In traditional Chinese painting, sketching the contours of the painting with ink lines and not filling in colors is called Line Drawings in Traditional Ink and Brush Style, also known as “White Painting”.
Chinese had a deep understanding of the significance of lines in the modeling long time ago. Xie He, a painting theorist in the Southern Qi Dynasty, proposed the method of “Bone Pen”. The modeling backbone of Chinese painting is the “line”, namely “through the strong and weak lines, curved and straight lines, short and long lines, thick and thin lines, shading lines, virtual and real lines and curl lines to express the complex relations of the object’s shape, texture and movement so as to form the completed image” . In a manner of speaking, “line” is the basic language of Chinese painting; the expressive force gains the high development by creation of painters through ages and it gradually disengages the original state of only expressing the outline of the object. In the Tang Dynasty, line drawing was not only the basic technique in the painting training of every Chinese painter, but also became a kind of artistic expression with unique aesthetic value; the art masters of Line Drawings in Traditional Ink and Brush Style such as Wu daozi and Li Gonglin emerged.
In modern times, a number of Chinese painters with innovation spirit started to bring the sketching method, anatomy and perspective science into China trying to reform the traditional Chinese painting. After 1949, such approach was enhanced to principles of teaching and promoted in the national colleges of fine arts. Simultaneously, painters such as Guan Shanyue and Ye Qianyu raised doubts on this. They thought Chinese painting had its own national features and law of development and the traditional technique trainings should not be abandoned completely. They especially proposed the significance of Line Drawings in Traditional Ink and Brush Style for learning Chinese painting and also practiced in the daily teaching and creation.
In this exhibition, we have selected a number of Line Drawings in Traditional Ink and Brush Style works in collection of Guangzhou Museum of Art created by recent and modern painters, and combines the historical pictures and literature to present the diversity and rich expressive force of line drawing techniques as well as its significance to the development of modern Chinese painting to the public hoping that the audiences are able to enhance their understanding toward the artistic features of Chinese painting from it.