Nianhua, a type of Chinese painting, has been called "an encyclopedia of civil society life in China". Some scholars believe that the New Year painting began with the door god paintings of the Han Dynasty, pinning people's wishes for good weather and rain, good agricultural harvest, family home Antai and so on, and to drive away disasters and avoid evil.
Yang Liu Youth Painting "Shen Di Yu Lei" Huo Qing has produced
From January 20th to February 27th, the "Homecoming Chinese New Year Exhibition - 2022 Chinese New Year Woodblock Print Exhibition" curated by Lingnan Art Museum will be exhibited at Lingnan Art Museum. At a time when New Year paintings are becoming more and more rare, looking for New Year's flavor folklore is a kind of "going home" in a different sense.
More than 300 pieces (sets) of New Year paintings were exhibited, and the Dongguan Spring Festival Folklore Document Exhibition was held at the same time
It is reported that this exhibition brings together the woodblock prints in the collection of the Lingnan Art Museum, as well as more than 300 pieces (sets) of fine New Year paintings collected by collector Chen Hong (Shen Hong), including works representing the origin of Famous Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage Paintings such as Tianjin Yangliuqing, Shaanxi Fengxiang, Shandong Weixian, Jiangsu Taohuawu, Henan Kaifeng, Fujian Zhangzhou, Guangdong Foshan and other famous Chinese intangible cultural heritage paintings.
The exhibition is divided into three parts: "Door God New Year Painting to Avoid Evil And Disasters", "Auspicious New Year Painting for Blessing and Blessing", and "Interesting New Year Painting", with rich themes and far-reaching meanings, so that the general public can share the beauty of Chinese New Year painting art. I pray that the vast number of citizens in Guanguan and Guanguan for the New Year will take "Guan" as their home and "Lingmei" as their home, and celebrate a warm, joyful and peaceful New Year festival.
According to the organizers, as a traditional Chinese folk art, Chinese woodblock prints have been included in many of their origins in the representative projects of national intangible cultural heritage. The works in this exhibition are selected from the famous woodblock prints in the country, and the authors are mostly non-hereditary inheritors at the national level.
Foshan New Year Painting "Plum Blossom Boy" Feng's New Year Painting Family
"When these works express the same theme, the techniques and craftsmanship are also different, they are all intangible cultural heritage created by people everywhere in the long-term practice of life, the crystallization of the wisdom and civilization of the Chinese nation, and the treasure of Chinese culture." The organizers expressed the hope that through this exhibition, the traditional woodblock print art of Chinese intangible cultural heritage will be further promoted and disseminated.
It is worth mentioning that at the same time as the New Year painting exhibition, Lingnan Art Museum also invited Zhang Jiandong, a folklore expert from Dongguan, to jointly plan the Dongguan Spring Festival Folklore Documentary Exhibition, which specially introduced "Dongguan's Spring Festival Folklore", such as "Making Winter Fruits in the Evening of the New Year", "Selling Lazy Chinese New Year's Eve", "Spring Festival Tour to Huangqi Mountain", "The First Seven Days", "Turning on the Lights Before the Lantern Festival", "Tea Mountain Doll" and so on. Let the general public have a deep understanding of the local customs of dongguan Spring Festival while watching the New Year painting exhibition.
In addition, the exhibition coincides with the Winter Holiday Spring Festival, in order to enrich the cultural activities of the General Public's Spring Festival holiday, Lingnan Art Museum specially plans a series of cultural activities and public education special sessions, such as The Collection of Yang Lian, Writing the Spring Festival and Sending Blessings, New Year Paintings, Prize Knowledge Q&A, Expert Tour, Creation of Flowers and Fruits of the Year Dynasty, Coloring DIY, Lantern Lantern Production, etc.
New Year painting trivia together to get!
Tianjin Yangliu Youth Painting: Is a traditional art of Tianjin, one of the national intangible cultural heritage, it is rumored to have begun about the Ming Dynasty during the Wanli Dynasty, flourished in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, and was publicly promoted as the first Chinese folk woodblock print.
Yangliuqing woodblock prints are Chinese folk woodblock prints, which inherit the tradition of Song and Yuan paintings, and absorb the forms of Ming Dynasty woodblock prints, arts and crafts, and theatrical stages. Prints have a wide range of themes, rich content, full composition, auspicious meaning, and elegant and popular appreciation. It adopts the method of combining woodblock overprinting and hand-painted painting, with exquisite engraving, delicate painting, vivid characters and elegant colors, creating a unique style of vivid and lively, joyful and auspicious, and full of touching themes.
Shaanxi Fengxiang New Year Painting: Fengxiang woodblock prints are a major genre of traditional Chinese folk New Year paintings, which began in the Tang and Song dynasties, flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and are praised by foreign collectors as "the crystallization of oriental wisdom".
Fengxiangmen Shennian painting pays attention to the traditional engraving technique, inheriting the iron wire engraving, the lines are thick, smooth and clumsy, the turns are strong and powerful, and the knife technique is bold and has a golden stone flavor. The colors are red, green, yellow and purple, and the contrast is strong.
The characters in Fengxiang's woodblock prints are more exaggerated, with a large head and a thick waist, and their character images are majestic and powerful, with both shapes and gods, and have a strong northern temperament, highlighting the brave, majestic, rugged, bold and simple character characteristics of the northwestern people.
Shandong Weixian New Year Painting: Shandong Weixian woodblock prints were formed in the Ming Dynasty and developed to reach a peak during the Qing Xianfeng and Guangxu years, the most representative of which is the Weixian Yangjiabu woodblock prints.
Weixian New Year painting "Descendants Long" anon
Weixian woodblock prints are real peasant paintings, which concentrate and typically embody the rough, unrestrained, industrious character and noble moral sentiments of the peasants in the north of the mainland, and are well-known at home and abroad for their strong local atmosphere and simple and distinctive artistic style.
Weixian wooden board New Year painting production method is simple, exquisite craftsmanship, bright colors, rich content. Every year, the theme of the Spring Festival New Year painting will be changed once, closely following current events, and can be reflected in the New Year painting immediately, and play a certain role in promoting the progress of society.
Jiangsu Taohuawu New Year Painting: Peach Blossom Wood Board New Year Painting is a traditional art in Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province, is one of the three major woodblock New Year paintings in mainland China, with a history of more than 400 years, and Tianjin "Yang Liuqing" New Year Painting and called "South Peach North Yang". The overall style of the New Year painting embodies the folk aura of the Jiangnan region, carved in woodblocks, and printed with a traditional watermark method of one-color and one-color. The composition is plump, the colors are bright, and the decoration is rich; the carving is exquisite, the subject matter is diverse, and it is a recorder of the life and customs of Suzhou citizens before the invention of photography technology. The themes are mostly folk tales, auspicious and festive, idols, dramas, and current events, and express people's good wishes in symbolic, allegorical and exaggerated ways.
The Peach Blossom WoodBlock Print has a unique form and a more elegant style, which not only integrates the literati painting method, but also integrates the Western-style "Taixi Brushwork", which is a model of the integration of Chinese and Western art and a "living fossil" of the exchange and development of Chinese and Western art.
Henan Kaifeng New Year Painting: Most researchers of New Year painting believe that the earliest folk woodblock New Year painting in China is the Henan Kaifeng New Year Painting. Among them, Zhu Xianzhen's woodblock New Year paintings are the most representative in the Kaifeng New Year paintings in Henan Province, and are the founding fathers of Chinese woodblock Prints.
Kaifeng New Year painting "Golden Ten Thousand Two" was produced by Helin
Henan Kaifeng New Year paintings come from the folk, different from the gentle and elegant style of the court literati paintings of previous dynasties. Its lines are rough and unrestrained, the plot is vivid and touching, the composition is full and symmetrical, the image is simple and vivid, the colors are thick and strong, it is very decorative, and has distinct local characteristics. Handle the picture and portray the character image in a concise and bright and exaggerated way. The image of the gods is shaped, especially highlighting the head image, and the body proportions are exaggerated, which is very infectious. The appearance of the characters is tony and handsome without flattery, which is its most prominent feature.
Fujian Zhangzhou New Year Painting "Zhangzhou Woodblock New Year Painting" is a folk traditional art in Zhangzhou City, Fujian Province, and shares the reputation of "Four Major Woodblock New Year Paintings of Chinese Folk" with Tianjin Yangliuqing, Jiangsu Taohuawu, Sichuan Mianyang and other places.
Zhangzhou New Year painting "Kui Xingchun" produced by Yan Chaojun
Zhangzhou woodblock Prints have a rugged and beautiful style of Southern Folk New Year Paintings, and are unique varieties among many Chinese New Year painting genres. The carved lines of zhangzhou woodblock prints are very different in thickness, rigid and soft, and are mainly strong black lines. The pursuit of color is simple and clear, the contrast is strong, the printing adopts the manual overprinting of the color separation, and the pigments used are divided into water quality and powder, which are the characteristics of these processes, creating the artistic characteristics of Zhangzhou New Year painting with generous composition, plump shape and brilliant colors.
Guangdong Foshan New Year Painting: Guangdong Foshan Woodblock New Year Painting is a famous folk New Year painting in South China, and is a wonderful flower of lingnan traditional folk culture.
Foshan woodblock New Year painting image is fine, the lines are rough and concise, strong and powerful, the composition is full, rich in decoration, which is obviously different from the characteristics of other local New Year paintings, reflecting the delicate artistic characteristics of Cantonese culture.
Foshan woodblock new year paintings draw on and absorb Foshan folk paper-cutting, dyeing paper, copper chisel writing lining, woodblock flower paper, sacred clothes, door cup spending and other local folk art production techniques, in a large area of color using red dan, green, yellow, black and other large color blocks overprint, so that the picture is magnificent and shining.
[Written by] Li Tonghui Gong Mingyang
Photo courtesy of Lingnan Museum of Art
【Author】 Li Tonghui Gong Mingyang
【Source】 Southern Press Media Group South + client