Chinese Flower And Bird Tradition Of Copying And Teaching

The main traditional method of teaching Chinese painting is to inherate painting from memory. Practising by copying classical copies of famous works is an effective solution of basic problem in teaching Chinese painting, and it brings us near to the thoughts of the ancient artists. Thus, the three main factors are teaching copying, painting from life and studying art history and theories.The teaching of copying in major of flower-bird painting in China Academy of Art has its unique features. And it forms a precious historical traditon, which plays the leading role in this area for most Art school in China. Early in the 1960s, teaching of flower-bird painting had had great achievements, led by three experts: Pan Tianshou, Wu Fuzhi and Zhu Lesan. In the guidence of whom, some classical works from Qing Dynasty and the ones of H-pipe were bought by department of Chinese painting, which has become valuable materials for the teaching. In the meantime, the teaching sketch for undergraduate courses has been based on, and there has formed the teaching system whose core is works from Song,Yuan,Ming and Qing Dynasty. And they drew up a detailed sketch and categories for teaching, depending on the collections in the museums and colleges. The major of flower-bird painting becomes distinguished through the teaching of art history, theories and Chinese ancient literature. Mr. Pan, as for himself, used to be both an art historian and a poet, that is the main infuence for the major.Generally, the flower-bird painting teaching in Chinese painting is directly connected to the entire history and the contemporary creative works by collections in our own college as the link. Not only our college, but also the teaching all around China was influenced, which is the priceless property of history. The important task we confrot is to analyse it and summerize the experience of copying teaching.So far, research for this subject in China is embodied by various textbooks. There aren't collections for depending on or analysis of teaching tradition, and the lack of method and contents still exists. Researches by Chinese scholars almost focus on the history and theories, but professional discuss aiming at copying teaching is rare. At present, as for the popular famous copy works in China, some of them emphasize on art history, others emphasize on some simple analysis of skills. But the records of collections in museums or a single academic thesis are always far away from practice of teaching. Obviously, what mentioned above fails in meeting the realistic demand of the contemperary teaching of flower-bird painting.In the thesis, I use interdisciplinary method to begin my reasearch based on collected works and analyze Chinese flower-bird painting history through material objects. Besides, I will make systematic analysis for the teaching method of Mr. Pan or so, and carefully summarize teaching experience in our department. The new problems emerging in current teaching will also be discussed thoroughly, trying to solve problems of heritance and switch of traditional teaching in image age.