The Modern Art Ideological Trend and the New Paper-cut
8 min readAt the beginning of the 20th century, science and technology and humanistic thought in the new era was changing people’s way of life.
People’s original life rhythm and social relations were broken, and many new things with innovation and stimulation of visual and spiritual factor come into being; at the same time, it also caused changes in ideological field in the new era. These unprecedented ideology and material technology will inevitably lead to the birth of a new art form language. Cubism, Expressionism, Dadaism, Futurism, Constructivism, Surrealism and other art genres stand out, and the Cubism painting withPablo Picasso and Georges Braque as the representative figures is the most important genre of the modern art movement. The Young Ladies ofAvignon painted by Pablo Picasso in 1907 marked the beginning of Cubism, and it is recognized as the first modern art works, which initiated the modernism art with historic turning significance.
For modern art, the artistic expression of The Young Ladies of Avignon has a completely new meaning. It breaks through the traditional visual art rules and cognitive methods, comprehensively pays attention to artistic personal performance, and represents a new art thinking of the new era development direction. Thus there appeared Structuralism, De Stijl, Dadaism of rational analysis and comprehensive formation, also there appeared Futurism, Expressionism, Surrealism ofreverie and subconscious perception, abstract art with advanced awareness beauty and other new art forms. As the extension and development of modern art, various new art forms representing a new social and cultural value appeared around the middle of the20th century, such as the European decorative arts, American commodity art, Northern European art, post-modernism and so on. These art forms show their artistic images from different angles and have produced significant influence for the progress of civilization and the diverse development of cultural art of human society.
Chinese paper-cut art is the native artists’ lyric poetry and the Chinese folk artists’ romantic way of expression. Itpenetrates the working people’s deep.
As a traditional artistic expressionvector with a strong modern sense on the vision, paper-cut art uses its unique artistic charm to please both the eye and the mind of people, and it has become a symbol of Chinese culture and art in the world.
Based on the analysis from the development status of Chinese paper-cut, Chinese paper-cut art has the typical artistic expression of Chinese culture and spirit taste, and it gives infinite resources and energy to our artistic originality. The birth of the pottery decorative symbols in the period of primitive society, bronze sculpture art in the period of Shang and Zhou and Warring States, laid a solid art foundation for the formation of Chinese paper-cut art’s symbolic graphical view. The portrait stones art in the Han Dynasty and the latter decorative fresco and engraving art, is the historical period with unique cultural features which are formed by era beauty and national art style. Confucian cultural spirit of Chinese religious thought in this period wins support among the people, and the idealized art images such as eclosion immortal, auspicious dragon and phoenix, rare and valuable animals are greatly popular. In the aspect of art form, Chinese paper-cut art emphasizes thetypical characteristics of image and dynamic beauty; it uses the artistic expression of planar silhouette, makes the planar space divided reasonably; its artistic style is full but not random, numerous but not scattered, motion in quiescence, move and motionless, plain and simple artistic characteristics, which is the typical artistic effect with decorative beauty of Chinese painting. In the Chinese folk paper-cut art, the unrestrained and frank, decorative charm, symbolic meaningfeatures makes the Chinese paper-cut glittering, obviously these artisticspirit is the topic which is pursued by oartistic originality in today’s society.
Strive for “beauty of rich”,”beauty of intangible”and poetic imagery beauty of “harmony”, stress the idealized feature of “similarity in spirit”… this is the spirit of the international fashion. The fullness, prosperous and magnificent art style in Tang Dynasty complement with the fresh, big-hearted, interesting life art style in Song Dynasty, make the integration of”sensibility”and”rationality”of Chinese paper-cut become potential cohesion. When we are learning the Chinese traditional cultural connotation with the integration of “sensibility”and “rationality”, on the one hand, we pay attention to the free and fluent line, large area of contrast color of white and black, and give ful expression to a “big”style; on the other hand, we strengthen exquisite depiction to the local details of the whole work, while this depiction is under the condition of the whole work which maintains a straightforward mode, and the special art process makes the whole work produce a natural and rich artistic breath. The folk auspicious pattern is a folk visual arts expression with ideology whichhas been popular since the Ming and Qing Dynasties. That “The figure must have auspicious meaning”becomes the ideal artistic expression of folk artists.
The traditional Chinese paper-cut art, therefore, also has the brillant rays with unique traditional aesthetics. Influenced by such ideology, with numerous Chinese symbol graphics elements, some analogical art techniques are used, in artistic creation, to describe an ideal world of good artistic conception, unity of the contradiction, childish and natural with heart. This is the modern artists’subconscious good sustenance and longing to the nature, the world and the life.
In addition, Chinese paper-cut with strong colors of traditional craft ideas makes full use of the paper-cut’s materials and tools and unique language of art form for artistic creation activities. This unique behavior way brings unique art meaning, which produces a unique art style.
The Chinese cultural tradition concept considers that”dao qi tong yi”is the only way for the creation development, and the thought that is called “ji yi zai dao”, ji jin hu dao”, is the fact that people realizethat skills does not exist in isolation, and it can be transformed into Taoism at a certain stage. Although the thought of preference on Taoism but not qi limitsthe skills’ development, interferes with the inheritance of skills, it also makes the traditional Chinese creation establish a set of excellent traditional culture road which is different from the western world. First, before the artistic creation, the artist often outlines an imagery form of the work content in the mind, or draws an image type of basic draft on the scratch paper and work paper, and has a clear idea about the work creation’s layout; when it comes into the creation period, it does not paint complete draft on paper, but by reference, thoughts and memory, lets thescissors directly communicate with thepaper and breaks through the modeling; when the pen of the scissors operates on the paper, the imagery graphic in mind appeared naturally and fluently, the graphics that appeared is natural, innocent with free interest. The artistic works are created by this method, which naturally have much more existence of the free image, produce more touching and vivid artistic effect. Such as images produced by reminiscence, idealized image through imagination, images of over shoes over boots, images showed through free play during the creative process… many vivid graphics image invariably shown in the picture with great unification and strong artistic appeal are a feast to the eye. In modern art, images of such creative thinking will naturally form a visual arts language of untrammeled and coherent Chinese artistic effect. It can be said that the black and white art has much artistic smartness than other visual arts. It is simple and deep, dialectic and extreme, coldlogos and humanized. The extreme visual art form of dichromatic black and white is widely used in Chinese traditional ink and wash and Chinese paper-cut art. Through the restrictionand counter-restriction, following and breakthrough of the picture, all this makes all kinds of things in people’s mind sublimating and emerging. The painter shows self artistic value, and gives the viewer endless esthetical and good aftertaste at the same time. The contrast visual language is deliberately strengthened and makes the art work show a pure, simple, sprightly modern artistic aesthetic feeling. It pays attention to the sharp contrast of planar space, emphasizes the strong .
On this point, the artistic expression of paper-cut art has the congenital advantage. Paper-cut art is a flawless beauty. It has unique nature of limited and abstract beauty, with the black and white interacting with each other, and the simple material and tools as the path of inevitable trend of abstract and image. In terms of sense of form,0Chinese paper-cut art abides by the combined action of exquisite details, rough structure model and large area of color to the picture content. All these can create the Chinese paper-cut with feature of strong contrast and pleasing to the eye. Meanwhile, they also create artistic beauty of visual atmosphere with modern consciousness.
Book of Changes once said:”once people accept the civilized knowledge, they will penetrate the knowledge to life and then make influence on the world”. Our ancestors have left extremely rich cultural resources for us, and this is our precious wealth!
Prof. Li Yan of Tsinghua University once made an iconic comparison between the old Beijing courtyard house’s door and modern anti-theft door. The traditional courtyard gives us an association of harmony and humanization, which is old thing abandoned by people. While the so-called modern anti-theft door brings usa closed, estranged, chilled feeling, this kind of change virtually forms a sharp contrast. It should be said that this is.
Similarly, for Chinese paper-cut art, whether from the ideological content of theme, or from the artistic sense s of form, it permeated with benign cultural atmosphere everywhere, this artistic expression of cultural atmosphere often has imperceptible feeling for human. Overall, the Chinese cultural art is imagery art rather than art of presentation, and its basic characteristics of artistic expression is the art show caused by imagination after the combination of all kinds of things and phenomena in nature, the2unified view, containment, dialogue between man and nature, insight thinking, imagery thinking and so on.
It has a positive response for today’s human civilization. The Chinese traditional culture and art is extensive and profound, and it has a long history.
It keeps the soul of our nation andmaintains our excellent traditional culture spirit. It is the important task of new paper-cut artist given by times. Because the new paper-cut art inherites the traditional virtues and actively explores new internationalbeauty, it strives to develop into a new art school, and this is what contemporary art struggling pursue!
Looking from abroad, the Japanese folk paper-cut is a typical oriental art form, and it began after the Chinese ancient color goldleaf”Ren Sheng”introduced to Japan (AD 756-757).
However, Japan’s modern paper-cut was deeply affected by the western art, and paper-cut art form began to be widely used in art and design.
These works have strong modern art breath. Although the paper-cut in India and other countries has oriental features, it basically shows the trend of decorative pattern. The paper-cut art in European and American countries is a product of typical Western art system, and this paper-cut form is essentially stereo plane silhouette “shadow puppet”form, realism, verisimilitude, and the pursuit of presentation is its visual characteristics. Modern paper-cut artists represented by French Henri Matisse, like his painting, use the modern artistic thinking and the combination of eastern and western different cultural art language, and emphasize the effect of composition, as well as the artistic expression such as contrast of black and white range, simple and the free, etc. This has pushed the paper-cut art to a new height, made the relationship between the paper-cut art and modern art more closely, and created refreshingart works, and paved the way for the development of new paper-cut art.
