History of China's Traditional Chinese Painting

History of China's Traditional Chinese Painting

China's painting has a long history. After thousands of years of continuous enrichment, innovation and development, painters and craftsmen, mainly Han people, including ethnic minorities, have created distinctive national styles and colorful forms and techniques, forming a unique painting language system with China meaning, which has an important position and influence in the East and even the world.

The history of China's painting can be traced back to the painted pottery patterns and rock paintings of Neolithic Age in primitive society. Although the original painting technique is naive, it has mastered the preliminary modeling ability, and can also pay attention to the main characteristics of animals, plants and other dynamic and static forms to express the beliefs and wishes of ancestors and beautify life.

Pre-Qin paintings have been recorded in some ancient books, such as historical figures in palaces, halls and temples in the Zhou Dynasty, lacquerware and bronze decorations in the Warring States period, and silk paintings unearthed in the State of Chu, all of which have reached a high level.

Qin and Han Dynasties were a centralized regime established in the early history of China, with a vast territory and strong national strength. The Silk Road has communicated the artistic exchanges between China and foreign countries, and the painting art has developed and prospered unprecedentedly. Especially in the Han Dynasty, the wind of heavy burial prevailed, and its tomb murals, portrait bricks, portrait stones and silk paintings with burial vividly shaped realistic, historical and mythical characters, which were dynamic and plot-like, and made great achievements in reflecting real life. His painting style is often bold and bold, with flowing brushwork, rough and bold, fine and magnificent, rich in content and colorful in form.

During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, wars were frequent and people's livelihood was poor, but painting still made great progress. Suffering provided the soil for Buddhism to spread, and Buddhist art rose with great enthusiasm. For example, Qizil Grottoes in Xinjiang, Maijishan Grottoes in Gansu and Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang have preserved a large number of murals of this period, and their artistic attainments are extremely high. Due to the love and participation of the upper class in painting, besides craftsmen, a number of well-known upper class painters emerged, such as Gu Kaizhi. Metaphysics prevailed in this period, literati advocated elegance and freedom, painting history, painting theory and other works began to appear, and landscape painting and flower-and-bird painting began to sprout. Paintings in this period paid attention to the depiction of mental state and the expression of temperament, and paintings with literature as the theme became increasingly popular.

During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, national unity, relatively stable society, relatively prosperous economy and active foreign exchanges injected new opportunities into the art of painting. In terms of figure painting, although Western painting style is still popular in Buddhist murals, Wu Daozi, Zhou Fang and others' works with distinctive Central Plains painting style have an absolute advantage, and their national styles are becoming more and more mature. The landscape paintings and flower-and-bird paintings of Zhan Ziqian, Li Sixun, Wang Wei and Zhang Yong are neat and rich, and have achieved good results.

After the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty, China's painting art became more mature and complete, and its heyday appeared. The imperial court set up a painting academy, expanded its organization, recruited talents and awarded titles. Palace painting is in full swing, and literati also regard painting as an elegant thing and put forward distinct aesthetic standards. Therefore, painters come forth in large numbers with numerous masterpieces, forming a unique system in theory and creation, with rich and wonderful contents, forms and techniques.

With the development of painting in Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, literati painting has made outstanding progress. On the theme, landscape painting and flower-and-bird painting occupy an absolute position. Literati painting emphasizes the expression of subjective feelings, "not seeking resemblance" and "not seeking worldly feelings", and does not cater to the aesthetic requirements of the public. It shows elegance and leisure interest by painting, advocates "learning from nature" and "the source of law", emphasizes the unity of personality and painting, and pays attention to the organic integration of pen and ink interest with poetry, books and seals, forming a unique painting style and emerging many outstanding painters.

China's painting is an important part of China culture, rooted in the soil of national culture. It is not only limited to appearance, but also emphasizes spirit likeness. It uses brush, ink and rice paper as special materials, constructs a unique perspective theory, boldly breaks the time and space restrictions, and has a high degree of generalization and imagination. This superb skill and means not only makes China traditional painting unique in artistic courage, but also is increasingly absorbed by modern art in the world.