Singer Zhao Maier meets the strangest guest in her life.
The guest, Ni Zhan, took her to stay at home for the night, and thought she was unclean, so he asked her to take a bath. After washing, I got closer and smelled it and asked her to wash it again. Smell it again, and let her wash it again. And so on until dawn.
The matter was not done, but Ni Zan still gave the money and sent Zhao Maier back.
The poet Yang Weizhen is good at wine and lust, once at a wine banquet, he had a whim, took off a woman's shoes as a wine vessel, filled the wine and passed the drink to a table of people, and the atmosphere of the banquet reached a climax at once.
When it was Ni Zhan's turn, he stood up, overturned the wine table, and left directly.
There is no need to put on a high hat that respects women for Ni Zhan, in fact, he just has a habit of cleanliness. However, his cleanliness habit now seems like oneAn anachronistic metaphor: In a world that is not clean, keep your heart clean.
Qing Ye Yanlan: "Ni Zan Portrait", from "Ye Yanlan's Portrait of Celebrities in the Past Dynasties".
Ni Zan (1301-1374) was the son of a wealthy family. Since his grandfather, the Ni family has been wealthy. Although his father died young, it was fortunate that he was his eldest half-brotherNi Zhaokui(1279-1328) was a big man - he served as a staff member in the palace of Xu Yan, the envoy of the government in western Zhejiang, worked with Huang Gongwang, and later joined the Quanzhen Sect, became a Taoist upper-class figure, once mentioned the Kaiyuan Palace in Hangzhou, and was also "specially given a real name" by the Yuan court - therefore, the Ni family continued to maintain the growth of wealth.
The Yuan Dynasty respected Lamaism as the state religion, and under Lamaism, the most powerful sect was the Quanzhen sect in Taoism. As early as the time of Genghis Khan, the Quanzhen Taoist priest Qiu had traveled thousands of miles west to teach Genghis Khan the "way of eternal life" and persuaded him to "stop killing". In return, Genghis Khan issued an edict to put Qiu Chuji in charge of Taoism in the world, and the status of Quanzhen Sect reached its peak and continued throughout the Yuan Dynasty. Due to the influence of Ni Zhaokui, Ni Zan later joined the Quanzhen Sect with Huang Gongwang and believed in the idea of birth and seclusion throughout his life.
In his hometown of Wuxi, the Ni family has become a local cultural center with a rich collection of books.
The young Ni Zan could proofread ancient books and copy famous paintings in the Qing Pavilion at home without worrying about food and clothing. It is said that the Qing Pavilion has Dong Yuan's "Xiaoxiang Map", Jing Hao's "Autumn Mountain Map", Mi Fu's "Haiyue Nunnery" and other classic paintings. Later, with the wealth accumulated by his grandparents and eldest brother, Ni Zhan became one of the three major cultural patrons in the Jiangnan region.
Dong Yuan: Xiaoxiang (detail), now in the Palace Museum, Beijing.
Zhou Nanlao, a person at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, described Ni Zhan's daily life in the Qing Pavilion:
There is a pavilion in the residence, the name is clear, and it is secluded. There are thousands of volumes of books, which are edited by hand, and the books of the history of the princes, the interpretation of Lao Qihuang, and the book of Ji Sheng, are recited every day. Gu Ding Yi famous qin, displayed left and right; The genus of pine and laurel orchid bamboo fragrant chrysanthemum, the dressing is winding, and the outside is the arbor repair, and the blue and deep ......(Ni Zhan) has no other fun in his life, but he is fond of accumulating ancient calligraphy and famous paintings, and those who hold them for sale will be returned to him and have nothing to do. ”
In the fifth year of Taiding (1328), the eldest brother Ni Zhaokui died, and the 28-year-old Ni Zan inherited the family property. For more than 20 years, he spent his time in the ancient books, paintings and calligraphy of the Qing Pavilion. By the time we met him again, he had grown into a literati doctor who excelled in poetry, calligraphy, and painting.
Ni Zhan, "Jiangzhu Wind Forest", now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
In the literature, Ni Zan is a person with a lonely personality and strange behavior, "good sexuality" and "cleanliness". There are many stories about his cleanliness in the rivers and lakes.
He likes to be accompanied by flowers and trees, so the front and back of the house are planted with flowers and trees, once the leaves or petals fall, people can not approach to pick them up, to use a long pole to glue these flowers and leaves, "afraid of human feet invading pollution".
His pavilion is even more undefiled, so a cyan carpet is specially laid, and cloth shoes are prepared at the door, and guests must change their shoes before entering.
He arranged for the servants to go out to fetch water, and they had to carry two loads a day, "the front bucket for drinking, and the back bucket for water", and he was worried that the servants would fart when carrying water, so he only drank the front bucket, and the back bucket was used to wash his feet.
He designed the toilet to deodorize, "The toilet is based on a high-rise building, with a wooden lattice and a solid goose feather. Whenever it goes down, the goose feathers will cover it, and the boy will be beside it, and it will be easy to go, and he will not smell any filth."
He easily did not stay with guests, because if he stayed overnight, he would not be able to sleep all night. Once, he heard the coughing of a guest at night, and early the next morning he ordered the servant to carefully look for ** with phlegm. The servant couldn't find it, and lied to him that there was phlegm on the sycamore leaves outside the window. He immediately had the leaves cut off and throw them away ten miles away from his home, and then ordered the entire plane tree to be washed.
He also did not like to go to other people's homes for banquets, fearing that the sanitary conditions there did not meet his requirements. Once, when a rich man from the same county invited him to a feast, he went, and ran to the back kitchen of the house, and when he saw the cook with a beard, he thought it was unclean, and he brushed his sleeves away.
He is a philanthropist, but when he helps others, he always puts his money far away and lets the recipient take it himself, avoiding direct contact.
History books say that he "never leaves his hands", washing his hands many times a day, and changing the water dozens of times each time.
It can be seen that Ni Zan suffers from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder of cleanliness. It's just that his cleanliness has been given cultural significance by the history books, not only emphasizing the opposition between dirt and cleanliness, but also highlighting the distinction between elegance and vulgarity.
In the literature, when his cleanliness was at its worst, it was when he dealt with "laymen" and "laymen". Even if he later fell into despair and lived in someone else's house, as long as there were "laymen" in and out of the same space, he would rather move out and wander. For like-minded people, it is common to give paintings, but for the "layman" in his eyes, he does not sell them for a large amount of money.
The other side of psychological cleanliness is actually moral cleanliness.
Ni Zhan, "Two Trees in the South Shore", now in the collection of the Princeton University Art Museum.
Sadly, Ni Zhan, who has a habit of cleanliness physically and mentally, encountered a dirty and filthy troubled world.
So-called"Nine Confucianism and Ten Beggars"., the Yuan Dynasty was extremely unfriendly to Confucianism. Ni Zan is not good at sociability, and the privilege of the eldest brother Ni Zhaokui as an upper-class figure in Taoism provided him with a rich and comfortable shelter for the first half of his life. After Ni Zhaokui's death, Ni Zan became an ordinary Confucian household, and the Ni family, who had lost protection, needed to face all kinds of extortion from the government.
After the death of the eldest brother, Ni Zan hid in the Qing Pavilion and seemed to be quiet, but in fact, he could not escape the troubles of the world
Fishing and farming are devoted to the biological mother, and the public and private are invaded every day.
In the past 20 years, the personnel has been vast.
The blood of the infusion is exhausted, and the officials are worried about the sick baby.
Depression is vulgar, and the heart is frightened.
In the fifteenth year of Zhizheng (1355), he wrote a poem "Plain Clothes", explaining the reason why he could not bear the pressure of the government and decided to scatter his family wealth:
Plain clothes, in his court.
The wounded are narrow, and the center is stunned.
He is a tiger, and he is a hooligan.
Treat hooligans as pigs, and rather criticize them.
The evening breeze is bleak, and there is a day.
Calling for the people's livelihood, it is really a hundred troubles.
In the poem's self-note, he writes:"Supervising the loss of official rent, restraining and grief, thinking of abandoning the field and collecting clothes for the night. ”This was an era when the government was as harsh as a tiger and the people were like pigs, and in order to escape the government's rent, he decided to abandon the land and escape. Although he was still hesitant, worried that his ancestors' family business would be ruined in his own hands, at a critical time, it was the Buddha's idea of birth and seclusion that gave him spiritual support and made him make a final decision without hesitation.
It was around this year that he completely emptied his family property and took his wife to float around Taihu Lake, or to live with relatives and friends, or to live in monasteries, or to boat in rivers and lakes.
At that time, the Mongol Empire was losing control, and uprisings and rebellions in the Central Plains and Jiangnan were occurring one after another. In the place where Ni Zan operated, Zhang Shicheng rose to become an anti-Yuan force. In the face of the possible new era, Ni Zan only felt tired - he had developed from being tired of the Yuan Dynasty to being tired of politics.
Like a utopian, he lived as a true hermit.
But politics always came to him.
According to the Ming dynasty Gu Yuanqing's "Yunlin Legacy", when Zhang Shicheng gained power, his younger brother Zhang Shixin heard that Ni Zhan's paintings were very famous, so he sent someone to send silk and satin, and asked Ni Zan to paint for him with heavy gold as a thank you gift. As a result, Ni Zan did not appreciate it and tore the silk to return the money. One day, Ni Zan was boating on Taihu Lake and met Zhang Shixin. Zhang Shixin, who was angry, ordered someone to beat Ni Zan severely, but Ni Zan gritted his teeth from beginning to end and did not say a word. Someone asked him afterwards why he didn't ask for mercy and explanation. He replied:
It's easy to open your mouth. ”
Yuan] Ni Zhan: "Zizhi Mountain House" (detail), now in the National Palace Museum, Taipei.
Ni Zhan, who would rather die well, carried out this energy into his lifelong career: painting.
There are in Chinese history"Literati Painting".Traditionally, compared with the style of folk painters and court painters, literati painting emphasizes the spirit and artistic conception, and the standard paintings are like the person, and the materials are mostly natural landscapes and foreign objects such as plum orchids, bamboo chrysanthemums, etc., which are endowed with personality symbols. This tradition can be traced back to Wang Wei in the Tang Dynasty, after five generations of Jing Hao, Guan Tong, Dong Yuan, Juran, Li Cheng, Fan Kuan, Mi Fu and others in the Song Dynasty, to the Yuan Dynasty reached its peak.
As a great painter of the late Yuan Dynasty, Ni Zan can be said to be the most outstanding representative of literati painting.
Pan Tianshou commented on the "Yuan Four Families" in the "History of Chinese Painting", and praised Ni Zhan: "The three families (Huang Gongwang, Wang Meng, Wu Zhen) have not washed the vertical and horizontal habits, Duyunlin (Ni Zhan) is ancient and natural, and Mi Lian (Mi Fu) is only one person." The Song people are easy to copy, but the Yuan people are difficult to copy; Yuan people can still learn, but Duyun Lin can't learn. His paintings are in the plain, surprising and endless, so that the wise man rests his heart, and the powerful man is depressed, and he can make it without ingenuity. ”
Difficult to copy, unlearnable, bland, and surprisingThese are the main characteristics of literati painting. Because literati painting has a strong individual uniqueness, to a large extent, it has been detached from the problem of technique, and integrated into the artist's own experience, ambition and mental state, so it is destined to be unique, imitable, and difficult to replicate.
Shen Zhou, the head of the "Four Families of the Ming Dynasty", liked to imitate Ni Zan when he was young, but every time he picked up a pen to imitate, his teacher shouted on the side: "It's too much!" It's over again! ”
Fang Wen, a well-known art historian, pointed out that Ni Zhan's painting style seems to be plain, but in fact it is impossible to imitate, because each brush maintains a subtle balance and tension, conveying to others a sense of inner self-sufficiency and sincere communication without exaggeration. In this way, the brush and ink technique is transformed into an emotional language, and painting becomes a living one"Heart Seal".
Ni Zan is good at painting landscapes, bamboo and stone, and his brushwork is sparse and simple, but the artistic conception is full, and when he observes carefully, he often gives people a lonely and empty mood. His paintings always hide his outlook on life.
My friend Zhang Yizhong likes the bamboo painted by Ni Zan very much, but Ni Zan said: "Yu Zhizhu chats about writing about the ease of the ears in the chest, how can it be compared with its similarity and non-appearance, the complexity and sparseness of the leaves, and the oblique and straight branches?" Or smeared for a long time, others think that hemp is a reed, and the servant can not argue for bamboo, really helpless! It means that what he paints is not bamboo in the real world, but a "sense of ease" in his chest, so it doesn't matter if the viewer thinks he is painting bamboo, hemp stalks, or reeds.
Ni Zhan: Ancient Wood, Bamboo and Stone (detail), now in the National Palace Museum, Taipei.
In the same vein, he also expressed the same meaning in another letter: "The so-called painter of the servant is just a sloppy brush, not seeking to resemble the form, chatting to entertain himself." ”
In his mind, painting is not meant to depict the real world at all. Freehand rather than seeking to resemble the form, this is the essential difference between literati painting and professional painters.
But Ni Zhan's greatness lies in the fact that although he has repeatedly emphasized that he is just scribbling casually and writing hastily, he has actually received very rigorous training in shapes, and his foundation in sketching and sketching is extremely deep. He once recalled this kind of training process in his early years: "I first learned to dye and paint. Outings and city tours, things return to the painting tube. It's just that he later got rid of the stylized way of painting and turned to pursue a naïve, distant, prosaic, natural style - this is undoubtedly a great leap in the realm.
Therefore, Chen Shi once pointed out in "The Value of Literati Painting": "Yunlin (Ni Zhan) does not seek to resemble the form, how can his painting trees not resemble trees, and how can his painting stones not resemble stones?" The so-called people who do not seek to resemble the ...... do not focus on the resemblanceWhen it uses the pen, there is another meaning, and there is another kind of sustenance, not to carve the boat to seek the sword, and the natural natural machine is fluent. Moreover, literati painting does not seek to resemble form, which is the progress of painting. ”
To use a better analogy for contemporary people, Ni Zan is a bit like Picasso, the more he paints, the more abstract he becomes, but the more he reaches the essence of things.
Xu Zhang: Portrait of Ni Zhan, now in the Nanjing Museum.
After middle age, Ni Zhan, who wandered around and lived in seclusion everywhere, finally formed his own painting style. This style has been described by researchers as "two banks of a river, cold mountains and thin water, dead wood and cold stones". Specifically, it can be divided into two major formats, one is:"One river, two banks" composition, one isDead wood, bamboo, stone figure
The classic composition of "One River and Two Banks" can also be traced back to Wang Wei, who has matured here after the inheritance and innovation of many generations of literati painters. Many of Ni Zhan's hand-me-down landscape paintings adopt this typical compositional mode, such as "Autumn Forest and Wild Xing", "Six Gentlemen", "Autumn Ji in the Fishing Village", "Looking at the Mountains on the River Bank", "Rong Knee Zhai" and so on. In this composition, the middle of the picture always uses a large area of blank space to symbolize the water of the river, the near scene usually uses dead trees, rocks or thatched pavilions to express the current state of mind, and the distant ground uses his favorite technique of folding ribbons to outline the distant mountains, alluding to the world on the other side.
Yuan] Ni Zhan: "Rong Knee Zhai Map", now in the National Palace Museum, Taipei.
Judging from Ni Zhan's landscape paintings, the "Autumn Forest and Wild Xingtu", painted before the age of 40, is still alive, with lush trees and leaves, weeds growing on the slopes, and even people in the thatched pavilion - a master looking at the mountain by the river, and a boy waiting by the side - this is also the only landscape painting in Ni Zhan's works with a human figure. But in his later years, the "Rong Knee Zhai Tu", which takes the same situation, is already a bleak and desolate place, with sparse forests, cold mountains and rocks, and no one in the pavilion. While Ni Zan deleted the picture to the extreme, he also cultivated his heart to the realm of emptiness and nothingness.
Partial comparison between the Autumn Forest Wild Picture (top) and the Rong Knee Zhai Picture (bottom).
Song Shilei said in the article "Landscape Schema and the Mentality of the Relics": "Ni Zhan's painting has achieved the ultimate in subtraction, as far as the eye can see, there are no people, no pavilions, no clouds, no water, as if only this void between heaven and earth is the only truth in the world." ”
Dead wood, bamboo, and stone are the main elements of Ni Zhan's landscape paintings, but sometimes he will extract these elements from the composition of the landscape paintings of "one river and two banks" and present them separately. In terms of form, it is somewhat similar to close-up close-ups from the age of the camera; As far as the core is concerned, it is like the analysis and exposure of the painter's heart. As Ni Zan himself said, he sometimes paints bamboo, but others see it as hemp stalks or reeds, and it doesn't matter, because what he paints is not an object, but a state of mind at the moment.
In the fifth year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (1372), two years before Ni Zhan's death, he painted the "Shadow of the Moss Tree". In the painting, there are two dead trees, a mountain rock, and a few green bamboos, and that's it. But behold this tree, though it is withered, it is straight; This stone, though raw and cool, is solid; This bamboo, although small, is clear and compelling. Ni Zan has painted his whole life into it, which is like a 72-year-old man's state of mind looking back on the past, revealing everywhere the romance, loneliness and gloom that he has adhered to all his life.
Yuan] Ni Zhan: "Moss Trace Tree Shadow Map", now in Wuxi Museum.
There is also a poem by Ni Zan on the screen:
The stone moss marks have rained, and the shadows of the bamboo shade trees are deep.
Hearing that Ansu Zhai is in the middle of the road, it can accommodate the lonely groan of the madman.
The hardness and nobility in the bones cannot be hidden until death.
The upper left of the Moss Tree Shadow Picture, Ni Zhan's inscription poem.
Ten years before he painted the "Shadow of the Moss Tree", in the twenty-second year of Yuan Zhizheng (1362), on a winter night, Ni Zan stayed with a friendChen Weiyinat home.
That night, the north wind outside the door was cold, the frost and moon were all over the ground, and the shadows of the trees were scattered. Inside the house, two old friends chatted in front of the lights, sometimes talking about life, sometimes silent. Ni Zhan, who has been adrift for nearly ten years, said that he has long looked down on the honor and disgrace of the world.
He told Chen Weiyin: "People say that I am absurd, but now I am solid, and I am like this, how can I say that I am easy to manipulate?" —A rich child who was once famous in the south of the Yangtze River, in order to pursue inner tranquility, was unwilling to entangle with the government and politics, so he scattered his family wealth and wandered between the rivers and lakes, isn't this the "paradox" in the world's mouth? But so what? He still goes his own way, unmoved, and even responds to the ridicule of the world by calling himself "Ni Yuan" and "Lazy Zhan", isn't this just living transparently?
That night, he must have told Chen Weiyin a lot of life truths. In the end, he told Chen Weiyin: "Don't show yourself as a nobleman, you will laugh and think it is a fallacy." "Don't speak out, especially not to the rich, they don't understand, they just continue to laugh at my absurdity.
Less than a year later, in September of the twenty-third year of Zhizheng (1363), Ni Zhan's wife Jiang died of illness. He was devastated by the loss of a companion who accompanied him on his wanderings and never regretted it:
The plum blossom night moon Geng Bing soul, Jiangzhu autumn wind sprinkled tears.
Flying outside the sky, only the shadow is seen, and the ninja sect buries the jade in the deserted village.
When he was like a hermit, "practicing clothes and hanging stones to make dreams, and sleeping and singing until the sun is setting", Jiang may be behind his back to wash his clothes and wash stones; But from now on, he can only "sleep alone in the night wind lanterns, and the rivers and rain cranes depend on each other through the windows", his poems, his life, there is no longer the woman who is hidden but like a bosom friend.
Five years after Chiang's death, the Yuan Dynasty fell and the Ming Dynasty was established. Paradoxically, those literati painters who struggled in the Yuan Dynasty and hoped to change the world did not usher in a good ending in the new dynasty.
It is also one of the "Yuan Four Families".Wang Meng, and Ni Zan has a very good relationship, and the two have also collaborated on landscape painting together. But the two have different attitudes towards politics, Ni Zan is a complete recluse, and Wang Meng wants to come out and do things. Therefore, when Ni Zan refused Zhang Shicheng's invitation, Wang Meng accepted Zhang Shicheng's official position. Entering the Ming Dynasty, Ni Zan did not go out of the mountain, and wrote a poem: "Eyes look at mundane things, and clear words Qu Shiying." Rich and noble, the name of the thought. "Quite a bithim for a splash of richesof spirit. Wang Meng was born in Shitai'an Zhizhou, and was later implicated in the Hu Weiyong case and died of illness in prison.
Three cups of peach and plum spring breeze wine, a couch of mushroom and a night rain boat", the lonely Ni Zan once took the fishing boat as his home. For a while, he began to miss his hometown, saying, "If you don't return to your hometown for family fun, the green trees are called cuckoos every year." But he has long been homeless.
Despite this, Ming officials forced him to pay taxes – a nightmare that seemed to haunt him for the rest of his life. As a last resort, he had to flee to Luzhou to take refuge and burn incense. The aroma attracted the officials, and he was imprisoned. In prison, whenever the jailer brought food, he always had to ask the jailer to raise the food above his eyebrows. When the jailer asked him why, he said, "I'm afraid your spit will spill into your meal." ”
This damn cleanliness fetish.
It is said that when the jailer heard this, he became furious and locked him next to the commode, deliberately disgusting him.
After being released from prison, Ni Zan stayed at the home of his in-law Zou in Jiangyin. Not long after, he fell ill and died in November of the seventh year of Hongwu (1374) at the age of 74.
Yuan] Ni Zhan: "Six Gentlemen" (detail), now in the Shanghai Museum.
In a certain year, Ni Zan wrote a small order "Folding Gui Ling, Proposed Zhang Mingshan":
The grass is vast and the tombs of the Qin and Han dynasties have risen and fallen for generations, but they are like the moon shadows. The mountain people pile up books, when the window is pine cinnamon, and the ground is full of ferns. Why does Hou Menshen need to be stabbed? The white clouds are pleasant. It's hard to say how the world is, there is not a single hero in heaven and earth, and there is not a single hero.
Throughout, he was dissatisfied with the times he lived in.
When he was alive, people had already noticed that there were almost no human figures in his paintings, and asked him, "Why don't you paint people?" ”
He just asked faintly, "Is there a decent person in this world?" ”
References:
Ni Zhan: Ni Zhan Collection, Zhejiang People's Fine Arts Publishing House, 2016.
Zhang Xiaozhuang and Chen Qifan, eds., A Collection of Historical Materials of Ming Dynasty Notes, Diary and Painting, Shanghai Painting and Calligraphy Publishing House, 2019.
Chen Shizeng: History of Chinese Painting, People's Fine Arts Publishing House, 2019.
Pan Tianshou: History of Chinese Painting, The Commercial Press, 2019.
Fang Wen: Heart Prints: A Study on the Style and Structure of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, Shanghai Painting and Calligraphy Publishing House, 2016.
Chen Chuanxi: History of Chinese Landscape Painting, Tianjin People's Fine Arts Publishing House, 2020.
Gao Juhan, Mountains Across the River: Yuan Dynasty Paintings (1279-1368), Life, Reading, New Knowledge, Joint Bookstore, 2009.
Xu Ying: "On the Literati Painting of the Yuan Dynasty", Hongde Cultural Seminar, Hongde College of Arts and Sciences, Inner Mongolia, 2022.
Song Shilei, "Landscape Schema and the Mentality of the Relics: The Classicization Process of Ni Zhan's "One River and Two Banks" Schema and the Self-Shaping of the Relics", Journal of Guizhou University (Art Edition), No. 1, 2021.