On June 30, 2022, the audience visited the Jiaxing special exhibition of "Chinese Paintings of the Past Dynasties".
Text: Xinhua News Agency reporters Shang Yiying, Zhu Han, Chen Hao, Xiao Haichuan, Yuan Min, Wang Shengzhi, Gui Juan, Shi Linjing.
Edited by Le Yana.
China is one of the countries with the most serious loss of cultural relics in the world, and many of the lost cultural relics have even been separated and stored in many parts of the world. In the case that it is not easy to return, the progress of modern science and technology has made it possible for these Chinese cultural relics scattered around the world to "gather" and recreate in their original place through digital technology. As some experts have said, although this is not a perfect ending, it can give the public a more complete understanding of the culture and art of the time and the history of the Chinese nation, and bring new possibilities for academic research on culture and art related to this.
17 years of ancient painting "gathering" project
Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty once designated Song Ji's "Female History Atlas" and three pieces of "Shujiang Map", "Nine Songs" and "Xiaoxiang Map" as Li Gonglin's works, which were designated as "four beauties", and treasured them in Jingyixuan in Jianfu Palace in the Forbidden City. Today, except for the "Nine Songs" preserved in the National Museum of China, the rest of the "Three Beauties" have been lost overseas, scattered in the British Museum in the United Kingdom, the Freer Museum of Art in the United States, and the Tokyo National Museum in Japan.
The Five Old Men of Suiyang are based on the five important ministers who lived in Suiyang in the Northern Song Dynasty who had both virtue, talent and longevity as the prototype, and the celebrities of the past dynasties continued to write prefaces, write poems, copy and frame them, making it a small history of Chinese famous paintings. **In the early years, the five old pictures and some inscriptions were divided and then traveled**, and they were scattered overseas. Today, "Suiyang Five Old Men" is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Yale University Art Museum, etc., and some of the inscriptions are in the Shanghai Museum.
Zhou Wenju, a court painter of the Southern Tang Dynasty of the Fifth Dynasty, originally wrote a long scroll on silk, depicting the lives of 80 harem women in white drawing, such as playing the harp, dressing, portraits, and playing. **In the early years, this painting was stolen and sold, cut into several pieces by Paris antique dealers and sold to European and American collectors, and is now in the collection of the Italian Renaissance Research Center of Harvard University, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Arthur Arthur Museum of Harvard University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other places.
There are many other ancient Chinese paintings scattered and separated like this. A 17-year-long project that gave them a chance to reunite. In the past 17 years, the project team of "The Great Series of Chinese Paintings of the Past Dynasties" has carried out the collection of images of ancient Chinese painting collections around the world for three times, repeatedly negotiated and communicated with relevant cultural and museum collection units at home and abroad, exchanged tens of thousands of correspondence and letters, and traveled hundreds of thousands of kilometers on the spot, so that the fine paintings that have been scattered abroad can be "returned" through high-precision digitization.
In the autumn of 2022, the "Great Series of Chinese Paintings of the Past Dynasties" was unveiled in two major exhibitions: the "Striving for a New Era" theme achievement exhibition at the Beijing Exhibition Center and the "Prosperous Revision of the Classics - 'The Great Series of Chinese Paintings' Achievement Exhibition" opened at the National Museum of China. In the exhibition, the National Museum of China's "Nine Songs" and other "Three Beauties" are exhibited together through the color palettes of the "Great Series" publications, and the "Suiyang Five Elders" and inscriptions are completely collected, giving the audience the opportunity to see the whole picture. There are also some ancient paintings scattered overseas, which were not seen for the first time in high-definition images until they were included in the compilation of the "Great Series", such as the hundreds of silk paintings unearthed from the Dunhuang Scripture Cave taken by the British Museum specially for the "Great Series".
The actor performed "Queen Wenzhao Ritual Buddha Picture" on the Buddha Altar in the Longmen Grottoes Scenic Area in Luoyang
Among them, the stitching of the Tang facsimile of "The Female History of Zhentu" lasted for 10 years. The original copy of the Female Historian has been lost, and the British Museum's collection is generally believed to be a 1,400-year-old copy of the Tang Dynasty. There are 12 sections of the painting heart, and the 9 sections that survive today are seriously weathered, and the painting heart, the inscription and the Qing Dynasty painter Zou Yigui's painting "Pine Bamboo Stone Spring Map" are divided into three volumes and framed. Since 2012, the project team has been in repeated communication with the British Museum, and it was not until the summer of 2020 that they received a high-definition image of "Pine and Bamboo Stone Spring" from the British Museum. Later, the image editor stitched together the digital images of the first volume of the Songzhu Stone Spring and the first volume of the Nushi Zhentu, and the Nushi Zhentu was connected from end to end.
At present, there are still some overseas cultural institutions and private collections in the "Great Collection of Chinese Paintings of the Past Dynasties" that have not been included in the collection. Some of the included works that still have controversies such as dating and authenticity need to be further studied; A large number of ancient murals, sculptures, architectural and other plastic arts also need to be digitally collected and utilized.
From the massive collection of books, the "pearls" of the combination were discovered
In a small building on the central campus of Shandong University, another project to "go home" of ancient books has been going on for six years. Launched in April 2017 and included in the "Chinese Ancient Books Protection Program" by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Ministry of Education in 2018, the "Global Chinese Nationality Consolidation Project" aims to investigate and find out the entire situation of ancient Chinese documents in overseas collections, and then reproduce, publish, organize and comprehensively study the varieties and editions that are missing in Chinese mainland.
As of June 2023, the project has established 255 professional teams at home and abroad, with a total of more than 900 people participating. Zheng Jiewen, chief expert of the project and chair professor of Shandong University, introduced that the project mainly includes four aspects: investigation, cataloguing, reproduction and photocopying of overseas Chinese ancient books, collation of the essence of overseas Chinese ancient books, research and database construction of Chinese books and Sinology. According to the plan, about 9,000 kinds of overseas rare books and other ancient Chinese documents will be copied or digitally scanned, and about 2,000 kinds will be photocopied and published, and about 200 kinds will be collated.
Professor Shan Chengbin, head of the survey and cataloguing team that compiles the catalogues of Chinese classics from overseas book collection institutions, describes his work as "registering" ancient books. He said that when cataloguing, it is necessary to know both the existing ancient books in China and the Chinese diaspora abroad, so that the two can be compared in order to separate the chaff and find the ancient Chinese books that need to be copied and returned. At present, nearly 30 universities and scientific research institutions across the country have sent people to participate in the investigation of overseas Han nationality, and about 2,000 overseas book collecting institutions have been contacted. Team members need to find the Chinese books in overseas book collection institutions and register the detailed information, and only after preliminary verification, review, primary selection, and re-selection can they confirm whether they have the value of replication and return.
This is a process of discovering the "lost pearl" from a large number of books. The Russian collection of the Song Dynasty inscription "Huainan Honglie Jie", the British collection of the British record of the British and French burning of the Old Summer Palace "Fu Ci Xian Shi Cao" manuscript ......Under careful selection, a number of rare Chinese classics have returned to their birthplace in the form of reproduction.
Tang Ziheng, a professor at the School of Literature of Shandong University, is an expert in the elite school team of the Hebi Project, and after his retirement, he devoted himself to the proofreading and publishing of overseas ancient books. "I wake up at 5 a.m. almost every day and read six or seven hours a day to read a book. Tang Ziheng said that after the reproduction of overseas Chinese ancient books, they need to go through professional and meticulous proofreading before they can become credible and reliable academic research materials. The team adopts a five-round review mechanism to minimize possible errors. At present, 130 kinds of Chinese books have been approved and 60 kinds of proofreading have been completed, and the first batch of 14 kinds of overseas returned ancient books have been published.
Some ancient books of the Song and Yuan dynasties are approaching the end of their lifespan, and if we do not find and copy them in time, they may have died out naturally in the long river of history. Chen Xiaoshan said. At present, the project has investigated 1,988 overseas book collection institutions, and basically grasped the situation of overseas Han collections. The compilation of a catalogue of Chinese editions of 554 book collection institutions is being carried out, and the identification and cataloguing of 360,000 overseas Chinese books has been completed. The team discovered more than 1,900 rare Chinese books that are missing in Chinese mainland, and 1,600 have been copied and returned.
Digital restoration and reproduction in situ
The Emperor and Empress Buddha is the only equal-height Buddha relief in the Chinese grottoes, and the original work is engraved in the Binyang Middle Cave of Longmen Grottoes. In the 30s of the last century, this group of reliefs was stolen, chiseled, divided and sold, and since then scattered abroad. Today, the Buddha of Emperor Wen of Wei Xiaowen is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Buddha of Empress Wenzhao is in the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in the United States, while the walls of Binyang Zhongdong are mottled and chiseled that cannot be bridged.
In 2019, Jia Haofei, a professor at Xi'an Jiaotong University, saw the Buddha of Emperor Wei Xiaowen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for the first time. "Due to the serious damage during the theft and chisel, many figures only have their heads left, and the vacant parts have not been repaired, and the aura of the entire relief is disconnected. Jia said that the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art's "Empress Wenzhao Buddha Picture" is not only missing one-third, but the restoration traces are too obvious, and the shape and style are quite different from the original.
The staff digitally scanned the remnants of the carved wall of the Buddha Diagram of the Emperor and Empress in the Binyang Middle Cave of the Longmen Grottoes.
Jia Maofei then came to the Longmen Grottoes, looked at the mottled remnants of the Binyang Middle Cave, and hit it off with Shi Jiazhen, the president of the Longmen Grottoes Research Institute. "We have only one thought, such a national treasure should be presented in its entirety. ”
In fact, as early as 2015, the Longmen Grottoes Research Institute began digital technology cooperation with Harvard University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Since 2020, the Longmen Grottoes Research Institute, together with the Center for Plastic Arts of Xi'an Jiaotong University and the Center for East Asian Art of the University of Chicago, has jointly carried out a 3D data collection and physical restoration project for discrete cultural relics, including the Emperor and Empress Buddha Figure.
This is not a simple process, and it took half a year to collect and process the fragment data alone. What is more difficult is that because the two foreign reliefs have been spliced and processed, the fragments cannot be docked with the existing remnants. The staff needs to locate the common points between the old ** and the remnant wall, and use digital technology to restore the outline position of the "Emperor and Empress Buddha Map".
In the context of the great difficulty in the return of overseas diaspora cultural relics, the development of digital technology has brought new possibilities for academic research on culture and art. At present, the Research Center for the Application of Modern Digital Technology in 3D Plastic Arts led by Jia Haofei has set up a team dedicated to the digital protection and dissemination of overseas diaspora cultural relics, and the international cooperation projects under research include "Research on the Digital In-situ Restoration of Overseas Tibetan Caojing in Beijing Zhihua Temple", "Research on the Restoration and In-situ Reproduction of the Six Horses of Zhaoling", "Research on the Digital Reconstruction of the Murals of Guangsheng Temple", etc.
Digital restoration of cultural relics may not be the most perfect outcome, but it is a better option under the current conditions. Shi Jiazhen said that what we can do now is to study, restore and display well, so that the public can have a more complete understanding of the culture and art at that time and the history of the Chinese nation.
*: Globe Magazine.
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