Mr. Meng Yangyu talks about the New Year paintings. Photo by Wei Liang
(New Year grassroots) The Old Man's New Year Painting Complex: Sixty Years of Recording the Spring Festival "New Year's Taste"
Zhongxin Network Taiyuan, January 20 Title: The New Year Painting Complex of the Elderly: Sixty Years of Recording the Spring Festival "New Year's Taste"
The author is Gao Yuqing
"New Year painting, New Year painting, New Year painting." After painting a lifetime of annual paintings, The Shanxi painter Meng Yangyu, who is nearly ninety years old, has made one festive work after another enter thousands of households in China. In an interview with reporters on the 20th, he said that in Chinese folk, the New Year painting is the symbol of the Year, "I hope that through the exhibition of the New Year painting, the public will awaken the memories of the New Year of childhood and the importance of Chinese folk culture."
The audience uses their mobile phones to shoot new year paintings. Photo by Wei Liang
In the cold season, the Shanxi Archaeological Museum worships the Shrine, and the snow slowly falls. In the exhibition hall on the west side, a series of New Year paintings attract the public to stop and admire. At present, there are less than two weeks left before the traditional Chinese festival, the Spring Festival.
For overseas Chinese, the Spring Festival is one of the most important festivals of the year. Prepare New Year goods, paste Spring Festival, hang New Year paintings, eat Group New Year dinner, keep the New Year, worship the New Year... Everything is indispensable. It is these Spring Festival customs that constitute a strong "New Year's flavor".
Meng Yangyu introduced that the New Year painting, a kind of Chinese painting, began in the Han Dynasty of the door god painting, reflecting the cultural connotation and meaning of the "year" in folklore, mostly used for posting during the Spring Festival, decorating the environment, containing the meaning of blessing the New Year auspicious and festive. "When we were young, we would paste New Year paintings, look at New Year paintings, and learn knowledge and education from New Year paintings." Meng Yangyu told reporters that it was precisely because of the New Year painting that he stepped into the door of painting art.
The public stopped in front of the New Year paintings to watch. Photo by Wei Liang
From the 1950s to the 1980s, Meng Yangyu created a large number of New Year paintings, reflecting China's folk culture, urban development and changes in the times. His works have been exhibited in Taiyuan, Qingdao, Jinan and other places, and have been collected by museums and collectors at home and abroad in China, Britain, Japan, Singapore and other places.
Xu Shiwen, a compiler, painter and art critic of the National Taiwan Museum of Art, once commented on Mr. Meng Yangyu's works in the article "A Brief Discussion on the Development of Chinese Objects": "The rest of the works similar to New Year paintings have a meticulous expression of Chinese and Western classical techniques, realistic kung fu to the home, rich in color and not tacky, vivid in shape, and natural in expression. ”
Among the works in the exhibition that day, a New Year painting that was made to form a body exhibition board was the most eye-catching, which was Meng Yangyu's 1982 "Ten Thousand Flower Lanterns Connecting Beijing". I saw several children wearing cotton jackets and cotton pants, holding various flower lanterns, lined up in a long line, on the other side, a boy carefully prepared to light firecrackers, and the younger boy on the side covered his ears.
The two protagonists imitate their childhood selves in the New Year painting before the work. Photo by Wei Liang
It is worth mentioning that the two protagonists in the New Year painting also appeared at the exhibition site on the same day, and imitated their childhood selves in the New Year painting in front of this work. "Covering his ears is the painter's youngest son, and I am the one who is ready to light firecrackers." Meng Yangyu's nephew Wang Zhiji told reporters that every time he saw this New Year painting, it could evoke his memories of the Spring Festival as a child.
Meng Yangyu said that his works can be loved and favored by the people, and he can't help but feel comforted, and a pleasant sense of happiness arises spontaneously. New Year paintings carry the people's yearning for a better life. He said, "The New Year painting carries the people's yearning for a better life. The Spring Festival is approaching, and I hope that my New Year paintings can awaken the 'New Year's taste' in my memory. (End)