmly greeted Yang Shouyu's arrival. The two were so excited that they burst into tears, held each other's hands tightly, and helped each other into the house.
After the photographer left them with the ** of the White Head Meeting, people silently withdrew, allowing the two old men to talk freely. However, this meeting did not seem to bring the joy of imagination.
An hour later, Yang Shouyu politely refused Liu Haisu's invitation to dinner and got up to leave. When she got home, she said only one thing: "I shouldn't have gone to see him." ”
Since then, Yang Shouyu's mental condition has not been good, she lost her appetite and began to live a miserable and lonely life. Finally, on February 12, 1981, she passed her life at the age of 85.
The embroidered woman on the stone carving is delicate and vivid, as if you can feel the temperature of her fingertips shuttling between the silk threads.