New Year's picture - draw a new picture of a better life
New Year pictures, a unique folk art in China, carry people's blessings and yearning for a better life, and have distinct cultural connotations, regional characteristics, and artistic characteristics.
In recent years, with the holding of various activities with the theme of "Returning New Year Pictures to the Spring Festival", New Year pictures have become a representative of the creative transformation and innovative development of folk art.
More and more art workers have made New Year pictures "live" and "fashionable" by innovating the content and form of New Year pictures.
New Year's pictures have become a bright color to enrich the New Year's festival culture and a window to show a happy life.
Inject "new" connotation
After the founding of New China, New Year pictures have been continuously injected with new connotations of the times through improvement and innovation.
In recent years, while protecting the core of the New Year's cultural spirit, New Year's paintings actively express the life scenes of the new era, and have a new look.
This is in the "New Life·New Style·New Year's Paintings——Our Well-off Society" sponsored by the Bureau of Literature and Art of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Second Bureau of the Central Civilization Office, the Public Service Department of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the China Artists Association, and the China Folk Literature and Art Artists Association. It was vividly displayed in the solicitation and display activity for the creation of life art works.
The event has been held for three consecutive years, with nearly 10,000 creators participating and nearly a million people benefiting from it. It has become a mirror, a platform, and a long scroll to show the new picture of a well-off life.
The painting has a taste of the year, and the year is in the painting.
Celebrating the new year, appreciating the Lantern Festival, appreciating lanterns and other traditional festivals and customs are the important content of the creation of New Year paintings.
For example, Li Longyan's "Picture of Making Spring" shows a prosperous scene of a group of children celebrating the new year happily.
The images of the characters show the characteristics of Tianjin Yangliu Youth Painting, but the hairstyle and clothing are full of modernity; the eye-catching Chinese red has changed the use of colors based on the "five colors" in traditional New Year paintings, and heightened the auspicious and joyful atmosphere.
Yang Yueping's "Reunion and Circle" uses exaggerated artistic techniques and strong color contrasts to depict the lively scenes of people gathering together to make, cook and eat glutinous rice balls during the Lantern Festival, reflecting the beautiful vision of a reunion between people and the moon.
There are also some works that focus on the creative transformation of the zodiac elements in New Year pictures.
For example, Tang Yufeng's "Rabbits in the Spring" uses the image of a group of rabbits to connect the interesting plots of having a reunion dinner.
The rabbit in the picture not only draws on the image of the "Rabbit Master" in folk culture, but also presents a lively and lively mood, which is full of the atmosphere of the times.
Guo Chenyan's "New Year in the Year of the Rabbit" cleverly combines rabbits and lanterns with simple and modern lines, and refines traditional patterns to decorate the body of the rabbit, making the work both traditional and modern.
In addition to reflecting festive customs, expressing happiness in daily life has also become the main theme of New Year paintings.
At the moment, many new works focus on rural changes and describe the lives of farmers.
For example, Chen Yehua's "Spring in the New Countryside" unfolds a beautiful picture of rural revitalization: roads and railways criss-cross, new farm houses are neatly lined up, delicate red peach blossoms and green fields complement each other, and spring vitality is surging everywhere.
Wang Xinghua's "My Family Lives by the Qinghe River" shows the beauty of harmonious coexistence between man and nature by depicting moving scenes such as beautiful water, fish fat, birds singing and mountain streams.
There are also some works that focus on expressing the new life in the city, such as "Splendid Homeland" created by Liu Min, where flowers bloom inside and outside the courtyard, birds are singing and flowers are fragrant, and parents and children are smiling and happy.
Although these works have different styles, they all use bright and warm colors to freeze the happy moments in life.
Facing the spring, each New Year painting is like a blooming flower, full of oriental aesthetic spirit, reflecting the new achievements of civilization practice in the new era, reflecting the new look of urban-rural integration and development, spreading the fragrance of Chinese excellent traditional culture far and wide, and letting " New" vitality flourishes.
Expansion of "new" space
In the artistic pursuit of returning to modern life, the creation of New Year paintings not only extracts themes and themes from the rich and colorful social life, but also keeps pace with the times in terms of creation forms and communication methods, which greatly expands the development space.
"Appreciating the New Year Paintings for the New Year - Art Exhibition of Our Well-off Life in 2023", "Opening the Door with New Rhythms in Ancient Versions - 2023 Joint Exhibition of Traditional New Year Pictures from Eighteen Regions of China" "Strive for the New Era and Co-Draft the Road to Wealth - Three Places in the Yangtze River Delta Folk Painting Exchange Exhibition"... In recent years, the special exhibitions of New Year paintings have been brilliant.
Throughout these exhibitions, most of the exhibited works have inherited the strong colors and simple expression techniques of traditional New Year pictures, and the rural atmosphere is overwhelming.
While absorbing the nutrition of traditional art extensively, some works also incorporate contemporary aesthetics, presenting a diverse outlook.
In addition to drawing on the characteristics of artistic creation such as woodblock New Year pictures and peasant paintings, the creators also incorporate elements such as paper-cutting, illustrations, and designs into their works to make the pictures more decorative.
For example, Wang Yichi's "Peach Rabbit Coming to Spring" develops creative expressions around "Sichuan hand-cut paper-cut" and "Mianzhu New Year paintings", exaggerating the artistic treatment of "rabbit picking peaches", which enhances the dynamics and vitality of the picture; the overall color contrast is strong, making the work Full of design beauty.
Another example is Song Chen's "Great New Life" highlighting the meaning of national style, Chen Boqing's "Well-off Youth in the Four Seasons" incorporating whimsy, etc., all endow New Year pictures with a new aesthetic conception and make New Year pictures look completely new.
In order to bring New Year paintings into the lives of the public, the display methods are constantly innovating.
Taking "Appreciating the New Year Paintings to Celebrate the New Year-Our Well-off Life Art Exhibition" as an example, it is based on the integration with the festive atmosphere, the integration with the people's life, the integration with the urban regional culture, and the integration with the international cultural communication. The art of New Year paintings is displayed in a combination of online and offline, which enriches the viewing experience.
In the second exhibition, with the help of interactive technologies such as augmented reality, face recognition, and human body sensing, the exhibition realized the "marriage" of new media interactive technology and traditional New Year pictures, bringing the audience an immersive experience that is both artistic and interactive , Also create an auspicious and beautiful spiritual home.
The third exhibition takes the seasonal solar terms as clues, and unfolds the artistic narrative through the four major sections of "Spring Harmony", "Summer Lindui Green", "Autumn Borderlands as Picturesque" and "Winter Storage Valley".
The exhibition site, the public space in Beijing Square, is festively and lively decorated with huge New Year pictures. Some bus and subway stations in Beijing also set up outdoor display areas, so that folk art can play a wider aesthetic function.
The innovation of New Year paintings from the form of creation to the way of dissemination reflects the renewal of contemporary life concepts, lifestyles, and living spaces. It has also become a vivid microcosm of the integration of traditional culture into contemporary life. useful exploration.
Inspire "new" ideas
At present, the creation team of New Year paintings continues to grow, including professional art workers, inheritors of intangible cultural heritage, new literature and art groups, etc.
The creators give full play to their respective advantages, so that the New Year paintings are deeply rooted in the fertile soil of traditional culture, but also show the spirit of the times. New art products are derived through cross-border integration, making the art of New Year pictures more "fashionable" and more diverse.
More and more creators are digging deep into the rich connotation of New Year pictures, finding a balance between tradition and modernity, commonality and individuality, so that the art of New Year pictures "live" in the present.
For example, the "New Year's New Year Paintings Daily" creation camp of the Academy of Arts and Design of Tsinghua University, with the theme of "Tracing the Origin of New Year's Paintings", gathered inheritors and related practitioners, teachers and students of colleges and universities, and designers from the representative places of production of New Year's pictures in the country to deeply explore the cultural connotation contained in New Year's pictures. With spiritual power, the creation of New Year paintings and the research and development of its derivatives, through creative transformation practices, present a beautiful picture of a new era and a new life.
The cultural and creative achievements of the work camp such as "More Than Years" are full of creativity and "trendy", reflecting the creative trend of promoting the integration of traditional New Year pictures and fashionable life.
In order to adapt to the aesthetics of the new era, some designers use New Year pictures as the main visual image to expand their creativity and develop "new domestic products" cultural and creative products.
For example, the Institute of Cultural Heritage and Innovation of Peking University launched the "New Year's Paintings to Empower Time-honored Brands' Cultural Creativity and Innovation Project", inviting New Year's painting experts, fashion brand experts, and fashion designers to jointly rejuvenate and empower China's time-honored brands.
The brand-new packaging design embellished with elements of New Year pictures and rich in cultural charm rejuvenates the century-old brand, and once again polishes the golden signboard in the process of cultural inheritance and innovation.
Nowadays, more and more New Year pictures in museum exhibitions and unique skills in the hands of intangible cultural heritage inheritors have been transformed into interesting and warm "new domestic products" through the creative empowerment of designers. With the help of new carriers, new materials, and new processes to achieve wider dissemination.
The application boundaries of New Year pictures continue to expand.
For example, the creative dance "New Year Painting Dance" integrates various elements such as technology, art, and folk customs, showing the joyful scene of the people working, harvesting, and celebrating the New Year.
The documentary "New Year Pictures·Picture Years" uses the form of dance, the way of small animation theaters, and the visual images synthesized by special effects, etc., to lead the audience to travel far and wide to appreciate the art of New Year pictures, to pursue warm memories, to inherit the essence of folk customs, and to reflect the feelings of rural China. loved by many viewers.
Pioneering and innovating in various forms makes the art of New Year pictures last forever.
Bringing New Year pictures back to life requires not only inheriting the tradition, but also inseparable from the creation based on life and times.
Looking forward to more New Year paintings "Flowers of Art" that express new life and promote new styles in the "Hundred Gardens" of art in the future, so as to enrich people's better life.
(The author is Song Liang, Artistic Director of Peking University Institute of Cultural Heritage and Innovation)
People's Daily