Source: People's Daily
Fiery Red New Year Flavor (Oil Painting) Xu Bucheng
Happy Spring Festival (Chinese painting) He Jiaying Zhang See Li Yuwang Li Pengbang Li Dan Guan Hailong
Where dreams begin (Chinese painting) Huang Bingdi
Happy Bags (Chinese painting) Ding Xiaodong
Chinese Year (Chinese painting) Zhou Zhongju
Construction Site Spring Festival Gala (Chinese painting) Luo Xiaoshan
Spring of Jinling (peasant painting) Yan Tianchi
A Good Life Comes (New Year Painting) Li Jiahui
In China's traditional festival system, the Spring Festival is the festival with the grandest weather and the richest connotation. The folk cultural resources contained in the Spring Festival have always been the treasure trove and source of inspiration for the creation of art workers. In recent years, in the creation of contemporary art, especially in the creation of major theme art, there have been many excellent works with the theme of the Spring Festival. When artists depict the visual images of the Spring Festival, they also try to interpret it from the cultural spirit. In this sense, the Spring Festival theme art works are not only a vivid picture of the Spring Festival culture, but also an artistic reproduction of social progress and the happy life of the people.
Art shows festive customs
The history of the Spring Festival stretches on and accumulates a large number of cultural resources. The traditional etiquette system with reunion and New Year worship as the main body, the visual aesthetic system characterized by spring festivals, paper cutting, New Year paintings, and flower lanterns, the entertainment system represented by dragon dance lamps, stilt walking, temple fairs, firecrackers, and fireworks, and the material culture system with Chinese New Year's Eve rice, dumplings, and rice cakes as the content, together constitute the cultural connotation and folk form of the Spring Festival.
In the creation of art workers, these festival customs innovate through the form of painting, thus achieving aesthetic sublimation. For example, Xu Bucheng's oil painting "The Taste of the Fiery Red Year" shows the lively scene of every household hanging lanterns and pasting Spring Festivals in shanghai's old lanes. In the picture, the laughter of the elderly, young people and children seems to infect the whole city, and the streets and alleys are particularly warm in an instant. Ying Jinfei's print "Family Banquet" is a uniquely conceived work. Chinese New Year's Eve Chinese New Year's Eve rice is presented through the "mirror image" on the spoon, on which the light and shadow swim, psychic and transparent. These works of art all reflect the recognition and closeness of art workers to traditional new customs.
The Spring Festival is old and also young. The Spring Festival, which has entered a new era, is more and more full of vitality and youthful vitality. The new visual experience brought about by high-tech empowerment, the efficient and orderly Spring Festival of high-speed rail, the convenient and environmentally friendly mobile phone New Year customs, the people's spiritual outlook and the changes in urban and rural landscape brought about by the comprehensive construction of a well-off society have all become the distinctive themes of the Spring Festival theme art works. For example, Yan Tianchi's peasant painting "Spring of Jinling", while depicting people reuniting with their families and celebrating the Spring Festival, integrates the new achievements of the development of the times and the new appearance of urban development such as high-speed rail and 5G mobile communications into the picture, showing the new image of the times. Of course, the moving scene of the Spring Festival is far more than that.
As the concept of building a community with a shared future for mankind continues to penetrate the hearts of the people, many foreign friends have also celebrated the Spring Festival and shared the beauty of Chinese culture. The Chinese painting "Happy Spring Festival" created by He Jiaying, Zhang Jian and others shows the scene of people from all over the world celebrating the Chinese Lunar New Year in a panoramic way: lion dance, firecrackers, rowing dry boats, making dumplings... The picture is full of happiness everywhere, which is a vivid interpretation of the Spring Festival in the new era.
For artists, the Spring Festival provides them with a huge amount of creative resources. Some works on the theme of the Spring Festival are not so much the result of the deliberations of the artists as the creative practice inspired by the Spring Festival culture.
Paint the Spring Festival cultural picture book
The creation of Spring Festival theme art has a long history. In terms of the surviving works of ancient Chinese art, according to their cultural nature, they can be divided into three categories: court painting, literati painting and folk painting. Although the three have their own cultural demands and inheritance systems, they always complement each other. Nowadays, with the development of the country and the progress of the times, art workers have created a new pattern of art creation on the theme of the Spring Festival, whether it is content, style or language, they all show the weather and characteristics of the new era.
In the creative practice of folk themes, the Spring Festival is the most grand theme and the most intimate theme. When art workers are immersed in ancient cultural traditions and embark on a new journey in the new era, they more consciously dig deep into China's excellent traditional culture, appreciate its spiritual connotation, and promote its creative transformation and innovative development. At the same time, art workers take root in the life of the times, innovate artistic language, shape the image of the people in the new era, construct the theme of the new era, and present the value pursuit of the new era. These practices are an important way for contemporary art creation to respond to the times.
Statues for the people, depicting their uplifting spiritual outlook and struggling, optimistic and confident temperament, have become the main orientation of the Spring Festival theme art creation. Luo Xiaoshan's Chinese painting "Spring Festival Gala at the Construction Site" recreates the portrait of the workers who still stuck to their posts during the Spring Festival from an optimistic perspective. The work is strong and happy, solid and simple and full of brilliance. Ding Xiaodong's Chinese painting "The Bag of Happiness" depicts the warm scene of passengers marching in an orderly and affectionate manner in the tide of the Spring Festival. Obviously, this calmness and self-confidence rely on the strength of the country.
At the beginning of the New Year, the bright weather and bright sunshine of the Languang Mountains are also the favorite objects of expression of art workers. In the Chinese painting "Yan'an New Year", Xu Weiguo uses a simple and ethereal brushwork and a seemingly light ink color to outline the new appearance of Yan'an full of verdant mountains and buildings, showing the development vitality of the old revolutionary area.
In the creation of Spring Festival theme art, New Year painting is unique. The novelty of New Year painting lies in its content and expression to keep pace with the times and seek new changes. In recent years, many excellent New Year paintings have emerged in the "New Life, New Fashion, New Year Painting" - our well-off life theme art creation collection and display activities. These works vividly depict the new picture of the people's well-off life in the new era, such as He Xiaobao's "Spring Returns to the Earth", Yang Xianhong's "The Beautiful Sheep and Sheep of the Well-off Days", Li Longyan's "Spring Map", etc., all of which are permeated with the feeling of melting spring in the taste of heavy color decoration, reflecting the rising happiness index of the people.
Looking at the Spring Festival theme art works in recent years, it is not difficult to find that it profoundly interprets the rich connotation of Spring Festival culture from multiple angles such as cultural inheritance, people's image shaping, and national construction, so it can be called a vivid Spring Festival cultural picture book.
Inspiring contemporary art creation
The 100th festival year is the first. The "Chinese Civilization Historical Theme Art Creation Project" implemented by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the "National Thematic Art Creation Project" organized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and the "'Belt and Road' International Art Project" undertaken by the National Academy of Painting of China and other thematic art creation projects have all included the "Spring Festival" in the scope of the selection of topics. After several years, the "family foundation" of spring festival theme art creation has become increasingly rich, whether it is the accumulation of materials, or the refinement of the theme, or the processing of images, all of which are well-stocked. Combing and summarizing the experience has a certain enlightenment for the art creation of major themes at present.
In the spring festival theme art creation, we can deeply feel that from the real sublimation of life to the truth of art, art creation can open up a new realm. Many spring festival theme art works are not a simple reproduction of the daily landscape, but the image construction completed by art workers on the basis of mastering and analyzing a large number of materials, relying on creative thinking and artistic imagination. These works are deeply rooted in values and spiritual orientation, reflecting a more typical and general reality--the truth of art. In Yang Xiaoyang's long ink volume "Silk Road - Gansu Bitter Water Society Fire", many scenes and character activities derived from reality have been highly summarized by the painter, forming a magnificent and magnificent meteorology, reflecting the contemporary significance of the folk customs of the community fire.
The Spring Festival is the carrier of the history and cultural traditions of the Chinese nation, and precipitates the ideas and wisdom of the nation, which determines that the art creation of the Spring Festival theme has humanistic connotations. In the creative process, artists need to play the role of scholars at the same time, and the height reached by their humanistic research institutes often determines the height of art creation. For example, in the prints "Four Traditional Festivals of China" created by Zhao Zongzao, Cai Feng, Kong Guoqiao and others, it is precisely because the painter has fully examined and interpreted various cultural symbols that the creation has a solid foundation.
In the creation of spring festival theme art, on the basis of in-depth study of traditional culture and perception of the fiery era, art workers also focus on refining and shaping the theme and value orientation of the work, while driving the innovation of artistic language and style, and strive to form a personalized image structure and artistic style.
Unity is restored, and everything in Vientiane is renewed. Isn't the natural rhythm of lines, colors, images and symbols in the Spring Festival theme art works the prelude to spring?
(The author Zhang Xiaoling is deputy director of the Art Theory Committee of the China Artists Association)
Layout design: Zhao Kairu
People's Daily (08th edition, January 30, 2022)