Looking back on the road that China has traveled in the past 100 years, we have to pay attention to why China's oil paintings are different from those in the West. In other words, we should study the characteristics given to it by China people since it was introduced to the West. Oil painting is a worldwide language. Art is not limited by national boundaries and is appreciated by people of all nationalities in the world. From an artistic point of view, it is difficult to hold the view that European oil painting and China oil painting are the same, because oil painting, as a worldwide art, has the same standard, just because creators of different nationalities have differences in content and expression techniques. Therefore, when we study the development history of China oil painting, theoretically, we must also use the international standards of oil painting to measure it. However, what is the world standard of oil painting? Generally speaking, there are three levels in the examination of oil painting art: technical level, formal skill level and spiritual content level. Technology must be passed, and oil painting technology ABC must be mastered, which is the most basic requirement. Using technology to express your feelings and describe what you see, hear and feel, there is a question of how to describe, how to express, what skills to use and what form to choose. As a classical realistic oil painting, Europeans have a solid foundation of realistic modeling, that is, sketch modeling. After Impressionism, European oil painting gradually turned to expressionism, adopting symbolic, freehand brushwork and abstract techniques. However, due to the foundation of concrete realism and the origin of classical oil paintings, their spatial consciousness is still in the same strain as their tradition, giving people a feeling of being still rich but thin and inconspicuous, with a three-dimensional spatial atmosphere without revealing the painted skin, even when they consciously get rid of the three-dimensional space and pursue planarization. Another important link of oil painting form skill is color. As a kind of painting produced in Europe, the history, geography and human environment in Europe have cultivated the art of oil painting. The natural environment and climate in Europe determine that their painting advantage lies in oil painting, not ink painting. The beauty and harmony of European oil painting colors attract attention in the world art world, and also cultivate the eyes of oil painters from generation to generation. Using oil painting technology, we must meet certain requirements in the feeling and application of color, and master the methods of color contrast and harmony through the level of color. Technology, skills and forms ultimately serve the spiritual content. The key to the success of a work of art lies not in technology and formal skills, but in the spiritual ability it contains. Spiritual ability has a wide range of contents, the most important of which is the depth of aesthetic feeling reflected in artistic works. Any profound aesthetic feeling can touch people's hearts, whether it is writing characters or writing landscapes, landscapes and still lives.
Using these three standards to measure China's oil painting art in the 20th century, we think there are many shortcomings. It is an obvious fact that technology and formal skills are not perfect. Because of social unrest and instability, the predecessors engaged in oil painting did not have enough time and energy to do more in-depth research and exploration in this area, and we still need to make up lessons. As for the spiritual capacity of our oil paintings, on the whole, China oil paintings in the 20th century are closely related to life and reality, although there was a tendency of pan-politicization, which was the result of narrow literary concepts and biased literary policies. The understanding of aesthetic intolerance has affected the all-round and healthy development of China's oil paintings, which is an unavoidable fact when we review this course. However, the elite creation of China's oil paintings in this period also has another feature, which is unique in describing and reflecting real life, with idealism and optimism. These works have influenced the spiritual life of the people in China, actively participated in the social changes in China, and promoted the pace of social progress. In this way, the oil painting art produced in China in the 20th century can basically be in line with international standards. We give it due evaluation and praise, not out of narrow nationalism and patriotism. In fact, impartial artists from other countries also gave a fair evaluation of China's oil paintings. From an artistic point of view, what is the most important feature of China's oil paintings? Realism. There are two meanings here, realistic spirit and realistic form. The reality of China in the 20th century and the social changes in China made many intellectuals and artists in China regard literature and art as a weapon to transform society. For most of this century, artists pay close attention to reality, absorb creative resources from social life, and endow their works with realism and related formal skills. At the beginning of the 20th century, when oil painting was first introduced to China from the west, its main forms were realism, figuration and realism. At that time, modernism had prevailed in Europe, and realistic oil painting had begun to be suppressed. China people can choose realistic oil paintings with classical colors and modernist oil paintings with radical colors. Because most international students in China study in foreign art colleges, they mainly receive practical education from colleges. Some people (such as Xu Beihong) are staunch realists and advocate realistic art. Some people have always been interested in modernist painting and studied and practiced it, such as Lin Fengmian, Pang Xunqin and Wei Tianlin, but these artists are not modernists in the true sense. They adopted a compromise attitude, not only studying classical realistic oil paintings, but also paying more attention to the exploration of modern art, drawing lessons from expressive language or doing local experiments. For example, some of their works adopt expressionism, barbarism and cubism. It is worth noting that at the end of 19, college art education in Europe and Japan had accepted some ideas and skills of impressionism and post-impressionism. It can be said that among the overseas students in China, even the painters who insist on classical realism are quite different from the authentic European academic school in19th century. After returning to China, these painters saw the backwardness and decline of the motherland, which was a scene of devastation caused by Japanese aggression. What society and people need is realistic art that they can understand and understand. Realism occupies the mainstream position and modernism is restrained, which is inevitable. From a sociological point of view, this may be beyond reproach, but from an artistic point of view, this is a very regrettable phenomenon. Because modernism also pays attention to life and reality, and does not want to establish a pure art palace divorced from society. However, in old China, where the task of cultural enlightenment has not been completed, it is difficult for people to accept modernism. In 1930s, there were clubs such as Juelan Society, which tried to promote modernist art, but failed. Some oil painters who are keen on doing modernist art are slowly changing their ways and painting more realistic paintings. At one time in 1930s, many oil painters expressed various techniques on the basis of realism. At that time, the artistic environment was relatively relaxed, and there was little administrative intervention in artistic creation methods, but the material conditions were extremely difficult, and artists were still in danger of unemployment. In 1950s and 1960s, the realistic art in China's oil paintings was very conceptual. Influenced by Soviet socialist realism, his artistic creation closely served the politics at that time. Oil paintings recognized by the ideology at that time generally had strong political content, while some oil painters with their own artistic ideals (such as Wu Dayu) made their own explorations outside the mainstream art.
The oil paintings in this period should be analyzed in detail. At that time, the political enthusiasm of the people of the whole country was high and they rejoiced for the prosperity of national construction. Many oil painters praised the prosperity of the motherland, the great victory of the people's war, the heroes of workers, peasants and soldiers and the new things in society with sincere mentality and strong patriotic enthusiasm, carefully scrutinized the art and created many works with both ideological content and formal aesthetic feeling, which should be fully affirmed and evaluated historically. These works are the artistic achievements of New China. Needless to say, among the works that serve politics, there are also some mediocre works and some pseudo-realistic works. The 1950s and 1960s were the harvest periods of China's realistic oil paintings. Oil painters who studied abroad or received education at home in 1930s, and people who grew up after 1949, all contributed many excellent works to China Realism Gallery during this period.
During the Cultural Revolution, pseudo-realism prevailed. From an artistic point of view, the oil paintings during the Cultural Revolution, except for some artists' private artistic exploration, were all subject to objective social conditions and lacked real realism.
In the more than 20 years since 1978, China's oil paintings have experienced two big shock waves, one is the trend of young pioneers in China under the influence of western modernist art, and the other is the trend of art commercialization under the impact of commodity economy. The so-called "85 new wave" is actually a young artistic trend of thought that widely introduces western modernism, with radical colors. The main goal of this trend of thought is to deny the pseudo-realism tradition. Its emergence and the sympathy or participation of many artists are due to some things it denies, such as false idealism, bright red, whitewashing, stylization of artistic creation methods, Chen Xiangyin and so on. It introduces some artistic ideas and methods that we are not familiar with, but it inspires us. The new wave is not so much a positive achievement in artistic creation as an impact force, which makes us more aware of some disadvantages of the existing artistic model, so as to consciously restrain and overcome it; Let's broaden our horizons and see a sky behind us. In addition, some radical and one-sided slogans and practices of "85 trendy" also hit the nail on the head, which makes us alert and aware that we will deny all possible consequences without analysis, so as to consciously keep the good things in the tradition instead of throwing away the baby in the basin when splashing bath water. The new wave of' 85' didn't destroy the realistic tradition of China's oil paintings, but the realistic art has been tempered from it and moved towards a broader and healthier road. At the same time, schools other than realism have gained corresponding development space under the impetus of new ideological trends.
The wave of commercialization brings oil painting to the market. The market demand once caused a worrying kitsch tendency in oil painting creation, and many works that cater to the market and are cheap in taste appeared. The impetuous mood of some oil painters is also related to the inability to correctly handle the relationship between art and market, and some people have to degenerate in order to enter the market. Vulgar and cheap pseudo-classical realism and works describing customs satisfied with fleeting images once flooded the market. However, the art market itself has the ability of self-improvement, the appreciation ability of art brokers, collectors and the masses is constantly improving, and artists are constantly improving the interest and style of their works. In the domestic art market, the quality of art sold by at least influential auction houses and galleries is constantly improving. Generally speaking, the emergence of the art market has injected new vitality into China's oil paintings, which will become more and more obvious with the passage of time. Therefore, since the 1980s, China's oil paintings have taken realism as the mainstream. However, the face of realism has changed greatly, and the concept of realism is more open and the methods are more diverse. Realistic ideas and methods reflect, struggle and blend with each other. There are many realistic works with expressive and symbolic characteristics, some surrealism with ridicule and ridicule, some barren works, and so on. In the 1990s, this trend became more obvious, and the situation that realism dominated the whole country has become a thing of the past, which is consistent with the process of diversification of artistic concepts and practices. China's oil paintings ushered in the spring of a hundred flowers.
Undoubtedly, China's oil paintings in the 20th century were influenced by western (including Russian) classical traditions and contemporary art, but in the process of development, influenced by the national real life, traditional culture and artistic background, it formed a different look from other national oil paintings. This face is hard to describe in one sentence, but it is obvious that there is indisputable freehand brushwork. There are two schools of oil painting. The first category is creative works which are mainly based on objective reproduction; The second category is creative works with subjective expression.
The first category, such as Baroque, Locke, Classicism, Academicism, Romanticism, Realism, Realism, Photographic Realism and Impressionism, appeared after the Renaissance, all of which were based on the reproduction of nature and expressed the different thoughts and purposes of painters. Baroque-/kloc-baroque pop from the 7th century to the 8th century. The original meaning of the word "Baroque" is irregular, twisted and grotesque. Advocating the distortion, richness and sense of volume of movement, its artistic language is strong, exaggerated, dynamic and flashy, which are the characteristics of baroque painting, and its representative is Rubens.
Rocco school-"Rocco" originally meant the shape of a shell. Its artistic style is complex, delicate, slender and sweet, and it was popular in18th century. Its representative painters are Eduardo and Fran? ois.
Classicism and academic school-Classicism is based on respecting the aesthetic principles of ancient Greece and Rome, with symmetrical and balanced composition, solemn and magnificent momentum, exquisite techniques and in-depth description. This is also the principle pursued by the academic school. As Fasino, the founder of academic school, said, "Beauty is the highest goal of all works of art and an objective nature of things, which is composed of order, harmony, proportion and rules". Its representative writers are Raphael and Angel.
Romanticism-Romanticism originated in the early19th century, and its masterpiece is "Medusa's Raft" by Ji Like. The composition, light, color, dynamics and expressions in this work all show the artist's rich imagination, breaking the horizontal and vertical in classical composition, and the light is soft and even, which makes the picture have a passion. This is also an important element of romantic painting, which pays attention to the catharsis and expression of feelings.
Realism-Realistic painting refers to1in the mid-9th century, painters headed by Miller advocated expressing normal visual images and reflecting the essence of life by being faithful to objects. His masterpiece is "Miller's Collection".
Realism and photographic realism-realism, as its founder Courbet said in 1885: "As I have seen, it faithfully shows the customs, thoughts and characteristics of my time. In short, creating art is my purpose. " Photographic realism is to put life on the screen in the form of photography, such as a close-up portrait of John. It draws a work by taking photos or slides first, and then enlarges it to the cloth at a ratio ten times larger than the real person, showing the details of the object more delicately and realistically, such as every texture and hair on the face.
Impressionism-Impressionism is that painters in the19th century went out of the studio to explore the instantaneous changes of light and color in nature, which broke the traditional concept of inherent color, such as the tree is blue-green, and the shadow is black. It objectively painted the influence of the surrounding color on the inherent color. Its representative painters are Monet, Seurat, Cezanne and Renoir.
If the above-mentioned school of painting is still a faithful representation of nature by painters, but only supplements, emphasizes and develops it, then the second category introduced below is post-impressionism, fauvism, cubism, futurism, abstraction, surrealism and so on. , is no longer a true description of the objective object, but a free creation according to the painter's subjective intention, and most of them appeared after the 20th century.
Post-impressionism-Post-impressionism painters emphasize self-feeling and pay attention to color contrast and the internal structure of things. The representative painters are Van Gogh and Gauguin. This school of painting has had a far-reaching influence on modern western painting.
Fauvism-Fauvism expresses its inner passion with exaggerated shapes, strong colors and rough lines, and Matisse is the founder of this painting school.
Cubism-Cubism painting school, the viewpoint of the picture is no longer an orientation, but an all-round performance of things, so that objects can be restored to geometric shapes. Its founder is Spanish painter Picasso and French painter Braque.
Futurist-Futurist painters use colors and lines to express the speed and intensity of movement and their combination and separation in an abstract form.
Abstraction-Abstraction depends on the abstract combination of lines, blocks, surfaces and colors, and has no concrete image. Its representative painter is the Dutch painter Mondl An.
Dadaism-Dadaism has a certain influence on later surrealism, mobile sculpture, pop art and even postmodernism.
Surrealism-Surrealism painting school is influenced by Bergson's intuitionism and Freud's subconscious theory, and advocates expressing people's subconscious and dreams. Representative painters are Spanish painters Dali and Milo.