Dry brush, light ink, and creating mood through reserved white space: The brush-and-ink language and artistic conception of Shao Mi's landscape painting
Yaoyao Qin
Anhui University of Finance and Economics
DOI: https://doi.org/10.59429/pmcs.v8i2.14544
Keywords: Shao Mi; landscape painting; dry brush and light ink; creating mood through reserved white space; lean, dry, and ethereal; late Ming literati painting
Abstract
Shao Mi, one of the "Nine Friends of Painting" in the late Ming dynasty, developed a distinctive formal language centered on dry brush, light ink, a flat and extremely simplified composition, and the creation of mood through reserved white space (liubai zaojing). These elements together produce the unique aesthetic character that art history has called "lean, dry, and ethereal" (qing shou ku yi). Focusing on representative landscape works by Shao Mi, this paper analyzes, from three levels—Brush-and-ink technique, compositional paradigm, and artistic mood generation—His inheritance and personal transformation of the Yuan dynasty literati tradition. It reveals the high degree of unity between his brushand-ink language and spiritual conception, and elucidates the typical significance of Shao Mi's landscapes as a visual expression of the reclusive mentality of a commoner-literatus in the late Ming.
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