Presentation and Analysis of Postmodernist Artistic Characteristics of Chinese Paintings

Wu Kun

(School of International Communication　Shenzhen University,Shenzhen　Guangdong　518060)



Presentation and Analysis of Postmodernist Artistic Characteristics of Chinese Paintings

Wu Kun

(School of International CommunicationShenzhen University,ShenzhenGuangdong518060)

The style of Chinese Paintings reflects more obvious artistic characteristics of “beauty of artistic conception” and “beauty of space”.However,analyzed from the perspective of “beauty of artistic conception”,the root of beauty of artistic conception lies in the hierarchical guidance on aesthetic perspective,psychology and thinking,ultimately leading to the continuous widening of the artistic space embodied in Chinese paintings and leaving appreciators extensive artistic imagination.While the artistic style of postmodern paintings emphasizes the abstractness of thinking as the basis and impels intuitive motivation of aesthetic perspective and psychology via the abstractness of aesthetic thinking,thus fully reflecting the postmodernist artistic characteristics of Chinese painting,and meanwhile continuously sublimating the artistic values implied in Chinese paintings.

Chinese paintings;artistic characteristics;postmodernism;exploration and analysis

Ⅰ.Traditional paintings’ artistic conception and modern paintings’ aesthetic artistic characteristics echo each other

1.Abstractness of creative thinking reflected in intuitive artistic conception of traditional paintings

The intrinsic artistic values of traditional Chinese paintings are relatively extensive,the artistic characteristics reflected by which are mainly embodied in the expression of intuitive conception.Through the design and creation of paintings’ structure,lines,patterns and color,traditional Chinese painting intuitively guide people’s aesthetic conception,making them feel immersive when appreciating the paintings.While this is the very expression of the artistic style of postmodernist paintings,covertly motivating people’s aesthetic thinking and perspective by the abstractness of painting contents.Continuous expansion of artist perceptual space promotes the abstractness in the painting to be simple,making the experience process for artistic values of beauty more direct.

2.Spiritual feeling of post-modern art of painting expressed in ideological artistic conception of traditional Chinese paintings

The ideology of traditional Chinese paintings mainly expresses creation environment and inner world and brings men to the creation artistic conception of the paintings through imagery to experience the realness of creative inspiration.Stronger compatibility is one of the change features of Chinese paintings in this revolution,allowing contradictory individuals to exist in the identical object and thus being personality and style compatible while without neglecting the original’s values.The emphasis of Chinese painters’ creative themes turns from subjective emotion into object world.By this way,the artistic conception of thought in Chinese paintings is promoted to manifest its guiding role,facilitating people to appreciate paintings’ beauty.〔1〕This is an important factor of Chinese paintings’ artistic conception of thought to manifest postmodern artistic characteristics,making spiritual feeling of painting art realized in a more direct and real way.

3.Experience of spiritual artistic conception in Chinese paintings representing reverse perception of postmodern painting art

The continuous improvement of the ability to experience the sense of pictures exerts effects in spiritual level on the construction of artistic aesthetic thinking.This is the artistic characteristic of traditional Chinese paintings,which impels the shaping of postmodern art creation and aesthetic visual angle from spiritual level.With more specific postmodern art characteristics,Chinese paintings are also the basic driving force for the development of postmodern painting art,〔2〕optimizing and guiding artistic aesthetic angle of view from inward level,the artistic characteristics of which are mainly represented in inward optimization,making postmodern artistic characteristics deem the reverse development of thinking as its specific direction.The perceptual angle of view of postmodern painting art possesses relatively stronger reversion.

Ⅱ.Visual perception of beauty presented in classic paintings manifesting style of postmodern art

1.Traditional style of Chinese paintings implying pursuit for objective beauty of good things

Chinese paintings show relatively high artistic values,the source of which lies in that their painting style can profoundly express and spread their connotation,enabling appreciators to form a yearning feeling for good things via traditional painting techniques and cultivating people’s inner heart to generate artistic conception by the color and feeling represented in the paintings.The embodiment of postmodern artistic style in traditional Chinese painting style cannot be recognized by appreciators,but a yearning feeling for good things is expressed and conveyed through traditional Chinese painting style,making the picture more real and vivid.However,the style of postmodern paintings mainly expresses intuitively the psychology of pursuit,presenting stronger abstractness of postmodern paintings.While traditional Chinese painting art not only presents “the beauty of artistic conception”,but also expresses the pursuit and yearning for “the beauty of reality”.〔3〕In addition,postmodern art also attempts to break the aesthetic scope and the boundary line of art and life from deconstruction to reconstruction.Under the influence of such deconstructionist thoughts,postmodernist artists firstly eliminate the differences between art and non-art,then remove the differences between various art categories and at last clear up the boundary line of elite culture and mass culture,high culture and pop culture.The postmodern artistic characteristics reflected in traditional Chinese paintings are more specific,revealing realistic pursuit and yearning for good things from the objective point of view of the pictures,which are the new artistic characteristics of “beauty of reality” and “beauty of realness” presented in traditional Chinese paintings,with thoughts and artistic conception expressed abstractly in artistic style and the pursuit for beauty fully presented in painting style.

2.Artistic style of Chinese paintings implying experiential process of modern paintings’ psychology and thoughts

As for painting style,Chinese paintings usually deem realism as its root,striking people’s visual sense from visual perception perspective and leaving people a feeling that the picture is so vivid and lively;thus it is regarded as the classic of the style of Chinese painting art.Actually,it is not true,what is presented in classic Chinese painting style is the realness and vividness of creation,while what is manifested in aesthetic level is the vitality of pictures and the vividness of artistic conception of the paintings,giving expression to the true form of things in pictures from the inward level and show the pursuit for intrinsic feeling and yearning of pictures.As for the artistic style of postmodern paintings,what people can experience is the abstractness and mess of the pictures,but from the perspective of micro psychology,the real thought expressed in postmodern paintings is the ideal pursuit for good things and the reverse psychological perception process burst out from inward;thus its artistic style is obviously different from that of classic Chinese paintings.However,explored deeply from the perspective of inward world and thought,there are the pursuit for and the feeling of inward world and thoughts in both classic Chinese paintings and postmodern paintings,possessing the common ground of inward world and thoughts.The artistic thinking of postmodern paintings in inward and thought levels is reflected in classic Chinese paintings with the artistic conception of psychology and thought presented showing respect for the appreciators’ inward experience demand and the postmodern artistic characteristics mainly embodied from the levels of thought and psychology.

3.Creative Ideas of Chinese paintings presenting micro visual experience of modern painting art

The creative ideas of traditional Chinese paintings reveal stronger realness of the description of pictures,reflecting things vividly from the pictures and promoting the picture modeling to return to reality and transcend reality.〔4〕From the angle of artistic characteristics,the artistic characteristics of traditional Chinese paintings express the respect towards reality,and meanwhile decorate the artistic conception and atmosphere in the picture,forming dual experience of vision and psychology.While the creation inspiration of postmodern paintings pays special attention to the abstractness of paintings,the modeling in which tends to reflect abstract thinking and the creative ideas reflected lie in the reversal and abstractness of thinking.However,in traditional Chinese paintings,the expression of the realness of pictures is based on the processes of inward feeling and experience for them,forming the real return of picture style through inward touch.Yet in postmodern paintings,the application of reverse thinking and abstract thinking highlights the process of thinking and psychological experience of the pictures,promoting the revealing of the deep meanings therein in the full experience of thinking and psychology.The shaping of classic Chinese painting style implies the artistic characteristics of postmodern paintings,with the deep experience of psychology and thinking being the common ground.While forming differences between expression form and expression ways of the pictures,the commonness of intrinsic in-depth meaning in artistic level is elaborated.

Ⅲ.Abstraction of traditional lines and patterns forging artistic thinking of postmodernist paintings

1.Leisurely lines embodying concise and euphemistic artistic style of postmodern paintings

With distinct artistic characteristics,the lines of Chinese paintings are presented in an obviously different way from those of postmodern paintings,which present themselves in front of appreciators,mainly featured as modesty and softness with prominent sense of refinement and softness,thus relatively fully manifesting the intrinsic “beauty of softness” of China paintings.On the contrary,the lines in artistic works of postmodern paintings tend to be stiff and bold,presenting the artistic characteristics of individualized thinking.Analyzed on the interrelation from the perspective of artistic characteristics of Chinese and postmodern paintings,there is no direct correlation,but more obvious directional difference instead.〔5〕However,from the perspective of the deep meaning embodied in picture lines,those of Chinese paintings reflect the softness of people’s artistic conception inward,while those of postmodern paintings present the persistent pursuit for thinking.However,the softness of people’s artistic conception inward makes it sure that the thinking mode of people possesses visualized features,thus promoting the prominent pursuit for “beauty of softness” by Chinese painting lines through intensive yearning for “beauty of softness” and thus shaping the artistic characteristics of beautiful lines in Chinese paintings.Yet the inner psychological and thinking pursuits implying in the artistic characteristics of “beauty of softness” are profound and intuitive,laying a solid foundation for the forging of concise and euphemistic artistic characteristics of postmodern painting lines.

2.Graceful artistic creation ideas of patterns embodying new image of postmodern art

The pattern style of Chinese paintings is featured by gracefulness,implying more extensive artistic connotation and expressing thought-provoking artistic creation idea.No matter landscape paintings,figure paintings or bird-and-flower paintings,the conception and design of the patterns are all based on real aesthetic,emphasizing the creation features of euphemism yet not simple and thus leaving broad artistic reverie space.While as to the creation style of postmodern painting art,the soul of design and creation lies in euphemism yet not simple,bringing challenges to people’s artistic aesthetic thinking and meanwhile providing more extensive artistic reverie space.This is the fundamental starting point of pattern design and creation of postmodern paintings,presenting more abstract artistic characteristics and more explicit intrinsic art creation characteristics.However,the design and creation direction of patterns for Chinese paintings is visually different from that of postmodern paintings.From the perspective of artistic imagination,the soul of pattern design and creation of Chinese paintings lies in presenting the beauty of realness,drawing the picture in euphemistic methods,while the space of artistic imagination and artistic conception experience lies in the thinking and psychology.Postmodern paintings fully reflect the pattern design and creation from the angle of psychology and thinking with high degree of unity between the directions of artistic aesthetic thinking and aesthetic psychology,promoting the artistic characteristics of pattern design and creation of Chinese paintings to present the new postmodern aesthetic viewpoint,which provides artistic expression in thinking and psychological levels for the construction and formation of the artistic images of postmodern paintings.

3.Concise yet not simple lines,patterns and color vitalizing new aesthetic viewpoints of painting art

Studied from the perspective of intrinsic artistic characteristics implied in Chinese paintings,the graceful lines,euphemistic and bold patterns and artistic conception of color as the symbols of art can restore the real things and present them in front of people for whom unlimited reverie spaces are left.〔6〕While as for the artistic characteristics of postmodern painting creation,lines are presented as simple and bold;patterns self-assertive and unrestrained and color application mainly based on abstract artistic conception,thus making artistic expression more reverse while presenting maximum imagination space tapped for the things in the painting.Seen from the superficial artistic characteristics,there is no specific relation between the artistic characteristics of Chinese painting works and those of postmodern painting works,and instead there exists directional difference.But analyzed from the perspective of deep and micro psychological feeling,the lines,patterns and colors in Chinese paintings mainly motivate the artistic conception of the spirit and mind through the picture,deeply digging people’s artistic appreciative thinking from inner feelings.While postmodern paintings intuitively present the imagination space possessed by creation thinking,directly inspiring people’s thinking.The artistic characteristics of lines,patterns and colors of Chinese paintings deeply inspire the artistic characteristics of postmodern painting art,embodying the artistic connotation of postmodern paintings in inner and thinking levels,and the aesthetic perspective of Chinese paintings also possesses deep artistic characteristics of thinking abstraction.

Ⅳ.Conclusion

The artistic values embodied in Chinese paintings are relatively extensive,exerting intuitive visual striking on people from perspectives of both artistic style and artistic conception and making people’s aesthetic visual angle intuitively affect their aesthetic psychology.But by deeply digging into the intrinsic artistic characteristics of Chinese paintings,it can be known that the experience and perception of beauty presented in Chinese painting lie not only in the cockles of the heart but also in indirectly promoting the construction of aesthetic thinking,guiding the formation of people’s complex aesthetic artistic conception.Thus the artistic characteristics embodied in Chinese paintings are promoted to possess certain postmodern style,guiding people to perceive and experience artistic values.

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About the author：Wu Kun,lecturer at School of International Communication,Shenzhen University.