"Old Master Baishi once said, 'The beauty of painting lies in the balance between similarity and dissimilarity.' The whole book "My View of Qi Baishi" is written around this sentence." The 95-year-old well-known painter Han Yu has always loved Qi Baishi. In recent years, he has reread the paintings of Old Master Baishi. Recently, Beiyue Literature and Art Publishing House published the revised edition of "My View of Qi Baishi". In addition to adding some new articles on reading Qi Baishi, it also appended Hu Shi's self-edited "Chronology of Qi Baishi" and Zhang Cixi's notes "Autobiography of Old Master Baishi". The Paper selected Mr. Han Yu's postscript and the article "Card Player and 'The Beauty of Painting Lies in the Balance between Similarity and Dissimilarity'".
Postscript to the second edition of My Readings on Qi Baishi
In order to further supplement and elaborate on certain issues, this reprint has added "The Card Players and "The Beauty of Painting Lies in the Between Similarity and Dissimilarity"", "The Word "Between"", "The Poetry and Xue Pan's Similarities", "Recalling the "Xue Pan Style"", and "The Fun of the Yaba People in Spring".
Continuation of Xiao Qiang's article "My Reading of Han Yu's 〈My Reading of Qi Baishi〉", the "friend's voice" in "The bird sings, seeking the voice of its friends" also means "It is a great pleasure to have friends coming from afar".
A painting is like its author, and a person is like his painting. The work is to the author like a shadow following his body. For this reason, I would like to thank the editor for including Hu Shi's self-edited version of "Chronology of Qi Baishi" and Zhang Cixi's "Autobiography of Old Man Baishi" as appendices. It is a great honor for my humble home to have such a presence.
Han Yu's "My Reading of Qi Baishi" was published by Beiyue Literature and Art Publishing House
"The Card Players" and "The beauty of painting lies in the balance between similarity and dissimilarity"
In my early years, I wrote a book called "Let the Horse Run Free", and I copied a passage from it as follows:
To be fair, when it comes to painting, Banfenli should be considered one of my enlightenment teachers. One day, he said: "You can draw Guan Ye and the God of Wealth, can you draw people playing cards?" I said: "It's not difficult to draw you playing cards." I drew four people sitting around a table, each holding a card in their hands. He looked at it and said: "Look at me." He picked up the pen and finished the painting in a while. It was three consecutive pictures. The first picture was a few people peeing together. The second picture was a house, with a few people crowded in the window, holding cards in their hands. The third picture was still a few people peeing. I didn't understand it, so I asked what was going on. He said: "You haven't played cards, you don't know that before playing cards, you must pee first. Once you start playing, who has the time? After the game is over, you have to pee again. Think about it, you hold it in all night, how can you not pee?" After he said that, I suddenly realized that what he painted was the most important point - the word "addiction" of the card players. He inspired me to a crucial issue in painting: how to convey the spirit.
This happened 80 years ago. If I hadn't written about it in my book Letting the Horse Run Free, I'm afraid I would have forgotten it completely. But I happened to read it recently and it really fulfilled the saying in The Analects: Reviewing the past will help you learn new things. I actually saw Qi Baishi's famous saying "The beauty of painting lies in the balance between similarity and dissimilarity" in the painting Card Players.
I have heard this saying since the early 1950s. I know what it is, but I don't know why. Let's try to parse the words "the beauty of painting lies in the balance between similarity and dissimilarity": "painting" of course refers to tracing with a pen. "Similarity" means likeness, and "dissimilarity" means dissimilarity. It is not difficult for an artist to paint a likeness, and it is especially easy to paint a dissimilarity, just scribble. However, if you want to paint a likeness without dissimilarity, how can you strike the right balance?
According to the information, Dong Qichang, who was earlier than Qi Baishi, once said, "If it is too similar, it is not acceptable; if it is not similar, it is not acceptable either." Why "not acceptable"? Yun Nantian said it was because "if it is similar, it is close to vulgarity; if it is not similar, it is out of form." Wang Wenzhi said, "If it is similar, it is in form; if it is not similar, it is in spirit."
Contemporary painter Mr. Ye Qianyu also said something about "similarity and dissimilarity": "The theory of 'similarity in dissimilarity' can be understood as 'similarity in form with similar characteristics in spirit', or it can be understood as 'the ultimate similarity in form, the beauty of which lies in conveying the spirit'." This is similar to the saying "both form and spirit are present".
Qi Baishi's "Calling Each Other in the Future" album leaf, colored on paper, collected by Beijing Rongbaozhai. Han Yu's "My Reading of Qi Baishi" records: Look again, two chicks are fighting over a bug, but because of the addition of the four words "Calling Each Other in the Future", they immediately become very successful. From the current "fighting" over food, we can infer that they "called each other" in the past and became close to each other. They only see the "benefits" in front of them, and forget the "righteousness" in the past.
Mr. Wang Chaowen's discussion on "similarity and dissimilarity" is: "It respects the object and opposes despising nature ('dissimilarity'), but it is not passively constrained by natural objects ('great similarity'). 'Dissimilarity' is actually developed on the basis of 'similarity'. It is by no means an inaccurate 'similarity', but a more advanced 'similarity' than general simulation."
The above is the authoritative discussion of "similarity and dissimilarity" by the predecessors of the ancient and modern painting circles that I know of (there may be other things, but I am ignorant and don't know). The most critical issue in the discussion is what Wang Wenzhi said, "dissimilarity is to match its spirit", and Wang Chaowen said, "'dissimilarity' is precisely for the sake of 'similarity'".
These two statements are essentially the same. They are both conclusions, without any detailed explanation. Or perhaps, for them, this is no longer a problem, so they might as well "learn extensively and elaborate on it, in order to explain the general idea". But for me, it has become a problem, and I have been entangled for decades. Why is "not similar" actually for the sake of "similar"?
Let’s go back to the opening sentence: “Unexpectedly, I recently took out and read (“Let Your Horse Run Free”) by chance, and it really proved the saying in “The Analects of Confucius”: Review the old to learn new things. I actually saw Qi Baishi’s famous saying, 'The beauty of painting lies in the balance between similarity and dissimilarity' from the painting “The Card Players”.” In other words, I finally found the answer to “'Dissimilarity' is precisely for the sake of 'similarity'” from the painting “The Card Players”.
Let’s look at the first painting, “Several people peeing together.” The posture of “peeing” is completely different from the posture of “playing cards,” so of course it is “not similar.” The second painting, “Several people crowded together, holding cards in their hands,” shows that they are playing cards at a glance, so of course it is “similar.” The third painting is still “Several people peeing,” which is “not similar” again. Two of the three paintings are “not similar,” and one is “similar,” which just echoes Qi Baishi’s words: “similar and not similar.”
If you want to see from the painting "The Card Players" that "the difference is for the sake of similarity", you need to explain the word "playing cards" first. "Playing cards" is a local dialect in our hometown of Shandong. To put it bluntly, it means "gambling". Gambling on winning or losing can make people addicted. Once the gambler sits at the card table, the word "win" is all in his mind. The winner wants to play the next hand and continue to win; the loser wants to play the next hand even more, just to win back what he lost. Hand after hand, it's endless. There is a passage in "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio: Gambling Symbols" that describes the face of a gambler vividly: "Looking at others on the left and looking at oneself on the right, looking through the eyes of the devil; pretending to be weak on the outside but using strength on the inside, using all the tricks of the devil. Guests are waiting in front of the door, but he still lingers on the field; when the house is on fire, he still stares at the dice in the basin." With such dedication and such life-threatening, even when the house is on fire, he still stares at the dice in the basin. No wonder Banfenli, who painted "The Card Player", said: "Before playing cards, you must pee first. Once you start playing, who has the time? After the game is over, you have to pee again. Think about it, you hold it in all night, how can you not pee?" It is precisely Banfenli's words that reveal the internal causal relationship between "peeing" and "playing cards". It is because the card player is addicted that he holds his urine all night. On the other hand, it is because he holds his urine and has no time to pee that the addiction of the card player is more exposed. What is "addiction"? It is a mental state of obsession, a habit, and a special love. However, this mental state of the card player is not directly displayed on the card table, but in "peeing", which is in line with Wang Wenzhi's words: "The one who is not similar is the one who is similar."
If we examine these three paintings again, the first one is "not similar", the second one is "similar in form", and the third one is "not similar" again: only when these three paintings are combined together can people feel the "similar in spirit". In other words, this "similar in spirit" does not exist in any of the three paintings. Where does it exist? It actually exists in the gaps between the three paintings, which is the "between" in Qi Baishi's "the beauty lies in the gap between similarity and dissimilarity".
Mr. Wang Chaowen has a passage that can help explain this principle. He said: "The saying that 'the beauty lies between similarity and dissimilarity', from the perspective of the audience, has a basis in the psychology of appreciation... I always feel that the appreciation activity is interesting not only because the audience passively accepts something, but also because he may actively discover something and supplement something... After a lot of effortless mental activity, the audience starts from the visible image and 'sees' something that does not appear directly on the screen but is closely related to the image on the screen." Then the addiction (mental state) of the card player that "does not appear directly on the screen" is not "seen" by the audience from the "visible image" (urinating). Isn't it what Mr. Wang Chaowen said, "'dissimilarity' is for the sake of 'similarity'"?
Taking the painting "Card Players" as an example, we can see that "the beauty of painting lies in the balance between similarity and dissimilarity" is inseparable from the brush, not the brush. The "beauty" of the painting is not to let the audience passively accept it, but to actively discover and supplement it.
It also seems that as long as "the purpose of art is to make people feel things, not just know things" (Shklovsky), the saying "the beauty of painting lies between similarity and dissimilarity" is not only applicable to painting, but also to drama, literature, the East, the West...
Han Yu's work "Female Interpretation"
