Study On The Figure Drawings Of Zhang Daqian

In the20th century China experienced the most dramatic and profound changes in history. The powerful Western naval forces had not only opened China’s long-closed door, but also destroyed Chinese people’s confidence in the "Celestial Dynasty"."The Art revolution" arising in the20th century directed its criticism directly at the literati painting traditions of the dynasties of Yuan, Ming and Qing, and impelled the Chinese art to part from traditional fine arts and refer to Western art, conversing from the traditional pattern to the modern form.To save Chinese paintings from predicaments, Zhang Daqian cast his sight into Dunhuang, the art treasury of ancient Chinese civilization which combined construction, lithoglyph, sculpture with painting, and he hoped to find a road to revival for Chinese paintings from the national painting traditions.The Dunhuang copying had not only provided him with a better understanding of the broadness and profoundness of traditional Chinese paintings, but also urged his painting style to change. Since his transformation from traditional Chinese paintings is mild, reformative, and difficult to be detected, he had been positioned as a conservative painter fettered by old conventions.Living in the20th century when multiple enthuses emerged and different values alternative, Zhang Daqian had serious thinking and practical explorations on if traditional Chinese painting patterns could modernize with the painting resources from the traditional system, and how to build up the value system and morphological characteristics of modern Chinese fine art. He proved to the world with his own successful art career that traditional art could irradiate new vitality, and Chinese paintings had more outlets to move forward other than to learn from the west.Since2009there has emerged Zhang Daqian’s figure drawings of different periods of his career, which added to the research materials of Zhang Daqian’s figure portraits. These paintings are precious materials for studying how Zhang Daqian modernized traditional figure portraits with traditional resources. This paper is based on the study of Zhang’s transformation from the traditions, and explores the ways of modernization of Zhang Daqian’s figure portraits from two clues, the longitudinal one (Zhang Daqian’s painting art and history) and the horizontal one (the evolvement of Zhang’s painting ai itself), through the analysis on Zhang Daqian’s figure drawings.Reevaluating Zhang Daqian’s art practice through the study of his unique way c inheritance and transformation from traditions is of great value and significance present.