How to see the differences between Chinese and western cultures from the perspective of painting?

We say that the emergence of any art can not be separated from its social environment and cultural background. Culture is the root of art, and art is the concentrated expression of culture. The same is true of painting as a visual art.

China's traditional Chinese painting is rooted in China's ancient and profound cultural soil, with distinctive cultural characteristics of China, and is reserved. It combines painting, calligraphy, poetry, seal and pen and ink line art, and pursues a lofty artistic expression. Pictures and objective images are often expressed as "between similarity and dissimilarity", which contains very rich cultural background and thoughts and feelings. China traditional Chinese painting is the representative of the oriental painting art in the world.

The most representative of western painting is oil painting, which is developed on the basis of western watercolor gouache painting. Compared with China's traditional Chinese painting, the history of western painting is later, even from the ancient Greek period, it is at least several hundred years later than our traditional Chinese painting. Oil painting was basically formed in15th century.

Oil painting is the epitome of western culture. Its main features are openness, directness, enthusiasm and boldness. Oil painting is mainly realistic in modeling, pursuing the consistent and realistic appearance of the picture and the objective object. So people say that Chinese painting pursues "freehand brushwork" and strives to express the artistic conception of painting. Western oil paintings pay attention to "realism" and strive to draw vividly. Chinese painting is "the art of brush and ink lines", while western oil painting is "the art of modeling colors". To learn Chinese painting, we must first understand China culture, poetry and prose, and be familiar with calligraphy. To learn western oil painting, you can master the basic techniques of oil painting as long as you practice sketching well and learn to use colors.

Chinese painting and oil painting are not only very different in creative ideas, but also very different in creative tools, materials, techniques and forms of expression. Traditional Chinese painting is usually painted on Xuan paper or silk cloth with brush strokes dipped in ink, while western oil painting is painted on canvas or wall with colors mixed by vegetable oil and pigment with oil painting pen.

And so on, all these reflect that there are certain differences in the history and concepts of Chinese and western painting art. Its root lies in the differences between Chinese and western cultural backgrounds, cultures, historical cultures and traditions.