What is Chinese Figure Painting

Chinese Figure Painting refers to a method of painting figures.

In the ancient times, the first people could not understand their own condition and the world around them, and they were especially fearful and curious about the natural phenomena such as thunder and lightning, so they created the images of the gods in an attempt to use the power of the gods to fight against the forces of nature, and thus the myths and paintings of the gods were born.

Man's concern for himself and the anthropomorphization of the gods was the source of Chinese figure painting.

It was not until the Han Dynasty that Chinese figure painting began to detach itself from the hold of the gods and gradually went on a practical journey, and figure painting entered the stage of painting. "Forming mo good at painting", figure painting "into education, help people" function, was widely accepted, "painting figure Han martyrs, or not on the painting, the children and grandchildren of shame", "Hu powder on the wall, the wall, the wall, the wall, the wall, the wall, the wall, the wall, the wall, the wall, the wall, the wall, the wall, the wall, the wall, the wall. "Hu powder coating the wall, purple and green boundaries, painting ancient martyrs, heavy line book of praise".

Existing mural paintings in Han Dynasty tombs not only confirmed the achievements of the Han Dynasty figures, but also shows that the Han Dynasty figure painting involved in a wide range of social life. The figure paintings of the Wei, Jin, and Six Dynasties period emphasized the expression of human nature and godliness, thus laying down the aesthetic tone of Chinese figure paintings, which has become an unchanging guideline for thousands of years. People's attention to the metaphysical God far exceeded the general sense of form.

"To write God in form" and "to convey God" became the tradition of Chinese figure painting. The main surviving works of this period include Gu Kaizhi's "Lady's History" and "Luoshen Fu", as well as the molded brick paintings of "The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qizhi" and the murals of various grottoes. The aesthetic concepts of painting put forward in this period, such as "form and spirit" and "chi yun", also summarize the achievements of the figure painting of this class.

The economy of the Tang Dynasty was highly developed, and painting was also developed beyond its limits, especially figure painting, which formed a distinctive style of the era, and its painting skills also reached a historic high level. For example, Yan Lipen's The Official Tribute Figure and The Steps of the Emperor's Chariot, and Zhang Xuan's Lady Guo Guo's Tour of Spring and The Pounding of the Lianzhi Figure.

The aristocratic figures in Zhou Fang's Hairpin Ladies and Tea Tasting with a Harp, with their rich and delicate textures, reflected the social customs of the time. And Wu Daozi, known as the Saint of Painting.

"The pen is only one or two, the elephant should already be", "or from the arm, or from the foot first", "to keep its God, specializing in its one", so much so that later generations in talking about him more rendering and myth! In fact, it is a confirmation of the new aesthetic principles of figure painting in the Tang Dynasty.