A Comparison Between Chinese Traditional Freehand Figures And German Expressionist Paintings

Since the western painting was introduced into China, the comparative study of Chinese and western painting has become an important issue of Chinese modern art theory, practice and aesthetics. Obviously, Chinese and western paintings are two different kinds of painting style as they have their own independent art and aesthetic values. Both of them have a complete value system in philosophy foundation, aesthetic thinking, artistic conception and expressional form.The traditional Chinese compose figure painting is always in the state of "like and dislike" and focus attention on poem interest, leisure mood and the pursuit of body spirit. But at the beginning of the last century, a new kind of painting style appears in western countries which changed from thousand-year-old "similarity" tradition into express inner feelings. German expressionism traditional painting is similar to Chinese compose figure painting as it is in favor of perceptibility and vividness. Therefore, a kind of art convergence formed across space and time:the painting of Kokoschka can easily remind painting of Huang Shen, who is one of the "Yangzhou eight weird"; there are ideas from Kandinsky’s On the Spirit of Art in Shi Tao’s Hua Yu Lu.With the rapid development of the globalization process in the21th century, the debate on art style between global integration and nationality and individualization, and the discussion on the similarity and controversy are thought-provoking. Traditional compose figure painting and German expressionism painting have similarities in "spirituality", but in China the worship of ancient painting, especially in painting identity’s line art style, make it with characters of historical standardability and continuity in the artistic thinking and ideas. But western Expressionism painting is a kind of exotic art with colour and light as the main pursuit. Whit the collision of this and the native art, the traditional compose figure painting can absorb nutrition and reference from German Expressionism. As an old saying goes,"By other’s faults, wise men correct their own". Once closed structure breakthrough, this may honor modern compose figure painting.