Ink painting - Suibokuga

A style of oriental painting. It was popular in the East Asian cultural sphere, mainly in China, Korea, and Japan, and has developed in a unique way. It uses ink as the main pigment and attempts to depict all things in the universe, including people, animals, mountains, rivers, plants, and trees, by varying the shade and wetness of the ink. Although it may use light colors, it is basically an abstract and symbolic painting in which all figures are expressed in a single set of ink.

In addition to ink painting, there is a style of painting called white drawing (white painting), which is a type of painting that focuses on outlines and mainly uses ink lines. In China, this style has a long tradition dating back to the Han and Wei dynasties. Ink painting emerged during the Tang dynasty (618-907) in a complex relationship with the development of white drawing lines, and is characterized by its aim to achieve two-dimensional expression through ink shading and blurring. The term ink painting was already used in Zhang Yanyuan's "Records of Famous Paintings of All Ages" at the end of the Tang dynasty, but its meaning is probably synonymous with the "water-shaded ink-marked" painting described by Jing Hao in his "Records of Brush Paintings" at the end of the Tang dynasty, and it literally refers to a painting with a shading of water and a marking of ink.

There are two basic methods of ink painting: haboku (broken ink) and hatsuboku (splashed ink), and there are various interpretations of these two ink techniques. Haboku is a technique in which ink is broken with ink, the outline is drawn with light ink, and then dark ink is added on top, creating a sense of three-dimensionality and liveliness through differences in shading and blurring, while bakuboku is a technique in which ink is poured onto the canvas, ignoring the outline, to create a shape in one go and to express a sense of liveliness through the shading and momentum of the ink. The former is largely linear, focusing on grasping the form and relying more on the traditional bone technique brush, while the latter is more planar, and is worthy of the name Suiyo Bokusho (water-shade ink marking).

In order for ink painting to be independent of colored painting, it was necessary to change the way we look at painting. As the "Records of Famous Paintings of the Past" describes the paintings of Yin Zhongrong, a painter from the early Tang dynasty, as "using ink to achieve the five colors," it was essential to have an appreciation attitude that recognized paintings made entirely of ink, and that even though there were differences in shade, paintings made entirely of black were in fact five colors, i.e. colored paintings. This change in appreciation attitude, along with the establishment and fusion of the two painting techniques of "broken ink" and "spread ink," made it possible to express subtlety using only ink, and eventually realistic landscape paintings were born in the late Tang and Five Dynasties, and then ink painting reached its heyday in the Song and Yuan dynasties, reaching its perfection as the most oriental form of painting expression with a deep spirituality.

Meanwhile, ink painting in Japan followed the establishment of Chinese ink painting, and the "Torigeritujo no byobu" (Tori-ge-ri-tsu-jo folding screen) was produced as early as the Tenpyo period, giving a glimpse of the ink painting techniques imported from the Tang dynasty, but it was not until the Kamakura period, when ink painting techniques from the Song and Yuan dynasties were introduced, that ink painting began to be produced in earnest. In the early days, it was enjoyed in conjunction with Zen Buddhism, and was produced by so-called "artist monks" who were registered as monks, such as Mokuan, Kao, Mincho, Josetsu, and Shubun, and eventually "poetry and painting scrolls" became very popular with the rise of Gozan literature. Then, with the appearance of Sesshu, Japanese ink painting was perfected. In addition, with the support of the Ashikaga Shogunate and other warriors, lay artists such as Oguri Sotan and Sokei, who became official painters for the shogunate, and Kano Masanobu and Motonobu also appeared. Furthermore, local artists such as Shokei and Sesson were also active, and ink painting began to be produced and enjoyed widely throughout the country. It also contributed greatly to the establishment of large-scale gold and green screen paintings in the Momoyama and Edo periods, and was widely produced through various schools of painting such as Kano, Hasegawa, Unkoku, and Kaiho. We must not forget the achievements of artists such as Sotatsu and Korin, who succeeded in incorporating Japanese emotions into rich ink colors. In modern times, the expressionistic tendency and spirituality in the black and white world of ink painting are being rediscovered from a global perspective, and new forms of ink painting are being sought.

[Satoru Sakakibara]

"Yashiro Yukio, 'Ink Painting' (1977, Iwanami Shoten)" ▽ "Matsushita Takaaki, 'Japanese Art 13 Ink Painting' (1967, Shibundo)" ▽ "Tanaka Ichimatsu and Yonezawa Yoshifuku, 'Ink Art Series 1: The Development from White Drawing to Ink Painting' (1978, Kodansha)"

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

東洋絵画の一形式。中国を中心に朝鮮および日本など東アジア文化圏で流行し、独特の発展をみた。墨を主顔料に、これの濃淡や潤渇の度合いによって、人物や動物、山川草木など森羅万象を描き出そうとしたもので、淡彩を施す場合もあるが、基本的にはすべての形象が墨一式で表現された抽象的かつ象徴的な絵画をいう。

　彩色しない、墨を基調にした絵画、いわゆる墨絵には、水墨画とは別に、白描画(はくびょうが)（白画(はくが)）とよばれる画法があり、これは墨の描線を主にした輪郭線本位の絵画で、中国では漢、魏(ぎ)以来の長い伝統をもつ。水墨画は、この白描画の描線の発達とも複雑に関係しながら唐時代（618～907）に発生をみ、墨の濃淡やぼかしによって面的表現を目ざしたところに特色がある。水墨画ということばは、唐代末期すでに張彦遠(ちょうげんえん)の『歴代名画記』に使われているが、その意味はおそらく、唐末に荊浩(けいこう)がその著『筆法記』のなかで述べた「水暈墨章(すいうんぼくしょう)」画と同義と考えられ、文字どおり水で暈(くま)どり墨で章(あや)どった画(え)のことである。

　水墨画の基本的描法として破墨(はぼく)と溌墨(はつぼく)の2種があり、これら二つの用墨法についてはさまざまな解釈が行われている。破墨とは、墨をもって墨を破ることで、淡墨で大体を描いてその上に濃墨を加え、濃淡の差やぼかしなどによって立体感や生動感を表現する技法であり、これに対し溌墨は、輪郭線を無視して画面に墨を溌(そそ)ぎ、一気に形体を表すとともに、墨の濃淡と勢いとによって生動感を表す技法である。前者が多分に線的で形態把握を主眼とし、どちらかといえば伝統的な骨法用筆に依存しているのに対し、後者はむしろ面的で、水暈墨章の名にふさわしい。

　水墨画が彩色画から独立して成立するためには、当然そこに絵画観そのものの重大な変革があった。『歴代名画記』が唐代初期の画家殷仲容(いんちゅうよう)の画を評して「墨を用いて色五采(ごさい)をかねた」と述べているように、墨一色の絵画を認め、しかも実際には濃淡の差はあるものの黒一色で描かれたものを精神的には五采すなわち彩色画であると観念し、了解する鑑賞態度がなにより必要とされたのである。こうした鑑賞態度の変化と、前述した破墨・溌墨2画法の成立・融合とによって墨のみの微妙な表現が可能になり、やがて唐末五代に写実的山水画が生まれ、ついで宋(そう)・元時代に至り水墨画は全盛期を迎え、深い精神性をもったもっとも東洋的な絵画表現として完成をみるのである。

　一方、日本における水墨画は、中国の水墨画の成立をうけ、早くも天平(てんぴょう)時代に『鳥毛立女屏風(とりげりつじょのびょうぶ)』が制作され、輸入された唐代の水墨画法の一端をかいまみることができるが、本格的に制作されるようになったのは、鎌倉時代に入って、宋・元の水墨画法が移入されてからである。その初期には禅宗と結び付いて享受され、黙庵(もくあん)、可翁(かおう)、明兆(みんちょう)、如拙(じょせつ)、周文(しゅうぶん)など僧籍をもったいわゆる「画僧」によって制作され、やがては五山文学の隆盛とともに「詩画軸」が大いに盛行した。そして雪舟の出現によって日本的水墨画の完成をみる。また足利(あしかが)将軍家をはじめ武人の支持と相まって、幕府の御用画師となった小栗宗湛(おぐりそうたん)・宗継(そうけい)父子や狩野正信(かのうまさのぶ)・元信など俗人画家も現れた。さらには祥啓、雪村などの地方画家も活躍し、ここに水墨画は全国的な広がりのなかで幅広く制作、享受されるようになった。そして桃山、江戸時代の大画面金碧(きんぺき)障壁画の成立に大きく寄与し、狩野、長谷川(はせがわ)、雲谷(うんこく)、海北(かいほう)など各画派を通じて大いに描かれた。また滋潤な墨色のなかに日本的情感を盛り込むことに成功した宗達、光琳(こうりん)などの活躍も忘れてはならない。なお現代では、水墨画の白と黒の世界における表現主義的傾向や精神性が世界的視野において再認識され、新たな形式の水墨画が模索されている。

［榊原　悟］

『矢代幸雄著『水墨画』（1977・岩波書店）』▽『松下隆章著『日本の美術13　水墨画』（1967・至文堂）』▽『田中一松・米沢嘉圃著『水墨美術大系1　白描画から水墨画への展開』（1978・講談社）』

出典　小学館　日本大百科全書(ニッポニカ)日本大百科全書(ニッポニカ)について　情報 | 凡例