Research On Xu Beihong’s Historical Painting Creation

Xu Beihong is a milestone figure in the history of modern Chinese painting.He is the founder and pioneer of Chinese realistic oil painting.He devoted his life to the improvement of Chinese painting,with the feelings of joining the WTO,helping the world,his humane spirit and patriotic feelings,to create a wide range of works.Starting from Xu Beihong’s life experience,creative practice and his realistic aesthetic view,this paper will comprehensively explore and discuss Xu Beihong’s realistic artistic view and historical painting creation by using a variety of methods and perspectives such as history,comparison,aesthetics,archeology,iconography and oil painting linguistics.Xu Beihong’s several masterpieces of historical painting combine the realistic skills of western painting,the emotion of compassion for the people,the pursuit of freedom and democracy,and the consciousness of national self-improvement.In the process of creating historical and mythic figures,he uses realistic modeling,archetypal symbols,and grand narration to show the style of realistic oil painting.These paintings vary in subject matter style,historical background and subject content,but the spirit of realism is consistent.Xu Beihong integrates Chinese and Western art,and his observation extends to The Times,society and life.He concentrates on reflecting his realistic creation intention and reflects the social significance of his works,especially the promotion of human subjectivity,which moves the audience and sets a model for the realistic oil painting creation of later generations.Xu Beihong’s artistic propositions,based on the purpose of art for society and for the public,give full play to the art "into education,help people’s ethics,poor god change measurement and micro,with the six books,four times and luck.It is natural,not written."(Zhang Yanyuan’s Famous Paintings of the Past Dynasties).After that,he always upholds,sticks to and maintains the position of realism.Besides creation,he further elaborates,practices and disseminates his artistic concepts through theoretical articles,thus advocating for the realistic oil painting art.In this historical process,how did Xu Beihong’s creation of historical painting evolve? How are they related to each other? What is the symbolism of these archetypes? How to play the realistic significance of historical themes? And so on and so on and this gives us a lot to think about.Among them,the most important point is that Xu Beihong’s realistic oil paintings introduce "human" into the painting in the historical context,and human becomes the subject,which improves the humanistic thought and social concern of the works.It is his great contribution to the Chinese art history,which creates a precedent for the creation of realistic historical painting in China,and provides inspiration and reference for the creation of today’s historical thematic oil painting.