「Look at the Picture and Talk about the Painting」Ink and brush art of the Lantern Festival, celebrating reunion year after year

How splendid the Lantern Festival was in ancient times? You have to look for it in the paintings! The lanterns and lights captured by the brushstrokes in those paintings hold the ancient people’s understanding and aspirations for this festival.

In the “Yearly Splendor and Prosperity Scroll•the night of the 15th of the first lunar month” by Wu Bin of the Ming Dynasty, the artistic conception creates the scene. The Ao mountain lanterns in the painting transcend their functional attributes and can be regarded as the “installation art” of the ancients. Made of bamboo and wood as the framework and decorated with lanterns as the embellishments, they not only symbolize the wish for a peaceful and prosperous era but also represent the burst of folk imagination and craftsmanship wisdom.

The “Lantern Festival Painting” presents the true appearance of the Lantern Festival from a realistic perspective. This Ming Dynasty version of “Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival” incorporates the grand scenes of the lantern festival, the commercial activities in the market, and the various aspects of daily life into the painting. As a result, this long scroll has become a valuable visual historical record for studying the material culture of the Ming Dynasty.

The two ancient paintings jointly point to the core concept of the Lantern Festival – “roundness”. The roundness of the Lantern Festival, the roundness of the full moon, is the ancient people’s intuitive expression of “completeness”. The “reunion” of the Lantern Festival is not only the gathering of space, but also the connection of time. It is a hope spanning thousands of years, hidden in the cultural genes, and this hope makes every lantern of the Lantern Festival become a guiding light for the spiritual home of the Chinese people.

May the moonlight shine brightly tonight and the lights be warm. May you, in this completeness, find joy in the peace and prosperity of each passing year.

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