Development status of woodblock prints

Traditional New Year's Paintings have become endangered with the change of traditional customs and modern changes in the society, the traditional handmade wooden New Year's Paintings have been replaced by machine offset printing, and the development of modernization has greatly changed the architectural pattern of the residential buildings, the traditional New Year's Paintings have lost the soil of survival, and they are taking a touch of the pastoral glow of the former agrarian society with a hard time in the countryside which is still in the process of urbanization as well as among the traditional culture lovers and collectors in the cities. The traditional Chinese New Year paintings have lost the ground for survival and are struggling to survive in the still urbanized countryside as well as in the cities among traditional culture lovers and collectors. The only remaining workshops in Yangliuqing, Tianjin; Wuqiang, Hebei; Weifang, Shandong; Zhuxianzhen, Henan; Mianzhu, Sichuan; Fengxiang, Shaanxi; Zhangzhou, Fujian; Foshan, Guangdong; and Tantou, Hunan, are the only ones that have survived to see these paintings. The Chinese government has launched the "China National Folk Culture Protection Project," and traditional woodblock prints, like many other endangered traditional folk arts, have been included in the rescue and protection program.

Chinese National Association vice chairman, vice chairman of the Henan Provincial Federation of Literature and Culture Xia Bianqun said: "woodblock prints in the agricultural period of folklore basis has been extinct, people have no longer posted the New Year's paintings, wooden New Year's paintings have been changed from practical New Year's paintings to collection of New Year's paintings. At the same time, modern people's aesthetic tendency is also changing, if the woodblock prints can not change in response to the times, can not adapt to today's times and market demand, will gradually shrink, weaken or even die out, and finally become specimens in the museum."

The woodblock prints have their value as cultural heritage, in this sense, it is not allowed to be changed recklessly in the process of commercialization and marketization, or else its cultural and historical value will be lost; but on the other hand, today the traditional culture is facing the problem of adapting and coordinating with the contemporary society, and is facing the problem of maintaining the ethnicity and embodying the epochal nature at the same time. If we simply reject marketization and commercialization, the non-heritage is likely to lose its realistic vitality.

Xia Boqun believes that the innovation of the content of the new New Year's Paintings should ensure the natural extension of the traditional New Year's Paintings on the basis of the inherent artistic style, humanistic connotation, artistic style, and more importantly, the innovation of the external form, the content should be traditional, the so-called "old wine in new bottles". It is because the form of innovation in the New Year's paintings is not enough, so it can not adapt to the diversified needs of the market.