The Form and Category of the Chinese Paper-cut
3 min readPaper-cut is a kind of hollow-out art, and it gives people a intangible feeling and artistic enjoyment on the vision.
Paper-cut is also called engraved paper and painting by scissors, that is, some of the technique of expression use scissors, while some use with knives, and some use both. Though the tools are different, the creation of works of art is basically the same, and people call it paper-cut. The forms of carrier of paper-cut can be paper, gold or silver foil, bark, leaves, cloth, fur, leather and other sheet materials, and modern paper-cut art can also be extended to the forms of art like relief carving, round carving which apply metal materials, stone, pottery, glass and many other consolidated material through the cutting, engraving and carving.
As a representative style of Chinese folk art, Chinese folk paper-cut is widely used in China’s vast land, its universalityof the application covering various fields and the popularity of the community are rare within the scope of the world. Simplicity and convenience of the tools and materials should be the basic conditions for the fact that Chinese paper-cut art is widely circulated. Chinese paper-cut is a form of folk modeling art that folk craftsman cut and carve figures, flowers, birds, animals, insects, fish mountains and water, pavilions and other natural and social landscape images with scissors or a knife on paper, as well as the imagery of the visual image, which expresses good luck, bless, prevention of evil, exhortation, alert, interests and other morals. Chinese paper-cut makes the common people enlightened and joyful by its unique artistic charm.
As an artistic carrier of both modern and traditional expression, according to the sense of the design, Chinese paper-cut can be divided into graphic sense, spatial sense, space-time sense and so on. Graphic significance: the Chinese paper-cut has a level of art of painting which holds the value of appreciation, decoration and enlightenment, such as paper cutting, interior decoration, etc; spatial significance: it has the display effects of space design significance, and it is the beauty of smartness of the communication from space to space, such as paper-cut for window decoration, lanterns, smoke plaid(a kind of paper-cut that makes the windows exchangeair indoor and outdoor by using the open space of paper-cut in Shaanxi folk house), etc; space-time significance: it produces during the period that the movie and TV cartoon does not appear, with the multidimensional nature of the level of time and space, such as paper-cut shadow, etc.
Chinese folk paper-cut is rich in formsand categories, and from the perspective of usage it can be divided into the following contents:
Purely decorative patterns, windowpaper-cuts(including smoke plaid)door paper-cuts(ancient streamers)lantern paper-cuts, happy event paper-cuts(marriage, having kids, fruit), present paper-cuts, heatable brick bed paper-cuts, ceiling paper-cuts, vegetables decorated paper-cuts, embroidered paper-cuts(shoe, hat, pillow, apron, cushions, straps, curtain, pocketbook paper-cuts, etc.), offerings paper-cuts, funeral paper-cuts, embroider paper-cuts, shadow puppets paper-cuts, and many art categories like that.
