Tentative Study Of Simplicity In Painting

It has been the eternal basic principle to pursue simplicity of returning to trueness in the field of art and this also applies to painting. Especially those rustic, simple painting works that reflect working people's hardships and true feelings always lead us to the spiritual world of nature with their great charms. In this respect, modern paintings are deeply influenced, and with similar forms, call for artists' true, fine feeling, inspires the artists' to think about the essence of life.However, numerous painters take painting as a process of pursuing fashion as they retread continuously;some even draw everything possible under the camouflage of "creation" and pursue form for the sake of form, therefore obey the basic rules of evaluating beauty. The main cause is these painters do not have proper understanding about the connotation of simplicity and they do not have correct concept of simplicity. This is why the author writes the paper here.The "simplicity" discussed in this paper is not the simplicity in general meaning but an important aesthetic category which reflects the harmonious relationship between the content and form of the creation object. The paper first analyzes the fundamental meaning of simplicity from the perspective of philosophy, literature, etc., presents various viewpoints about simplicity both at home and abroad, and then comes to the author's preference to the simplicity that runs from outside to inside.The body of the paper mainly explores two layers of simplicity in painting, that is, simplicity of content and simplicity of form. With worksof those who are famous for their classic beauty of simplicity in creation like Jean Francois Millet, Kath Kollwitz, Zhou Sicong, Luo Zhongli, the paper arrives that the different elements of simplicity in both content and form provide basic condition for the holistic simplicity of the whole work.In the last part, the paper makes specific analysis of modern pursuance of simplicity in painting, questions the blind, absurd pursuance of lifeless forms in painting with the author's own accumulation of experiences and thought, concludes that rustic, unsophisticated simplicity that runs from outside to inside is the beauty of working people and the inner beauty of human being, emphasizes the origin of art—returning to simplicity and trueness, and proposes that simplicity should be regressed, kept and carried forward in painting.