Mask is a special field of plastic arts, which first appeared in very distant ancient times. Many tribes and tribal masks often combine sculpture and painting to create quite wonderful works. Although bizarre, they are not important achievements of plastic arts after all.
Mask culture is also often called Nuo culture. His appearance is a sign of social progress. China is one of the countries with the earliest appearance and the longest popularization time of masks. Its prototype and shadow can still be seen today, and it continues to play a role in the psychology, folklore, culture and art of our people.
Extended data:
Nuo mask is a prop used for Nuo sacrifice and Nuo instrument in Nuo culture. It is a relatively primitive mask shape, a primitive totem expression, an auspicious symbol of disaster relief, and an important spiritual strength of people since ancient times. Nuo mask has experienced the transformation from primitive worship of gods to entertaining gods and people, and it has the characteristics of religious art and folk art.
Nuo mask is rooted in the folk, which embodies the aesthetic taste of generation after generation and reflects the essential strength of a person. Many Nuo masks are fine works of art, and their mask features are realistic, abstract and rough.
Although the artistic style of Nuo masks is vigorous and rough, folk artists, with their traditional carving skills, concise and lively knife cutting, and soft and smooth lines, have carved various modeling masks, depicting the characters, personalities and identities of each mask in the opera, so that people can tell at a glance whether they are gods or ghosts, men or women, old or young, literate or martial, monks or Taoist priests, and clowns.
Its expression mainly uses the changes and modifications of the five senses to complete the image-building of the characters' wildness, fierceness, ferocity, strictness, stability, depth, determination, hero, arrogance, treachery, comical, loyal, upright, strong-willed, abnormal, kind, gentle, beautiful and kind.
The simple folk modelling technique endowed the mask with vitality and image through careful carving and paying attention to color, and depicted the gods, ghosts and legends with rich expressions and distinctive personalities in folk myths.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Mask (Chinese vocabulary)
Baidu encyclopedia-Nuo mask