Research On Xu's Realistic Painting Ideas During Sino-Japanese War

As the core of Xu Beihong's thoughts on painting, the realistic painting ideas are what he had recommended during all his life. Xu Beihong's realistic painting ideas have a great influence on the painting domain in the 20th century. Therefore, it is of significance to explore his concept of realism during Sino-Japanese war.The present study can be divided into the following parts. First, the factors that facilitate the occurrence of Xu's realism ideas were analyzed. Second, the content of Xu's realism ideas was introduced. Third, the reason that Xu's realism ideas get strengthened and deepened during the Sino-Japanese war was discussed. Fourth, how the ideas of realism were reflected in his paintings was described. Fifth, the influence of Xu's realism ideas on the painting circles during the Sino-Japanese was probed. Sixth, an evaluation was made on Xu's realism ideas. Moreover, the third and fourth parts were the focus of the present study.Any revolution and development in the art domain was caused by a certain social and historical factors. The dominance status of realism during Sino-Japanese war was resulted from the following reasons:the breakout of this war, Xu's ideas that artists should learn new ideas to rescue China, and the great attention that the Communist Party of China had paid to the art culture construction. During this period, Xu's painting ideas had been developed more deeply and were consolidated, which could be seen from his works.Based on the literature analysis, we have found that the Sino-Japanese has provided with new content for Xu's paintings, which facilitated his painting subjects moving towards the masses. He put the nation's hope on the laboring people, rather than on the dominator of that time. His choosing of realism ideas was not determined by his personal emotion, but was significantly related with his adolescence experience, the traditional education from his father, his learning from Kang Youwei, and his overseas studies. During the late Qing dynasty, the Chinese paints circle stick to old conventions and became lifeless, which urged Xu to realize the necessity of introduce realism ideas. He chose realism ideas to induce people to observe nature and society with a scientific attitude and to modify the Chinese art.Xu's achievement in the field of Chinese painting is a perfect reflection of his distinctive artistic ideas and thoughts. From his paintings, it can be found that his ideas on paintings had been transferred from "absorbing Western art elements with limitations" to "absorption as much as possible". This had made his pictures full of noble spirit consistent with nature, while at the same time his pictures are filled with the beauty of harmony that is embedded into the heart of the Chinese. From his paintings created during Sino-Japanese war, we can also notice that the elements such as the line, color, perspective and the light all reached perfection level. Xu had used the line and ink technology that is common in the Chinese paintings to display the classical realistic style in the Europe paintings, which had enrich the expressive forces of the Chinese painting lines and colors. Xu displayed the structure of objects and objects' relationship with the backgrounds by varying the weight, the speed, the denseness, and the moistness of the lines. The objects in his paintings were arranged properly and corresponding to each other, through which a strong sense of volume of space can be reached. The feeling of quality, quantity and rhythm exhibited in his paintings is far better than those in European classical realism paintings. Xu opposed the complete following of antecessors and proposed that artists should learn from the nature directly. He introduced the realistic painting skills used by the western classical painting circle to the Chinese paintings, and abandoned the idea that paintings should be total faithful to the objects. It can be said that painting a Chinese brush drawing with sketch skills is an original creation of Xu.Certainly, Xu's painting thoughts can't be accepted totally without any consideration. His ideas on painting have their own limitations. However, it is also the same truth that we can't turn down his ideas totally. All the artists have their own preferences and styles. Without preference, there would be no art, not to mention the influence of history and environment. The art domain in the 21st century has shown blind and utilitarian attitudes towards the western art. It is of great theoretical importance to reinterpret Xu's painting ideas and to rediscover his attitudes to the Chinese traditional art and to the western realistic art, especially the thoughts he held during the Sino-Japanese war. Xu's ideas on realism has laid a foundation for the Chinese realism paintings.