The Charm Of Popular Tastes

The Chinese ancient genres, for a long time as a kind of figure painting, refelt social life and the simple, honest, earnest emotions of people. Its characteristic of representing popular material sharply contrast with the traditional appreciation of beauty, which required gorgeous artistic language. It pursues to show the rich flavour of people' s various lives and emotions. And it is expressed directly with common frank language. So the artists think its aim is to reflect the popular custom and culture which concerns about citizen' s interests and charm. However, it neglects that genre painting is also the tool of the governor serving their regime and ethic, and that it is the pursuit of the spirit and psychology of genre painters and the research of the imperial palace' s culture.Especially, in Song dynasty, a period of great prosperity for art and culture, the genre existed in that certain environment. On the one hand, as for as the custom itself is concerned, the word contained the society and the humanities in ancient times, "popularity" is the creation of culture by people who should suit the surroundings. Therefore, in Song Dynasty which is full of Confucianism atmosphere, custom is quit emphasized politically. Furtheremore, since Zhou Dynasty, the consisting of ballads showed custom, which helped to govern for rulers.As the art served its politics, from Qin, West Han, Weijin to Tang, Song Dynasty, it civilized morale through regulating the custom.On the other hand, the rationalistic Confucian sprung up, under the guide of prugmatics, the development of business, the thriving economy and the differentiation and unite of social class. The situation that the refined and the popular tastes make up mutually make the intellectuals and painters in palace tolerate genre paintings which reflect wordly and popular materials. What' s more, they tried to dig beauty from the popular tastes in the vital genre. The genre not only enrich the painting subjects and enlarge the materials, but also adel new culture and philosophy into the popular art style with profound aesthetic state. Then they are not so-called superficial outcome of full custom culture at all.