Chapter 111 Calligraphy and painting have the same origin

Many calligraphers and painters in ancient my country recognized the saying that "painting and calligraphy have the same origin".Who was the first to discover this truth?It was Zhao Meng, a great painter and calligrapher in the Yuan Dynasty.He wrote a poem on a famous painting handed down to Zhizhi: Stone is like flying, white wood is like bamboo, and writing bamboo should also understand eight methods. If there are people who can understand this, it must be known that calligraphy and painting are originally the same. Here, Zhao Meng emphasizes that in Chinese painting, "writing" should replace "drawing", and calligraphy should be used to draw.

Chinese calligraphy and painting are different from Western countries.However, traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy have many similarities, and even writing Chinese characters and painting Chinese paintings are almost the same in the way of using the brush.The "Four Treasures of the Study" of Chinese writing and painting are exactly the same, and literati often paint in addition to writing and ink, and naturally bring the brush of calligraphy into painting. The pictures painted on pottery in the Neolithic Age six to seven thousand years ago, such as fish, frogs, deer, birds, flowers and leaves, dances, etc., are the earliest paintings in China.The earliest hieroglyphs were small pictures drawn with lines, which later evolved into the Chinese characters used today.It is precisely because painting and writing use the same tools, and both are based on lines, that there is a saying that "painting and calligraphy have the same origin".

This makes Chinese painting have a prominent feature: inscribed poems or inscriptions on the painting, so that poetry, calligraphy, and painting can be integrated into an artistic whole, giving people a richer enjoyment of beauty. Since the meeting of calligraphy and painting, Chinese painting has undergone fundamental changes, becoming more abstract and profound, the main representative of which is literati painting.The beauty of strength, rhythm, and clumsiness of brush and ink, as well as its unlimited modeling ability and broad rhyme range, have been loved by literati since ancient times.It is hard to imagine a Chinese painting without brush and ink or without brush and ink.Brush and ink is not only a skill, but also a spirit.The carrier of this spirit is the Chinese literati painting that "painting and calligraphy have the same origin".