What Historical Changes Chinese Painting Undergoes from Tradition to Modernity

Chinese painting over the past one hundred years of the 20th century can be roughly divided into two periods of transition (one in the first half of the 20th century, the other in the 1980s, through to the modern era); two special periods (the war period from the 1930s to the end of the 1940s, and the period of the Cultural Revolution from the 1960s to the end of the 1970s); a period of one-dimensionality and closure (1950s -mid-1960s, its alienated form is the void, division, internal depletion, and self-concealment during the Cultural Revolution), and a period of pluralistic openness (1980s-end of the century); each of these historical periods overlaps in time, and is sometimes continuous and sometimes disconnected in its evolution. This paper deals with only two periods of transition...?

1. The First Period of Transformation (First Half of the 20th Century)

The Cultural Background of the First Period of Transformation

The transformation of Chinese Painting is from the traditional Old Chinese Painting to the modern, from the classical form to the modern form. From the aesthetic orientation to the formal beauty of the law of modernity renewal and reconstruction.

The transformation of Chinese painting to modernity began in the Qing Dynasty and accelerated during the May Fourth Movement. It is a path of multiple origins, multiple streams, and intertwined transmutations. There is a distant source, there is also a near abyss, there are internal causes, there are also external causes.

2. The second period of transition is the time when Chinese painting has gone through all kinds of trials and tribulations in history, and has stored up the energy for nearly a century, and is ready to be launched. The east wind of reform and opening up made Chinese painting come out from the monolithic closure, and began a grand scale of re-transformation, no matter what kind of painting or painting, no matter what the composition of the Chinese painting team is incomparable to the first transition period.

After the baptism of the New Culture Movement, the art of Chinese painting should have been liberated and developed along the open road, but what followed was a long period of war. Especially the Japanese invasion of China, blocking the normal development of Chinese painting art. The Japanese invasion of China was a destruction of culture. Its negative impact on Chinese history, culture and art cannot be overestimated. This debt can never be repaid by the Japanese government. During the special period of the struggle for salvation, Chinese painting revealed its weakness of lack of combat power, and it appeared to be unable to do anything for a while, especially in landscape painting and flower and bird painting. It caused some Chinese painters to switch to paintings with strong struggle and timeliness. In addition, Chinese figure painting, which traditionally advocates truth, goodness and beauty, absorbed and transformed the Western painting method and began to form its own realism, participating in the social struggle, reflecting the true face of the times, and improving the expressive power of the painting.