Four masters of New Year pictures.

Taohuawu in Suzhou, Yangliuqing in Tianjin, Weifang in Shandong and Mianzhu in Sichuan are the four birthplaces of folk woodblock New Year pictures in China. Woodblock New Year pictures in Mianzhu, Sichuan, Taohuawu, Jiangsu, Yangliuqing, Tianjin and Yangjiabu, Weifang, Shandong have a long history and are known as the "Four Great New Year Pictures" in China.

▲ Suzhou Taohuawu

Taohuawu woodblock New Year pictures are the main folk woodblock New Year pictures in southern China. Taohuawu is located in the north of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. Taohuawu New Year Pictures originated from engraving printing technology in Song Dynasty, evolved from Xiu Xiang New Year Pictures, and developed into a folk art school in Ming Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty reached its peak during Yongzheng and Qianlong periods, producing more than one million woodblock New Year pictures every year. At the end of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Qing army besieged Suzhou, and the production of Taohuawu woodblock New Year pictures was seriously damaged, and it never recovered. Until the early 1950s, Suzhou Federation of Literary and Art Circles organized artists to resume production, and then established "Suzhou Taohuawu Woodblock New Year Pictures Society", which made great progress in renovation and innovation.

Taohuawu New Year pictures mainly include door paintings, traditional Chinese paintings and screen strips, among which door paintings can be described as the complete works of door gods in past dynasties. Taohuawu New Year pictures are printed by block printing, with one version and one color. Exquisite craftsmanship. A painting has to be overprinted four or five times to a dozen times, and some of them have to go through the processes of "painting gold", "sweeping silver" and "dusting". In terms of color, there are pink, red, blue, purple, green, light ink, lemon yellow and other colors. In terms of artistic style, Taohuawu New Year pictures are rich in composition, colorful, decorative and full of rich life flavor. It has simple, naive, concise and rich folk art characteristics in characterization, knife cutting and color setting, so it has been sold well at home and abroad for hundreds of years and has been collected by museums and art galleries in many European countries.

The printing of Taohuawu New Year pictures uses both coloring and color overprinting. The composition is symmetrical and full, and the colors are gorgeous. Often with purple as the main tone, the atmosphere of expressing joy is basically overprinted. Sculpture, color and modeling have exquisite and elegant Jiangnan folk art style, which mainly shows traditional folk aesthetic contents such as auspicious celebration, folk life, opera stories, flowers, birds, fruits and vegetables, exorcism and so on. Folk painting circles call it "Gusu Edition".

▲ Tianjin Yangliuqing New Year Pictures

Yangliuqing (20 kilometers west of Tianjin) has a 600-year-old folk woodblock New Year picture, which was produced in the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties. At that time, a folk artist who was good at carving took refuge in Yangliuqing town and carved some door gods and kitchen gods on holidays. People in the town rushed to imitate them. During the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty, the Grand Canal was dredged again, and the exquisite paper and watercolor in the south were transported to Yangliuqing, which made the painting art here develop. Yangliuqing New Year pictures were the most popular in Yongzheng, Qianlong and Guangxu in Qing Dynasty. There are thousands of samples (pastels) of Yangliuqing New Year pictures. In the heyday of the mid-Qing Dynasty, Dai Lianzeng's painting shop in Yangliuqing Town produced 2,000 pieces a year, 500 pieces each, reaching one million pieces. At that time, the whole town of Yangliuqing, together with more than 30 nearby villages, was a veritable hometown of painting. "Every family can dye and weave, and every household is good at painting." Rows of painting shops, high-hanging paintings in the shops, and businessmen from all over the world. After the Second Opium War, Yangliuqing New Year pictures declined. 1926, Huo Yutang, a descendant of Huo Pai V, founded the largest "Yucheng" painting village in Yangliuqing Town, and Yangliuqing New Year pictures gradually recovered. After liberation, Premier Zhou Enlai also visited Huazhuang and sent much-needed raw materials of Garcinia. During the Cultural Revolution, Yangliuqing New Year pictures were changed to offset printing, and the traditional crafts were on the verge of extinction.

Huo Qingyou (son of Huo Yutang), the sixth generation descendant of Huo's New Year Pictures School in Yangliuqing, Tianjin, began to inherit his father's legacy in the 1980s, and spent nearly 30 years painstakingly studying traditional techniques such as crocheting, setting, painting and mounting, mastering a full set of Yangliuqing New Year Pictures techniques, becoming the only "five-item" Yangliuqing New Year Pictures artist in Tianjin, making it an almost extinct wood. Today, "Yucheng" painting village has built a family museum and cultural attractions to attract Chinese and foreign tourists.

Yangliuqing New Year Pictures inherited the painting tradition of Song and Yuan Dynasties, and absorbed the woodcut prints, arts and crafts, stage and other forms of Ming Dynasty. The method of combining woodcut overprint and hand painting is adopted. When making, the lines of the picture are carved with woodcut first, then printed with ink, printed in monochrome for two or three times, and filled with colored pens. It not only has the flavor of prints and wood, but also has hand-painted colors and techniques. Therefore, folk art is full of charm and Chinese style. Yangliuqing New Year pictures have created a vivid, auspicious and touching style. In the history of China printmaking, Yangliuqing New Year Pictures and the famous Suzhou Taohuawu New Year Pictures in the south are called "Peach Blossoms in the South and Willow in the North".

Yangliuqing New Year pictures show people's beautiful feelings and wishes through various means such as implication and realism, especially the themes that directly reflect current events, customs and historical stories in various periods. For example, in the New Year picture "More than a Year", the doll on the picture is "a baby face, a Buddha's body and a martial arts fight", holding a carp and a lotus in hand, which means that life is rich and has become a classic in New Year pictures and is widely circulated. Yangliuqing New Year pictures are widely used, including historical stories, myths and legends, opera figures, secular customs, landscapes, flowers and birds, etc. , especially those closely related to people's lives and those news with the nature of current affairs. It has not only artistic appreciation value, but also historical research value. The fine tradition of combining realism and romanticism, represented by these excellent works, has formed the mainstream of Yangliuqing New Year pictures and has continued to develop to this day. The artistic characteristics of Yangliuqing New Year pictures are various, and so are the conditions for forming their artistic characteristics. Among them, the most obvious is production. The production procedures of Yangliuqing New Year pictures are roughly as follows: creating manuscripts, dividing editions, engraving, overprinting, painting and mounting. The previous process is basically the same as other woodblock New Year pictures. Are overprinted according to the drawings; However, the post-production of Yangliuqing New Year pictures has put a lot of effort into hand painting, skillfully combining the knife taste of printmaking with the style of painting, so that the two arts complement each other. Moreover, due to the different expression techniques of painting artists, the same blank (ink line or semi-finished products without painting treatment) of Yangliuqing New Year pictures is the same. It can be divided into "precision work" with detailed description and "rough work" with bold style. Different artistic styles, each with its own artistic value.

▲ Yangjiatun, Weifang, Shandong

Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures in Weifang, Shandong Province rose in the Ming Dynasty, and were all made by hand in the traditional way. In the early stage of development, they were influenced by Yangliuqing New Year pictures and reached their peak in Qing Dynasty. Yangjiabu once had the grand scene of "hundreds of painting shops, thousands of paintings and tens of thousands of plates", and its products were all over the country. Among them, the largest Dongdashun painting shop has more than 300 sets of paintings, with an annual output of more than one million. Yangjiabu New Year pictures have a wide range of genres, rich imagination, reuse of primary colors, rough lines and simple style.

Yangjiabu woodblock New Year Pictures, Yangliuqing in Tianjin and Taohuawu in Suzhou are also called the three major folk woodblock New Year Pictures in China. They began in the Ming Dynasty and flourished in the Qing Dynasty. They are festive, colorful and practical, reflecting ideals, customs and daily life, with complete and symmetrical composition, rigid and simple modeling and simple and smooth lines. According to the actual needs of farmers to decorate their living environment, there are mainly door paintings, door paintings, lanterns for praying, beauty bars, stands, crawlers, moonlight, etc., which have a strong folk flavor, local flavor and festive atmosphere.

Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures have a wide range of themes and rich contents, including idols, door gods, beauties, golden boys, landscapes, flowers and birds, dramatic figures, myths and legends, etc. At the same time, there are also works that reflect folk life and criticize the disadvantages of the times, but the theme of Yangjiabu New Year pictures is jubilation and auspiciousness. Such as good luck, happy new year, congratulations on getting rich, wealth, more than a year, happiness and peace. Like the blessings of relatives and greetings from friends, it constitutes the characteristics of farmers' peace and happiness in the new year, hoping for wealth and peace. The main contents of Yangjiabu's New Year pictures include six categories, namely, Chinese New Year, marriage, busy farming, getting rich every year, and goldfish all over the body. , the door god, the god of wealth, the birthday girl, the kitchen god, etc. , as well as legends and allusions such as Bao Gong's appointment, three visits to the thatched cottage and crossing the sea by the Eight Immortals, and entertainment satire such as boxing, busking and promotion.

The production technology of Yangjiabu New Year pictures is also very unique. The artist first painted with wicker charcoal sticks and incense ashes and named it "rotten manuscript". On the basis of the rotten manuscript, he completed the original manuscript, the tracing manuscript, stuck it on the pear board and carved the line version and the color version respectively. Then after color matching, paper clamping, printing, color running, etc., manual printing. After the New Year pictures are printed, they should be painted with various colors by hand to make them look natural and vivid.

The production of Yangjiabu New Year pictures is divided into painting, carving, printing, mounting and other processes, each of which is extremely precise and accurate. The practice is to hook out the black draft of the painting first, stick it on the planed pear wood or Tang board, and carve the main line version. After the manuscript is printed, it will be engraved in different colors, printed in color, and finally modified and mounted.

At the time of prosperity, just in autumn, all kinds of art dealers gathered in Yangjiabu. At night, the streets are decorated with lanterns and New Year pictures. More than 5000 businessmen come to buy paintings every year. At that time, selling paintings and singing short essays, the most popular lyrics were: "Su Dongpo sat in Han Xin and asked Xiao He. This number is not without merit, but it is too verbose now. Credit is like three debts, and asking is like asking Zhuge. "

Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures, which were born and bred, have stepped onto the elegant art hall step by step. 1983 Spring Festival, Yangjiabu New Year Pictures were exhibited in China Art Museum. In the same year, Yangjiabu New Year Pictures toured 9 countries in America, Europe and Africa. 1987, Yang Fuyuan, a folk artist, was invited to Singapore to paint, carve and print woodblock New Year pictures. In 1990s, a group of Yangjiabu New Year pictures artists went to Brazil, Japan and other countries to perform live performances, which were well received. In 2002, the 76-year-old folk New Year picture artist Yang Luoshu, an authentic descendant of Tongshunde Painting Shop with a history of 200 years, was awarded the honorary title of "Master of Folk Arts and Crafts" by UNESCO. Yang Luoshu/Kloc-started to create woodcuts at the age of 0/8. His "Water Margin" and "The Emperor's Map" The Journey to the West are all wonderful in composition, exquisitely carved, lifelike and full of local flavor, which are deeply loved by people. Today, Yangjiabu, a small village with only 3 10 households and10/50 people, produces more than 20 million woodcut New Year pictures every year, which are exported to all parts of the country and more than 100 countries and regions around the world. Yangjiabu has become an important stop on the thousands of miles folk tourism line in Weifang, Shandong Province. Here, people can enjoy more than 65,438+000 sets of New Year pictures, witness various tools and originals for making New Year pictures since the Ming Dynasty, and watch the mysterious techniques for making New Year pictures on the spot.

▲ Sichuan Mianzhu New Year Pictures

Mianzhu New Year Pictures, named after Mianzhu County, Sichuan Province, is the hometown of bamboo and paper. Mianzhu New Year pictures have a long history, which originated in the Northern Song Dynasty and entered a prosperous period in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. During the years of Qianlong and Jiaqing, there were more than 300 workshops of New Year pictures in Mianzhu County, with more than 0/000 employees/kloc, with an annual output of 654.38+200,000 pictures. Products are not only sold to Hunan, Hubei, Gansu, Qinghai and Sichuan, but also exported to India, Japan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Hong Kong and Macao and other countries and regions. At the beginning of 2004, Chen Qiang, the grandson of Chen Xingcai, an old artist of Mianzhu New Year pictures, showed his newly created innovative New Year pictures "Squeezing the Golden Gate God".

Mianzhu New Year pictures are good at painting, with strong national characteristics and distinctive local characteristics. The composition of Mianzhu New Year Pictures emphasizes symmetry, integrity, fullness, clear priorities and diversity. The contrast technique is used in color, and the color is simple, gorgeous and strong, which constitutes a prosperous and enthusiastic artistic effect; The lines are refined and smooth, both rigid and flexible, dense and rhythmic; Exaggerated, deformed, symbolic and moral shapes have humorous and lively effects.

Mianzhu New Year pictures have a wide range of contents, including historical heroes such as Kong Ming and Zhang Fei, wonderful pictures of novels and operas, statues of soldiers, animals and flowers, and so on. Among them, the most interesting are folklore such as a mouse marrying a woman, three monkeys scalding a pig, a dog biting the god of wealth, and a watchman stealing a pot.

Mianzhu New Year pictures are divided into dividend goods and black goods. Red goods refer to painted New Year pictures, including door paintings, gladiators and stripes. Among them, there are many ways to make door paintings: Seiko has "hanging", "printing gold", "hooking gold" and "spending gold"; Rough work includes "routine", "ink painting" and "filling with water" drawings, which are divided into nave, screen, horizontal push and single sheet, and posted in halls, bedrooms, corridors and animal pens. Door paintings have different sizes, such as heavy hair, two hairs and three hairs, which are used to paste doors, halls, doors and stoves. Black goods refer to woodcut rubbings printed with cigarette ink or cinnabar, mostly landscapes, flowers and birds, statues and celebrity calligraphy and painting, with nave and stripes in the majority.