Lunar calendar Nongyin Tiger Year is coming, for thousands of years, people have been regarded as a town house god beast that can drive away evil and avoid disasters, ancient books contain "painting tiger on the door", "painting chicken on the household", this Year painting is also the same as the Spring League, originated from the "door god", in the process of development, gradually become another kind of "Chinese painting", adding festive joy to the Spring Festival.
Historically, folk have had many names for New Year paintings: the Song Dynasty called it "paper painting", the Ming Dynasty called it "Painting Paste", and the Qing Dynasty called it "Painting Piece". Until the Qing Dynasty Li Guangting wrote in the "Interpretation of the Folk Language": "After the broom house, I will paste the New Year paintings, and the children's plays will be eared." ...... Still gourd-like, spring returns from the painting. There is no cold in the hands, and the heart is contrary to the lying swimming. Earn children's joy, can produce fluffy brilliance. Cultivating Santu is the best, as if a fat family", the word "New Year Painting" first appeared.
Shandong Yangjiabu New Year Painting "Taishan Divine Tiger"
Another kind of "Chinese painting"
In the ancient art of painting on the mainland, there is a kind of "Chinese painting" that has been framed, properly treasured by people, and taken out from time to time to enjoy. Their themes are mostly landscapes, flowers and birds, bamboo stones, molan, etc., representing the spiritual temperament of Chinese literati, and the proportion of figure paintings is low. However, the New Year painting is the opposite of "Chinese painting", its content is mainly based on the activities of characters, mainly based on historical novels, legendary stories, folk life, farming situations or current affairs news, with a strong local atmosphere.
The history of New Year paintings is quite long, the earliest is the ancients in order to "drive away evil spirits and resist evil", posted on the door of the "door god painting". After the Tang Dynasty, it gradually evolved, and some decorative paintings appeared, such as the "Four Beautiful Pictures" of the Song Dynasty, which is regarded as the ancestor of the New Year painting.
"Four Beautiful Pictures" is from Pingyang (now Linfen), painted on Wang Zhaojun, Zhao Feiyan, Ban Ji, and Green Pearl, printed in woodcuts, with delicate lines of carving, different postures and costumes, and meticulous portrayals of the four beauties of the Han and Jin dynasties.
《Four Beautiful Pictures》
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, woodblock New Year painting ushered in its heyday, and the maturity of color overprinting technology greatly promoted the painting and sales of woodblock New Year paintings, which have spread throughout urban and rural areas throughout the country and formed different genres.
The New Year paintings of Yangjiabu and Wu Qiang in the north are rough and bold; the New Year paintings in the south, such as Taohuawu and Foshan, are delicate and feminine. But carefully distinguished, even if they belong to the same northern New Year paintings, they also have different painting styles.
Yangjiabu, Shandong, Wuqiang, Hebei, the painting style has a strong mountain forest atmosphere; Henan Zhuxian Town is located in the hinterland of the Central Plains, the painting style carries the elegant atmosphere of the Central Plains; Tianjin Yangliuqing is close to the imperial capital, and the painting style advocates exquisite beauty... In the long historical process, different regions have formed a set of production experience and artistic characteristics, and a number of classic New Year painting works have been born, such as Yang Liuqing's "More than One Year in a Row", Zhu Xianzhen's "Big Kui Tou", Taohuawu's "A Tuan He Qi", Yang Jiabu's "Deep Mountain Tiger", and Wu Qiang's "Six Sons Fighting for the Head".
In the Jiaqing and Daoguang years of the Qing Dynasty, due to the emperor's cool opera, the number of opera gardens in Beijing increased, and famous people from other places concentrated in Beijing to perform, and photo painters appeared in the history of painting, drawing the true appearance of famous people. Folk have also begun to popularize New Year paintings depicting the performance scenes of the opera garden, helping the vast number of rural people to see the "true appearance" of famous people. Among them, Yang Liuqing's painting is the most evocative, the original is Yang Liuqing Dai Lian Zeng painting shop to invite the painter to the theater to see the play, the painter must carry a decaying pen (sketch pen) and paper to see the play, on the spot to draw the most wonderful scene of the famous performance, back to the workshop and then meticulous processing.
Yang Liu Youth Painting "Mulan Joins the Army"
After the Yuan Dynasty, figure painting declined, but folk New Year painting artists inherited this painting style creation, so that its development was not endless. The New Year painting replaces the text with an image, which has played an educational role in popularizing knowledge for women, children, and toiling masses who have little literacy in history, such as "Reading with Hanging Horns" in Yangliu Youth Painting, "Cultivating and Weaving Map" in Suzhou Taohuawu, and "Visiting the King of Wenxian" in Kaifeng, Henan, etc., all of which enable people to absorb the "goodness" of content and the "beauty" of form in silence. After the Opium War, there were also a large number of anti-aggression New Year paintings, which were distributed to rural townships and towns throughout the country.
Although it is often only circulated in tian's hometown, it is removed after being worn out, and rarely enjoys the "treatment" of proper preservation, the New Year paintings and "literati paintings" are still like branches and flowers, and bloom in the China Art Garden.
The New Year painting enlightens Lu Xun's aesthetics
The New Year painting is also the earliest artistic enlightenment of Mr. Lu Xun.
Lu Xun loved to paint since he was a child, and the woodblock New Year paintings circulated in Jiangsu and Zhejiang left a deep impression on Lu Xun in his childhood. He recalled in the article "Dog, Cat, and Mouse" in "Chao Hua Xi Shi": "In front of my bed, there are two pieces of flower paper, one is the 'Eight Commandments', full of paper with long mouths and big ears, which I think is not very elegant; the other one is cute, from the groom, the bride to the bride, to the guests, the deacons, there is not a single one who is not a sharp cheek and thin legs, like a reader, but wearing red shirts and green pants." ...... The night of the fourteenth day of the first month is the night when I refuse to sleep easily, waiting for their honor guards to come out from under the bed. ”
Hunan Tantou New Year Painting "Mouse Marrying Relatives"
The "flower paper" here refers to the New Year paintings, and the first one in the catalogue of New Year paintings collected by Lu Xun is "The Complete Book of the Newly Carved Mouse Marrying Relatives in Chu Nantan Town", which shows that Lu Xun is very fond of this vivid and lively, popular folk and full of folk interest.
The story of "rat marrying a woman" can be described as a household name in the folk, and the most primitive meaning is to show the theme of "rat marriage" to show the theme of rat Nafu, and it has a kind of comedy in the seriousness of worshiping gods and exorcising gods. One of the theories is that the mouse couple wanted to marry their beautiful little daughter to a powerful person, and finally chose the cat. On the day of the marriage, the rats delivered to the door were eaten by the cat. People use this story to satirize those who tend to be inflamed and eager to cling to the powerful.
In the New Year painting of "Mouse Marrying Relatives", the scene is grand, there are many images, lifting a car, riding a horse, carrying a dowry, and a kissing band, the shape is vivid and interesting, reflecting the beauty of the present world of folk customs and harmony and nature, which is fascinating to watch. Regarding "rural humor", Lu Xun once said in his letters: "I do not agree with the saying that 'humor is urban', and Chinese peasants use humor more often than small citizens in the city." ”
Lu Xun's New Year painting "Black Cat Catching Mouse"
The art of New Year painting even influenced Lu Xun's novel creation. Lu Xun once mentioned in the article "How Do I Start a Novel" that in his own writing, he always highlights the characters and focuses on portraying the characters and expressing the inner spirit of the characters, which is learned from the old plays and New Year paintings: "On the old Plays in China, there is no background, and there are only a few people on the flower paper sold to children in the New Year (but now the flower paper has more backgrounds), I am convinced that for my purpose, this method is appropriate, so I do not describe the wind and moon, and the dialogue will never talk about a large article. ”
In addition to the collection of Chinese painting rubbings, Chinese and foreign woodblock prints, modern lithographs, Lu Xun also has a lot of folk prints of woodblock New Year paintings, in addition to the aforementioned Beachhead New Year paintings, but also covers Zhuxian Town, Yangjiabu, Yang Liuqing, Wuqiang, Taohuawu and other regions, the collection of New Year paintings of the wide range of origins, can see a lot of effort, the physical objects are now stored in shanghai Lu Xun Memorial Hall. Although Lu Xun did not say much about the New Year paintings in the text, he made concise and concise expositions on the origin of the New Year paintings, the current situation at that time, the content of the old New Year paintings, the traditional printing methods and composition methods of the New Year paintings, and how to learn from and criticize them.
Lu Xun's Collection of Henan Zhuxian Town New Year Painting "Door God"
In fact, Lu Xun collected New Year paintings and did research, not out of pleasure such as play or curiosity, a very important reason was that the young painters in the society at that time had a tendency to worship the ocean, so Lu Xun proposed to learn from the traditional art of the nation and the folk. In a letter to Yao Ke in 1934, Lu Xun said: "A letter says that a good illustration is greater than the power of an oil painting, which is extremely correct. But the young Chinese painters, very few people pay attention to this..." In 1935, in a letter to Li Hua, he replied again, "How to create better prints": "So I mean that if you consider the stone carvings of the Han Dynasty, the illustrations of books in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and pay attention to the so-called 'New Year paintings' that the folk appreciate, and integrate with the new laws of Europe, you may be able to create a better printmaking." ”
These cherished teachings of Lu Xun are also the crystallization of his lifelong collection of folk New Year paintings.