Modern Practice of New Paper-cut Art
8 min readModern Practice of New Paper-cut Art(Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong and so on)
The new paper-cut art shows the excellent scene of vigorous development with the strong support of large solid platform of Chinese cultural art spirit and extensive protection of Chinese traditional art resources, and the opportunity of prosperity brought by development and exchange of international and domestic multicultural.A lot of representative researchers and explorers of modern art emerging around China show a number of very meaningful works of art practice and make their own contribution to the new career of the Chinese paper-cut culture. There appears Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other areas as the center of the more developed regions of development of modern art.Now let’s make a brief introduction of the new paper-cut art conditions in some regions.
[ Beijing]
As the cultural center in China, Beijing has a profound traditional culture and art accumulation and also has the resource of many famous universities and culture and art master.
It is the flourishing land of international communication of Chinese culture art. The advantaged academic environment and human resources create a large number of outstanding artists, and their artistic practice behavior exhibits the leading position at home and abroad. Here,I would like to introduce several representative artists with new paper-cut art spirit features of Beijing style.
Lv Shengzhong
The reason why Lv Shengzhong is called a famous contemporary visual artist is that it derives from his personal passion towards the Chinese native traditionalculture, and it stems from fragrant and lovely folk deep art soil. Lv Shengzhong’ sart is pure modern manifestation of folk.
Since 1984, during the study in graduate school of the China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, Lv Shengzhong devoted to the folk tour and study.
In the learning, as he said, it is not a simple description of the form to understand the unique spirit of the folk culture and profound connotation of traditional national culture. This is why Lv Shengzhong moves towards the success of modern art. Chinese folk art, in addition to common characteristics of orthodox traditional art, also has its own unique style. For example, with more freedom, more sensitivity, and more pure primitive emotional characteristics, she does’t like orthodox art which is easy to retain, however it reflects the immutability of the opopular sentiments and spirit; while in the pursuit of visual impact, folk art pays more attention to perceptual and original visual impact in the depths of the soul.
These characteristics and temperament of Chinese folk art, combined with”nature unity”,”broadness”and other national spirit, jointly gives “gods”spirit to Lv Shengzhong’s works, so his modern installation art is with distinct personality.The works, such as “Sacred Way”,”Summons of the Soul”, all show this spirit connotation since they are grand,mysterious and aggressive, as well as give a person with strong national time sense, fully embody the outreach and publicity of beauty of national spirit.
Lv Shengzhong’s art works are full of some modern art features, and the art form with the modern means is mainly reflected in the following two aspects:
The first aspect is that the art screen in the dark background environment is dotted with red graphics like a flaming, or plane, or solid, or Yin, or Yang, or large tometers, or small as few millimeters, and forms a multi-level appeared, space-time change multiterminal and mysterious fantasy modern visual art effect.
The second aspect, it fully uses modern means of “light”. In these art works, the artistic techniques such as modern materials, modern communication tools expressed at thesame time, reflects some art examples with unique beauty of the modern installations and modern behavior art that comprehensively use national traditional folk artistic visual language.The “Little Red Figure”series of work shown in China Art Gallery, works of “Soul Tablet”created in Australia, and internal carriages installation art of “Red Train”in Germany, and so on, arerepresentatives in these art works.
Qiao Xiaoguang
“We have become accustomed to know about China from Chinese characters，from the ancient history books，imperial palace ruins，heritage and treasure，sages elite，emperors and kings，generals and ministers to know Chinese.But very few of us could know China from a farmer，a village，a regional customs of life，an oral poem，a folk artwork，and the world rarely knows China from folk.”一Qiao Xiaoguang
Qiao Xiaoguang，the professor of China Central Academy of Fine Arts，the animator of the protectionof intangible cultural heritage and the Chinese paper-cut art，especially stresses the importance of folk art.Qiao Xiaoguang has plenty of academic theoretical accomplishment，and he puts forward a series of social concerns，in which he presents”theliving condition culture”that folk culture as its the main body is the core factor of the persistence of Chinese civilization；he presents“the phenomenon of paper-cut women”，calling for society’s respect to the cultural contribution for the cultural heritage of the Chinese nation which has been made by generations of working women in rural China and their current living situation；he presents the symbiotic characteristics of folk culture，advocates in different modes of traditional ethnic festivals as the core of intangible cultural heritage protection concepts，and calls for starting the intangible cultural heritage education in the field of national education as soon as possible…
In the exploration of creation of the new paper-cut art, the paper-cut works created for Finland epic Kalevala should be one of the representatives. Qiao Xiaoguang combines the epic with Han Dynasty paintings in northern China with programming methods of Chinese folk paper-cut language, as well as three-section type structure of Miao paper-cut and other language methods and presents the complexepic in a six meters long paper-cut space. Here Qiao Xiaoguang accepts that the simple emotion and free imagination of Chinese paper-cut belong to the world.
Another representative works of Qiao Xiaoguang should be the stage design for the Henrik lbsen theatre in Norway. In 2006, at the 100th anniversary of the Norwegian outstanding writer Henrik lbsen’ sdeath, the theatre hoped the first lbsen’s modern dance drama”Looking for Nora”could be shown in China in that winter, then toured the world. The Norwegians invited Qiao Xiaoguang to design a stage background of paper-cut style for the drama. Qiao Xiaoguang’s 27 pieces of Chinese paper-cut works of “looking for Nora”, which was presented with thecontemporary art features, made the world marvel.
Zhang Shuxian
Zhang Shuxian’s hometown is Yongjia, Zhejiang Province. He used to work for the Foreign Culture Group of Ministry of Culture(the original Exhibition Studio of Foreign Culture Committee), and he was once appointed as deputy chief editor and took other positions in China International Book Trading Corporation. He has been appointed as the director of the Paper-cut Art Professional Committee of Chinese Culture Promotion Association since 2006.
His representative works should be the large-scale paper-cut mural of Heaven, Earth and Man created for Beijing Metro Line 10 in 2008; hisbooks includes Chinese Folk Paper-cut Art(in Chinese, English and German)(published by China Today Press), series of storehouse of Chinese Folk Paper-cut Master(published by China Today Press); he established the first professional journal-Chinese Paper-cut(bimonthly) in the paper-cut industry in 2006.
Zhang Shuxian devotes all his life to China’s organizational construction and academic research of paper-cut, and the innovation career of folk paper-cut art. He integrates beauty of form and color in Western modern art and beauty of “charm”and lines in Oriental art into the traditional folk paper-cut, creating the offbeat modern color paper-cut art. The Chinese Characters’ Story about the origin and evolution of Chinese words is collected by the Museum of Chinese text. His art works such as Vicissitudes of The Old Summer Palace, The Spring of Childhooad, Red Leaf Dye in Fragrant Hil and The Novel from the Plain, etc, are the re-innovation of folk paper-cut art in aspects of composition and conception and expression methods.
Zhao Xigang
Zhao Xigang graduated from Decoration Art Department of Central Academy of Art and Design in his early years, and later as a graduate student he graduated from Tsinghua University Academy of Fine Arts, which is deeply influenced by traditional decoration and modern art design.
He immerses himself in his favorite comparative study of traditional and modern art and new paper-cut art for decades, makes a integration of modern design concept and traditional art spirit, accumulates a wealth of creative experience, and creates alarge number of innovative modern paper-cut art works and cultural creative products of contemporarypaper-cut art, which has drawn the world’s attention.
[ Shanghai]
Shanghai paper-cut belongs to a paper-cut art form of Shanghai Art.
The new paper-cut art here is more associated with modern commercial civilization. Due to the congenital highly developed market economy, the culture and commodity collectively influence the new paper-cut art in this areas. The artistic characteristics of the diverse and inclusive arts features are added. Here,I’d like to make a brief introduction about the influential artists with new paper-cut spirit characteristics in the area.
Lin Ximing
Lin Ximing starts to learn Chinese painting in 1942. His publishes works including the Selected Chinese Painting of Lin Ximing which is divided into landscapes and figures volumes, Paper-cut Anthology of Lin Ximing and The Poems of Lin Ximing, etc, and he also creates a variety of book ilustration. Lin Ximing is contemporary Chinese painting master, famous modern paper-cut artist, as well as professor at Shanghai University. His modern paper-cut art is under the influence of ink painting freehand brushwork in traditional Chinese painting.
Lin Ximing’s modern paper-cut art has the following features: Firstly, the far-reaching and profound conception. Woman joy together with the fish in the works of Happy Fish and Merry Woman makes the audience remember ancient fable of Zhuang Zi and Hui Zi enjoy the sight of fish on the bridge of River Hao, and the famous saying of”if you are not fish, you may not know the happiness of fish”.
Secondly, the refining form. He onlycuts a dove in Long Live the World Peace, which induces complete details, accurately summarizes Picasso’s paintings, as well as Paul Eluard’s famous poem Le Visage de la Paix(with Picasso’s illustrations), and infiltrates modern characteristics, spirit of Chinese painting’s and modeling of Western painting.
Thirdly, the novel form. The white children and black children in Peace and Friendship, the female artist inthe industry of Storyteller, and the attentively child of Bubbles all are new subjects.
The expression of Lin Ximing’s opera characters paper-cut is the same ashis other paper-cut creations which have general modeling and rough lines, and he uses the decorative conception to achieve a simple beauty on art. Guan Liang makes comments on it like”spiritual conveyance from knife”, Ai Qing praises it like”give times consciousness to rural art”.
