Is oil painting the main traditional painting in the west?

Western traditional painting is mainly oil painting.

The establishment of the western traditional painting aesthetic system was completed by the Greeks. Western traditional painting can be divided into simple stages from ancient Greece to the middle of19th century: ancient Greek and Roman painting; Medieval painting; Painting from Renaissance to19th century. The main function of western traditional painting before photography is to record events and publicize the spirit of the times, and its expression is mainly realism. But in different periods, it presents different characteristics and spirits.

1. Ancient Greek and Roman painting: the perfect combination of humanity and divinity.

The formation and development of Greek art is closely related to its social history, national characteristics and natural conditions. Greece's beautiful natural environment, open society, democratic politics of slave owners, simple life, worship of gods and rich spiritual life make the Greeks have sober rationality and rich emotions. The Greek nation is in harmony with nature, individual and group, emotion and reason, reality and ideal. This inner harmony produced Greek art characterized by beauty, harmony and elegance. Although sculpture is the main representative of Greek art, Greek painting also embodies the same spirit. Greek painting has reached a high artistic level, and the Greeks worship painting art even more than sculpture art. According to historical records, there are exquisite murals in Greece, but unfortunately they are all submerged. Let's take the picture on the pottery bottle as an example. The most famous black painting The Game of Dice depicts the Greek heroes Achilles and Ajax sitting opposite each other. Although the characters are still influenced by some ancient oriental paintings, the overall picture reflects the aesthetic spirit of the Greeks and is a beautiful, harmonious and elegant realistic painting that perfectly combines human nature and divinity. Because the gods worshipped by the Greeks are not unattainable gods, but the strongest, most beautiful and glorious men and women. These gods have the same feelings and forms as people, and they are noble and kind. Artists regard the most beautiful and healthy person in life as the image of God, so the unity of man and God becomes the essential spirit of Greek art.

What the artist presents to the audience is a pure image of human beauty, but it dilutes the personality characteristics of the characters and melts their rich expressions and psychological and emotional connotations. The artist completed the idealized face: oval face, straight nose, flat forehead, curved eyebrows, almond eyes, slightly bulging lips, quiet and serious thoughtful expression. Such an image has always been regarded as a model in Greek art, but compared with the vibrant human body in various ways, the lofty and profound expression is more quiet and less vivid. Two thousand years later, German Nietzsche named restraint and reason Apollo spirit. Greek moralists ask people to restrain vulgarity and keep elegance, and this spirit has become the realm pursued by artists, so calmness, calmness, generosity and solemnity have become the typical images created by Greek artists. This Apollo spirit embodies the pursuit of personality charm.

The early Romans worshipped the Greeks as teachers. In comparison, identification and selection, the Romans chose the form and shell of Greek culture, which filled the cultural structure and connotation of their own nation. The Greeks created God in the image of the most beautiful man, while the Romans created man in the image of God, thus achieving the perfect unity of man and God from another angle. As the main form of Roman painting, murals and mosaics survived in Pompeii, with the largest number and the most famous. An outstanding feature of these wonderful paintings is the illusion technique. There is also a certain perspective relationship, light and shade and projection. It laid the foundation for the arrival of the Renaissance. We can see the Roman spirit from Pompeii's paintings. Brave Romans pay attention to reality and enjoyment, and prefer to boast and show their wealth and achievements.

The battle of Isus showed the worship of war and the praise of heroes. Dionysus's Secret Instrument Map shows the daily life of the Romans, paying attention to reality and enjoying themselves. In an early mural of a tomb, people who play flute and harp depict a band on their way to a party. The bright colors and vivid shapes of the picture not only have the line drawing decoration style of Greek bottle painting, but also have all the realistic styles of Pompeii painting later. The picture strongly sets off the cheerful atmosphere of the Romans' active indulgence. The indulgence and madness of Dionysus spirit is the spirit of Rome and also the spirit of Roman painting. This spirit gave birth to the great Roman culture and cultivated the ignorance, arrogance and arrogance of the Romans, thus destroying the Roman Empire. The unrestrained Roman civilization was replaced by the extremely restrained religious civilization. The realistic style in Roman painting, as well as the light, shadow and perspective invented by the Romans, also fell silent with the decline of Roman civilization.

Second, the expressionism and religious color of medieval painting.

Medieval painting under theocracy presents a completely different style and spirit from ancient Greek and Roman painting. Painting is not to record people's real life, nor for aesthetic purposes, but to serve religion completely and become a tool to publicize religion and illustrate. Therefore, painting has a strong symbolic significance. In order to publicize teachings and express strong religious beliefs and feelings, painting abandoned the realistic tradition of ancient Greek and Roman painting, and achieved spiritual truth with symbolic expressions such as exaggeration and deformation. Although this medieval art of expression was considered useless by most people during the Renaissance, it is not the case today. There are two main systems of world painting, one is oriental painting which pays attention to expression, and the other is western traditional painting which pays attention to realistic reproduction. Medieval painting, which belongs to western traditional painting, is also based on expression, not seeking similarity, but seeking expression. However, the single painting theme caused by the supremacy of theocracy in medieval painting made this expressive painting lose its universality and broad recognition. For a good painting, the shaping of form and the expression of meaning are indispensable. If form doesn't exist, God doesn't have it, and if God doesn't have it, he has no meaning. From the Renaissance to the19th century, medieval painting was widely criticized because it ignored the single form and theme. It was not until the revival of performance art in the 20th century that medieval painting regained its luster. But pure expression is not the ultimate of art, and complete negation and complete affirmation are biased. The spirit of medieval painting is that it reflects the social reality of the supremacy of theocracy in western feudal society under the rule of Christianity in a expressive way. Medieval painting emphasized that the image of man could not fully express the absolute authority of God. This was incompatible with the social background at that time.

Three. Painting from Renaissance to19th Century

When the aura of divinity can no longer shine on everything, but becomes the bondage of human development, the return of human nature becomes inevitable. The spirit of Renaissance painting is consistent with the spirit of the whole Renaissance, that is, the spirit of humanism. The specific performance is the change of theme from god to man, and the expression method is mainly realistic, paying attention to the scientific nature of human anatomy and advocating rationality. Human nature has been promoted to an unprecedented position. This is not only the revival of ancient Greek and Roman culture, but also a rebellion against the supremacy of theocracy in the Middle Ages. This realistic painting, which attaches importance to people and pays attention to reality, continued until the impressionism came into being at the end of 19. Although there have been various factions and theories in the past 500 years, the fundamental spiritual trend and expression have not changed qualitatively. From Mona Lisa to Fountain, from The Last Supper to Guiding the People Freely, it is not difficult to see that their aesthetic concepts and expressions are consistent, whether they praise people or worship God.

Throughout the development of western painting, we find that they follow such a law, that is, extremes meet. From the realism of ancient Greece and Rome to the distortion and exaggeration of the Middle Ages, to the realism of the Renaissance, to the abstraction of various expressions in the 20th century, the ways of expression are from realism to expression, from expression to realism, and then from

Realism to expression. This cyclical development track just confirms the way of thinking of westerners, that is, one-way thinking, and they love to go to extremes. It is completely different from the moderate bipolar thinking mode of China people. Judging from the theme of western traditional painting, it is nothing more than the combination of human nature and divinity or the choice between human nature and divinity. No matter the equality between God and man in ancient Greece, the unity of man and god in ancient Rome, the supremacy of god in the middle ages or the supremacy of man in the Renaissance, they have not been divorced from man and god. Moreover, the religious complex of western traditional painting is very strong, which is obviously different from the spirit of eastern painting.