The Grande Odalisque
Ingres's art “lofty and solemn” could be reflected by his important work The Grande Odalisque. In the painting, Ingres gave up a lot of unnecessary details and made them unified in the serene, quiet and harmonious atmosphere, like carefully calculated. Each number represented the very dangerous event which was closely related to the whole. The free change would make the whole painting with a thoroughly collapse. This also seemed to validate the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras’s "number and harmony" theory, Pichia looked up at the night sky and could feel the stars combinations like the music composed by the numbers. He said he had really heard such "all day music" for many times.
In this oil painting, proportion and color were arranged in a strange order as the numbers which was gorgeous and not losing calm. During his early study tour in Italy, he surely felt the divine beauty of Pythagorean’s philosophy from the ancient Greek works of art. The deliberately elongated body seemed to reflect a kind of solemn beauty of the ancient Greek sculpture. Art is not the blind copy of reality, but the expression of the spirit of flowers pouring into all feelings of life. This was a kind of aesthetic feeling without any reason. Qi Baishi said the painting "wonderful in between like and not like", after the body away from the worldly shackles, the spirit will be successful. This was also reflected in his many great sketches. For example, in his portrait for the violinist Niccol ò Paganini, it was streamlined, but did not lose bearing. It abandoned the visual illusions in the daily light, and reduced the shadow and tone to the extreme. Then the inner body and spirit could be shined between the spaces, such as lotus pond after the new charge, not making any dust.
