Chinese paper-cut culture
6 min readThe Basic Cultural Background
“Chinese paper-cut art is Chinese folk artist’s lyric poetry and their way to express romantic feelings; and she also embodies masses of working people’s deep love for nature, lifeand world.”(“Creative in Daydream”in September 2008 in Art & Design written by Zhao Xigang)
Chinese traditional art can be summarized into three art forms: the mainstream of palace literati, the folk art form inherited by laborer group, and folk artists group which is professtional and dominated by folk craftsmen, etc. Chinese folk art which is rich in contents and various in forms is the original Chinese culture form. It is a kind of art which reflects collective views and values, and thanks to the reliance on the basis of a wide range of folk mass and folk activities, it can be continuously inherited and developed.
Human could get the basic idea of the survival and reproduction through the long struggle against nature. And that is also the cycle of human’s life and eternal ideology. This is cultural wisdom quintessence that has been accumulated by the masses of working people from generation to generation.
Folk art is the active art form of traditional culture, which is created by working people in life and production, and the history of folk art is the history of handmade creations that different ethnic groups created for the faith of survival and the needs of daily life. Chinese folk art is an important part of Chinese traditional art, and it is the cultural psychological basis of Chinesetraditional art. It not only implies the nation’s most original life philosophy and values of cultural beliefs, but also maintains the most primitive cultural thinking patterns and the most original state of traditional artistic narration.
If you don’t understand the folk art which is dominated by generational rural farmers, you won’t really understand the cultural root of Chinese art, thus it is not easy to explore the cultural innovation of art with Chinese characteristics.
As the living normality culture characteristics, Chinese folk art can berecognized from the view of eight basic cultural characteristics:
①Living normality
Folk art is accepted as generational inheritance, thus it forms a kind of eternal law of being carried on from generation to generation. Civil society life is a natural soil for the folk art to survive, and oral teaching is the main way to achieve its intentions. All this has created the important cultural characteristics of living normality of Chinese folk art.
② Groupment
The traditional folk art gets rooted in the general population, and comes into being in the social custom, socialidentity and conventionality of public custom life. Its practical function presents a social attributes of common sense, as well as shows a kind of social cultural phenomenon of group significance and value.
③Regionalism
China has many minorities, and the difference of regional characteristics is clear and distinctive, which determines the characteristics of distinct local cultural background in different regions, different ethnic groups, so the folk art makes the corresponding distinctive regional culture characteristics-the beauty of regional differences of culture.
④Inheritance
Inheritance is the striking featureof the folk culture and art. Chinese folk art has a family-based creation and production mode, and this kind of oral granted inheritance form which is conducted as a family unit embodies the social values of cultural heritage of agricultural civilization, and also makes the traditional Chinese culture in good inheritance and development.
⑤Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism of folk art embodies in two aspects of utilitarianism respectively in religion and life beautification. Among them, the color of utilitarianism which is permeated with a spirit of life value constantly brings great outlook about idealism and positive romanticism to us.
⑥Symbolism
Chinese folk art has a very strong cultural symbolism, and there are many artistic expressions with characteristics of primitive culture and myth spirits. The visual symbols of totemism symbolic of human childhood is the product of folk cultural beliefs, as well as the important content of folk art. Means of artistic expressions, such as symbol, metaphor, harmonics, personification quasiphysical and so on, make the folk art colorful and dazzling.
⑦Symbiosis
Folk art interacts with other traditional culture art forms and shares common associations, which makes the oneness and builds up an intergral cultural ecology relations, thus it makes the traditional culture show a systematic culture system.
⑧Rheological properties In the process of its own development and changes, Chinese folk art presents a dynamic phenomenon of the living normality and historical development, showing an artistic rheological characteristics. Generally, the Chinese folk art shows the stateof successive inheritance, and in the process of inheritance, it more clearly shows a unity of cultural phenomenon of people’s conscious inheritance and creative inheritance.
The Chinese paper-cut art is an important artistic style of Chinese folk art, and it is cherished by the natural heaven of culture, as well as embodiesthe Chinese ancestor’s visual ways of language expression which is full of cultural philosophy and artistry, at thesame time it also reflects the artistic ability of reappearance brought by the induction of the heart and hand.Its changing artistic expressions, vivid language, unique expression, and strong visual tension always bring unforgettable impression to people.
This is the visual language image which has forthright, honest and romantic characteristics of typical Chinese.
Mr. Zhang Daoyi had compared the Chinese folk paper-cutting to “Zhuang Zhou Dreams of Being a Butterfly”. Through the paper-cut art representation of romantic passion, wecan see the Chinese visual art’s root and art rule, and the spirit of truth of the Chinese traditional culture and art.
Chinese folk paper-cut has a vast distribution. Due to the geographical environment differences and different cultural backgrounds between different areas, it brings different cultural characteristics and historical imprints to paper-cut art, so the development of Chinese paper-cut art is a content-rich history textbook. The Chinese paper-cut art is native Chinese art, and it inherits the Chinese culture and art spirit. With two thousand years of recorded history of traditional culture, it is known as a “living fossil”of Chinese traditional culture.
For thousands of years, paper-cutting is extremely rich in its social application scope in the design of the traditional process as the typical local style classic graphic design; at the same time the Chinese paper-cut art has brought the extremely important significanceand development of application value on the cultivation of people’s artemotion and aspects of ideological indoctrination. Paper-cut art is worthyto be the representative of the visual arts style with Chinese characteristics.
Through the visual imagery presented by paper-cut art, we can look in depth theunderstanding of beauty in the human’s subconscious cognition and Chinese nation’s unique aesthetic tendency.
Since the ancient times, our ancestors unswervingly advocate the moral spirit of Chinese culture of “Put propriety to the priority”and”Beauty of harmony”, and its logic of harmony and unification between man and man, human and nature, as well as man and society, has always affected the Chinese paper-cut art profoundly.”Completeness”,”mildness”and”generiosity”build a distinctive artistic features of paper-cutart and the most perfect life realm; at the same time, in the mode of expression of conception, Chinese paper-cut art has individuation, hommization and aesthete artistic conception, thus this spirit will continue to make rational thinking and artistic confession; from another aspect, the Chinese paper-cut art has its unique way of expression, which are the special use of tools, special materials and special technology creation methods. All these have created the unique nature of paper-cut art. Therefore, it is easy to make Chinese paper-cut art communicate and interactwith modern art ideas and modern design.
When modern people talk about paper-cut art, it is no longer merely treated as the “antique”in old era or a “traditional”stuff.
Chinese paper-cut art, which is the natural living and an art form with a strong international visual art color, has shown in modern art and modern design stage of the world as modern, visual art symbols of extremely strong vogue.
