「Look at the Picture and Talk about the Painting」Just One Corner, But It Becomes a Benchmark for Chinese Painting?

He only depicted a corner of mountains and rocks, or half of the river water when creating landscapes, and was thus called “Ma Yijiao”. However, through this “effortless ink-saving” technique, he completely overturned the thousand-year-old aesthetic standards and was included in the “Four Masters of the Southern Song Dynasty”.

In the Song Dynasty, aesthetics emphasized the pursuit of object exploration and knowledge acquisition as well as poetic blank spaces. Ma Yuan took this essence to the extreme. He broke away from the grandeur of the panoramic landscapes of the Northern Song Dynasty, creating a sense of momentum through the use of corner compositions. The vast blank spaces in the paintings invite endless imagination of clouds, sky, and water. In the “Cold River Solo Fishing” painting, with just a small boat and a fisherman, the blank spaces are used to create a solitary and desolate atmosphere, evoking the image of “A solitary boatman in a straw hat, alone fishing in the cold river with snow”, which has more tension than a full depiction of snow and wind.

In terms of technique, he innovated the large axe slashing brushwork method. His brushstrokes were like a heavy axe slashing across, with thick and neat ink colors. This made the mountain rocks have distinct edges and a strong, powerful appearance. The half-view of the mountain scenery in “Treading to the Music” and the solitary and rugged mountain rocks in “Facing the Moon” were both arranged according to the “Ma Yijiao” composition concept, and the mountain rocks were highlighted with the large axe slashing brushwork. The brushwork was concise yet full of force.

Ma Yuan’s “simplicity” is the subtraction in art and the addition in aesthetics. He, in line with the pursuit of the literati of the Song Dynasty for “elegance without excess”, uses blank spaces to convey emotions and employs simple brushstrokes to convey poetic atmospheres. The highest realm of art does not lie in the quantity of embellishments, but in the wisdom of selection. The true beauty often lies in these intriguing “aftertastes”.

The tea for today is all gone. Next time, I’ll brew a fresh pot and enjoy art with you again.