Traditional culture handbook: the history of face painting

Face painting has a long history. Facebook originated in the mask, the face will be painted directly on the face, and the mask will be painted or cast in something else on top of the graphics and then worn on the face, in ancient China, the ritual activities of the witch dance and Nuo dance, the dancers often with masks. In Sichuan, north of Chengdu, the ancient Shu ruins "Sanxingdui" unearthed artifacts, there are dozens of bronze masks, is 4,000 years ago, the ancient Shu king of the fish mallard rituals held supplies. Lanling King Changgong of Northern Qi Dynasty, the temperament of the brave and strong martial arts, but handsome like a woman, he fought with a mask, to help its power. In the Tang Dynasty's song and dance "King Lanling's Entry Song", the actor playing King Lanling had to wear a mask. This may be the origin of face painting in theater.

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Ancient masks had simple symbols, "idea symbols" and ""expression symbols", used to express a particular idea or expression. To the theater, these symbols are painted directly on the face to express more complex and rich 'concepts and expressions. In the Tang Dynasty, there was a record of "painting the face", and Meng Jiao wrote in "Song of Strings": "Driving the stalls and beating the drums and blowing the flute, the skinny ghosts dyed their faces but their teeth were white", which indicated the use of dyeing and painting the face to express the image of ghosts and gods. In the sixth volume of "Qingkang Zhongchichan" of Xu Mengxin's "Three Dynasties of the North Gate" of the Song Dynasty, it is recorded that two sycophants of Emperor Huizong of Song Dynasty used "powder and ink to make a play", uttering obscene and vulgar words in the marketplace, to bewitch the Emperor. Song Dynasty "face painting" is divided into "clean face" and "surface" two categories, flower face is also very simple. Painted a white nose, red eye circles, the purpose of "business in the funny". Because the Song Dynasty miscellaneous dramas, gags accounted for a large proportion. Yuan dynasty miscellaneous drama prevalent, in the "Daxing scattered music Zhongdu Xiu do field here" in a large mural, appeared in the Yuan miscellaneous drama frontal character "whole face" of the spectrum, breaking through the past vice net that the basic tone of the black line on a white background, with a certain character of color.

The Ming Dynasty was already the world of legendary plays performed by the Kun Opera, with rich performances and a fine division of labor, with the net divided into positive net (big face), vice net (two faces) and ugly (three faces). Pure and ugly are all painted faces, and each character has a specialized face. Its base color is mostly based on the depiction of rap literature or the actor's own imagination design. For example, Guan Yu's base color is red and Bao Gong's is black. Its basic spectrum is the exaggerated eyebrow and eye part. In the Ming Dynasty, people kept their hair and their faces were drawn below the forehead, while in the Qing Dynasty, people kept their hair in braids and their heads were shaved above the head, and their faces were also drawn above the head. The proportion of the patterns also changed. Compared with the Ming Dynasty, the face painting was complicated and simple, with the same base color. In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the rise of local theater, the face of the net clowns in each place is very different, there are obvious local characteristics and folk art breath, a variety of local theater about more than 300 types of plays, mostly in the 18th century after the rise. The prosperity of the local theater, making the repertoire of the characters of the characters continue to increase, the line of work is more detailed. In addition to the Jing line, there was the addition of the Wu Jing. The colors increased blue, green, yellow, gray, orange.