How far back do Chinese reproduction woodcut prints go? How were prints first made?

The emerging prints and ancient reproduction prints are not only very different in terms of production technology, but also qualitatively different in terms of their function and relevance as art. From the day of its birth, new printmaking has been closely related to the liberation of the Chinese nation and the fate of the people at large. It was an important part of China's revolutionary literature and art, and the main force of left-wing art in the 1930s. Printmakers ascended to the stage of history as artists and revolutionary fighters, flagged off art as a weapon of battle, and played a great role on the ideological and educational fronts.

Since the introduction of novels in the Ming Dynasty, woodcut illustrations have gradually developed. Represented by Chen Laolian, the woodcut illustrations were highly decorative, with high artistic achievements in modeling, line and composition. The Nine Songs, The Tale of the Western Chamber, The Water Margin, and The Biography of Bogu. which he created, are all excellent woodcut decorative illustrations. The author drew the stories into sketches, then asked the carver to carve them into wooden boards, and then reproduced them with watermarks. In the character modeling, he focuses on psychological carving and the contrast of environment to the characters, with thick and smooth lines, well-organized relationships of sparseness, reality, black and white, and strong decorative charms.

In addition, there are many famous painters involved in the creation of book illustrations, such as Tang Yin's The Western Chamber, the Legend of the Ladies, as well as the works of, Liu, Ding,, Gu Zhengyi, Liu Suming, etc., which brought unprecedented prosperity to the art of printmaking. Chinese printmaking is an important category of Chinese art. Ancient prints mainly refer to woodcuts, but there are a few copperplate prints and overprints left out. Its unique flavor of knife and wood makes it an independent artistic value and status in the history of Chinese culture and art. There are many kinds of prints, the most common of which are woodcuts, etchings, copper plates, and so on.

Prints are made by first carving a pattern (reflection) on a hard material and then printing it on paper in black or color. Traditionally, China had carved statues of Buddha and other figures, but they were drawn with a single line. Since Lu Xun introduced woodcuts from the West (Germany), a group of progressive painters in China also began to create woodcuts, which reached a climax. Because an edition could be printed in countless sheets, the economy was high, the people loved it, and it gave a great impetus to the development of the revolutionary cause. The Yan'an period was the climax of the development of woodcut. Printmaking is a unique art, with its own special artistic language and expression. Chinese printmaking has a long history. Its birth can be traced back to the Han Dynasty. In terms of its development, the prototype of what is known as Chinese printmaking is the Han pictorial stone brick. Although it is a decorative artwork in architecture, it is a marvelous ? printmaking? , because it takes the stone brick as its place and the knife as a ghost, showing certain attributes of printmaking, which later people rubbed with paper.