Research On Zhou Sicong’s Paintings And Aesthetic Judgment

As the most influential female painter in modern China, Zhou Sicong had made her creativeprocess, art work and even aesthetic concepts considered as one of the landmarks in modernChinese painting and art aesthetics; more importantly, her creative process is not only anessential transition point in the reforming and developing process of ink-figure-painting of20th century, but also a continuous reflection of her own life experiences and internalfeelings towards the changing society and culture. Through different levels, includingtechniques, appreciation, humanity and artistic philosophy, she demonstrated the leaps anddisconnection between art creation and appreciation development in Chinese art history,which is saturated of conflicts and integrations of traditional Chinese art and modernwestern art; such conflicts and integrations are the results of individual exploring efforts bythe artists, as well as the trend of modern Chinese painting.Analyzing her creative process and painting style, it is clear to us that she went through theregression of the spirit of freehand via realistic painting; this is not as simple as repeatingand returning, but the absorption of skills and aesthetics in western painting, andself-surpassing in form of regression, and all these are on the basis of abundant experiencesand great realistic ink-figure-painting skills. Moreover, all her exploration and creations arereflection of her inner world experiences and thinking process; regression to traditionalfreehand spirits can also be seen as her self-discovery and enhancement as an artist.This thesis, based on the art study, begins with the early period, and is followed by themature period, and the late period of the artistic creation experience of Zhou Sicong. Thecreation background, artistic techniques, and value analysis of her representative works,combining with materials and oral content in her real life, takes center stage. Because of this,the overlapping studies of both her aesthetic judgments and her real life experiences havebeen put in place as opposed to only focusing on the art works. What’s more, this papergives full play to intellectual resources of feminist philosophy, philosophical hermeneuticsand aesthetics, striving to figure out modern themes in Chinese and Western culture, and inthe contemporary China, with the artistic reflection of what artists had experienced. In addition, three periods of Zhou’s creation experience are regarded as an organic whole: theworks are full of artistic sublimation and development in terms of artistic philosophy andtechniques, the developing artistic philosophy is the result of changing thoughts andemotions in the real life, and the process that thoughts and emotions are constantly changedand transformed renders people capable of understanding the transformation of her aestheticjudgment. Meanwhile, given the fact that Zhou Sicong demonstrates delicate and sensitivefeatures as a female and mother, it becomes substantially complex to define her as a subjectof artistic study and interpretation. In this thesis, the purpose is not to put forwardassessments or conclusions of Zhou’s artistic study. Instead, it presents interpretivedescriptions, through which we can find how a contemporary Chinese artist integratedtraditional Chinese painting techniques and artistic philosophy with Western ones when herreal life and artistic creation experiences were in seamless harmony. Therefore, the pointlies in the future trend of Chinese art through analysis of a representative contemporaryChinese artist.In this paper, Zhou Sicong first is a woman, followed by an artist, once again is acontemporary Chinese artist, and finally an ink-figure-painting master of the20th century.If we regard her art works as artistic expression of her life and the spiritual world, she notonly inherited the tradition of Xu Jiang system realistic ink-figure-painting, but alsoexperienced a huge leap of creative thoughts and aesthetic judgment to convert the changes.Crossing between the emotional and exquisite realism brushwork and ethereal Zen, ZhouSicong achieved complete freedom and fullness in her self-construction artistic world as anartist through the inner journey blossoming from real ethereal feel.The first part of the paper begins with the social changes, cultural movements and the artdevelopments of the twentieth century. It reviews Zhou Sicong’s learning process andartistic exploration at the early stage, sorts out the impact of establishment of Xu Jiangsystem to ink-figure-painting and aesthetic philosophy of early art education in the20thcentury, especially emphasizes on early variety of artistic enlightenment Zhou Sicongreceived from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, with integration of Chinese and Westerncultural environment, and stressed the strong sense of social responsibility reflected in herearly artistic creation. Based on this, the second part of this paper analyzes "Miners”, Zhou Sicong’s masterpiece, from different angles, focusing on the continuous developments inher realism creation, from visual to emotion, from real feelings to experience, fromcomposition to techniques. The third part of this paper attempts to analyze the series worksof “Yi women”, based on the experience of women and misery aesthetics to find herenhancement in the aesthetic judgments, that is from real feelings to experience, frompowerful imagery to inner ethereal, ultimately the formation of the inner life of a bridgebetween the images and life, to build the self-awareness of an excellent female artist. Thefourth part of the paper analyzes why and how Zhou Sicong could reach a freehandregression in the final stages of her life, achieve the successful completion of artistic realm.The spirit of freehand in Zhou Sicong’s art works lay in the regression of the “lotus series”.It is not only a technique of impressionistic imagery, but also the integration of the creator’slife experiences, a spiritual aesthetic judgment after crossing, as well as once sublimation infreehand brushwork based on the concept of traditional freehand.Thus, by outlining Zhou Sicong’s art and aesthetic judgment, this thesis is expected to be acreative blend of the world, inner experience and art, and to interpret the artists as a wholeand point out the artistic trends and directions reflected in their creative process from thehermeneutics and aesthetic angle, from realism to impressionistic, the possibility oftraditional regression of freehand brushwork as the Chinese contemporary painting freehandtopic.