Research On Chinese Watercolor Painting From A Regional Perspective

Since its entry into China with missionaries at the end of Qing Dynasty,watercolor has a history of more than 300 years till now.After going all the way through germination period of“Eastward Spread of Western Culture",the growth period of“Native-Conscious style",and the formation period of "New Atmosphere",Chinese watercolor finally reached a leap-forward development in the late 1970s.Along with the increase of Chinese people's acceptance of watercolor and the growing number of watercolor painters,Chinese watercolor made great progress in creative concept,aesthetic view,and art form.Its focus of attention also transferred from technology language exploration to nationalized art creation.With the regional culture's intervention of Chinese watercolor's regional style,creative group and creative mechanism have been formed.By choosing Chinese watercolor art as its research object,adopting a geography-space perspective,and taking reference from previous scholars,achievements and ideas,this dissertation aims to deeply explore Chinese watercolor's regional artistic style and its formation mechanism in the north and south of China through different theories and approaches such as artistic stylistics,art-geography,art aesthetics and comparative arts,illustrate watercolor 's artistic stylization and esthetic connotation,and identify the diversity of watercolor painting art's development and its national characteristics.According to the theoretical framework design,this dissertation consists of three parts.The first part is literature review and an introduction to the study focus,in which watercolor's development after its entry into China is taken as the clue,and its change and development in China is reviewed from a historical perspective;the study focus lies in the regional style and creative group of Chinese contemporary watercolor painting.The second part of the dissertation is devoted to the main analysis of the whole study.According to China's geographic region division,there are 10 regional watercolor arts in south and north of China.Space and time being dimensions,regional culture and its art tradition being background,the present study tries hard to put important creators and schools5 watercolor styles in three dimensional coordinate of Chinese history and geographic condition so as to conduct an art-geography research and observation of region-stylization and illuminate the painting theme,aesthetic standard and painting technique in different regions.It is also expected to further explain the formation,style and art feature of different regions' watercolor works and outline watercolor styles in China.The last part of the dissertation is a detailed description of the study.Based on the case study in the previous part,this part is to analyze the elements that influence the formation of Chinese watercolor 's regional styles and characteristics and explore the differences and similarities of aesthetic orientation between the north and south of China.It is finally found that the color paintings in the north and south of China show obvious differences under the influence of different aesthetic patterns.Through the study it is concluded that the different regional style of Chinese watercolor art results from both internal and external factors.External factors include the natural factors reflecting its region-space tradition,the spiritual factors determining its region culture tradition,and the academies and mentoring factors inheriting that region's academic tradition.Among all the essence factors,creator is the foremost influential element,in which the character of creators themselves and the particularity of their group's structure are regarded as the leading causes.The ontology language of relative painting type is also an important factor influencing watercolor style,which includes the evolution of creative medium and the change of creative technology.Besides,different regions'art cultures also interact with each other.The academic traditions generated from culture collision also promoted the development of watercolor art.Through comparative analysis,the present study finally makes a parallel analogy between“grace”and "grandeur"(the two aesthetic standards representing the south and north respectively)to demonstrate watercolor's aesthetic paradigm in the south and north of China,and further probe into their differences and similarities.In general,Chinese watercolor art creation theory needs to be constructed.Through the comparative analysis of the regional cultural and geographical background of the different watercolor regions and the combination of typical art works,this dissertation summed up the causes of Chinese watercolor art style and geographical aesthetic paradigm,and also put forward that the regional style research is an effective way to develop the nationalization and diversification of Chinese watercolor art.With the rise of Chinese watercolor art consciousness,generations of watercolor artists made efforts to show its independent culture and aesthetic value,which inevitably decided the leap and transformation of regional style of the watercolor art towards the pluralistic aesthetics.