Folk New Year's Paintings

Chinese folk New Year's paintings are widely distributed, after the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the workshops of engraving and printing New Year's paintings are almost all over the country, according to the collected works, except for Heilongjiang, Jilin, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, etc., there used to be workshops of engraving and printing New Year's paintings in other parts of the country.

Nianpiao in the long history of the gradual formation of different artistic styles and obvious local characteristics, such as tianjin yangliuqing, henan kaifeng zhuoxianzhen, jiangsu suzhou peach blossom dock, shandong weifang yangjiabu, shandong gaomi, sichuan mianzhu, hebei wuqiang, shaanxi phoenixxiang, guangdong foshan, shanxi linfen pingyang (ancient linfen), fujian zhangzhou, hunan shaoyang beach head woodblock new year's painting and so on have long been famous, each has its own unique style.

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1. Kaifeng Zhuxianzhen Woodblock Prints is the Birthplace of Chinese Woodblock Prints

Zhuxianzhen Woodblock Prints

Chinese woodblock prints flourished in the Northern Song Dynasty's capital city of Bianjing (present-day Kaifeng, Henan Province), and then spread or were influenced to other parts of the country. For historical reasons, Kaifeng Zhuxianzhen woodblock prints are regarded as the "originator" of Chinese woodblock prints. During the Northern Song Dynasty, Bianjing was the political, economic and cultural center of the country, and merchants from all over the world flocked to the capital in large numbers. The large citizen class promoted the development of secular literature and art, and the active secular literature and art provided rich soil for the creation of New Year's Paintings. In this period, the maturity of engraving and printing technology, so that the demand for pen and paintings turn to engraving and printing of New Year's Paintings, and government-run and privately-run workshops, so that the Kaifeng woodblock prints and sales unprecedented, and soon affected the whole country. The content of Kaifeng woodblock prints reflects the traditional folk culture of the Central Plains, and the artistic style reflects the finer mainstream style of the coexistence of the official and elegant culture of Kyoto and the culture of the marketplace. After the 11th century A.D., the Central Plains experienced a long period of ethnic strife, war and natural disasters, to the early Ming Dynasty, Kaifeng is located in the Central Plains were devastated, people migrated in large numbers, towns and cities in extreme decline, the mainstream of culture in the Central Plains has lost the Northern Song Dynasty more refined official elegance and urban culture style, and the formation of a rough or even rough with the flavor of the countryside of the cultural traditions and styles. This period of Kaifeng New Year's Paintings bold lines, exaggerated image, big head and small body, humor and childish, full composition, left and right symmetry, bright and heavy colors, strong taste of the countryside, no lipstick, no charm, colorful but not vulgar. Zhuxianzhen New Year's Paintings influenced the artistic style of woodblock prints in the whole north, with simple, exaggerated, rough and powerful compositions, bright colors, mainly orange, green and peach red, as well as its simple, bright and clear techniques, all of which are very much in the northern vernacular flavor.

2. Tianjin Yangliuqing New Year Paintings are famous in Beijing

Yangliuqing New Year Paintings

Yangliuqing in the Ming Dynasty was a major town on the South Canal, and with the opening of the South Canal, its economy became more and more prosperous. By the middle and late Ming Dynasty, Yangliuqing initially produced the art of woodblock prints, and the earliest painting stores appeared at the end of the Ming Dynasty, only to flourish in the Yongzheng and Qianlong years of the Qing Dynasty. Qing Dynasty Beijing and Tianjin region as the center of Chinese culture, social culture is very complex, royal culture and aristocratic culture convergence of the essence of Manchu and Han culture, the culture of the officials and gentry convergence of Confucian and official culture trend, the culture of the marketplace is a concentration of the Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasty Beijing folk customs. Yangliuqing Town is located in the major transportation routes of the north and south, and is closely connected with the south through the South Canal, thus its living customs have both the northern style and the southern flavor. Tianjin was the main port of the capital to overseas countries, with dual functions of diplomacy and trade. In this way, the art of Yangliuqing Township New Year's Paintings was profoundly influenced by multiple cultures, and the consumers were diversified, including royalty and aristocrats, townspeople, countryside peasants, and even foreigners. The half-printing and half-painting process makes Yangliuqing New Year paintings closer to Gongbi Heavy Color Chinese Painting, thus forming a high and handsome artistic style.

3. Suzhou Taohuayu woodblock prints are the best representatives of Jiangnan New Year paintings

Taohuayu New Year paintings

Suzhou Taohuayu woodblock prints have been passed down from Lin'an (Hangzhou) in the Southern Song Dynasty. After more than a hundred years of development, the culture of the Southern Song Dynasty blended with the refinement and delicacy of the Jiangnan culture, forming a refined cultural style of compatibility and elegance that was quite different from that of the new Central Plains culture at that time. Under the influence of this cultural style, woodblock prints spread directly from Hangzhou to the surrounding areas such as Suzhou and Wuxi. Since the Yuan Dynasty, the Yuan and Ming Dynasties have been full of fruitful operas and novels, and almost all the scripts and novels published and distributed in the society were accompanied by woodcut illustrations, which drove the art of ancient Chinese prints to reach the peak. And Jiangnan brush printing woodblock prints flourished, led to the development of woodblock prints. Suzhou woodblock prints also directly benefited from the prosperous literati painting and calligraphy art in Jiangnan during the Ming and Qing dynasties. In the Yuan Dynasty, Zhao Mengfu and the Four Families of the Yuan Dynasty were active in the Suzhou area, and in the Ming Dynasty, Tang Yin, the Four Families of the Wu Clan, and Dong Qichang, the Nine Friends of Huating, lived and worked in the Suzhou area, and their writings and paintings were famous in the south of the Yangtze River. Their writings, paintings and articles were well known in the south of the Yangtze River and had a wide influence. By the Qing Dynasty, Jiangnan literati paintings had been popularized in painting academies, which profoundly influenced the development of woodblock prints. Therefore, historical, economic, cultural and artistic reasons made Suzhou Taohuayu woodblock prints become the center of Jiangnan woodblock prints in China, creating artistic styles and techniques that were obviously different from those of contemporaneous woodblock prints of Kaifeng Zhuxianzhen and other places.

4. Southern woodblock prints are popular in Lingnan and Ba Shu

Guangdong Foshan woodblock prints are a marvel of folk culture in Lingnan China. South China has always been the home of the Hakka people who migrated south from the Central Plains, naturally bringing a lot of things of the Central Plains culture, woodblock prints are the most important folk art. In Foshan, this far from the Central Plains, adjacent to China's most important foreign port of Guangzhou, Lingnan industrial and commercial town, the people's social and cultural life gradually and the traditional social and cultural differences in the Central Plains, most adult men do not work in agriculture, to business, foreign as a profession, so the home more prayers for good luck and fortune, wealth, and to avoid harm. Therefore, the varieties of Foshan woodblock prints are relatively single, mainly door god paintings, statue paintings, list side paintings, etc. In addition, due to the red culture of Guangdong, there are many varieties of woodblock prints. In addition, because the Guangdong culture is still red, that red represents vitality and business, so the red color is the most prominent local characteristics of Foshan door god paintings, has the reputation of "perpetual red", reflecting the characteristics of Lingnan culture.

Yangjiabu woodblock prints

The rustic Sichuan Mianzhu New Year's Paintings inherited the tradition of line drawing and coloring techniques from the Tang and Song Dynasty paintings, thus forming a bright and colorful, rustic and rich local flavor and distinctive national characteristics.

Weifang, Shandong Province, is represented by Yangjiabu New Year paintings. The kangtou paintings are the varieties that are quite characteristic of the place. Weifang New Year paintings are characterized by bold lines, simple shapes and strong colors, mostly in primary colors.

Sichuan Mianzhu New Year's Paintings began around the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, and its varieties are most varied in the form of door gods and door children. In the production of painters mainly dyeing, i.e., only ink lines printed out the painting, that is, hand-drawn, which is the complete opposite of the Suzhou Peach Blossom Garden all color plate overprints. Mianzhu New Year's Eve paintings also use the sealing method, that is, in the addition to the gold group of flowers, the pattern carved into a stamp type, pressed on the screen.