A Preliminary Study Of Aboriginal Painting In Australia

Australian aboriginal art is used for sacraments and ceremonies. It is the spiritral carrier of totem worship. Its history can be traced back to at least fifty thousand years ago, is one of the longest history of art in the world. Australian aboriginal painting both preserved deep traditional value, but also has distinctive modern consciousness. Primitives created a variety of strange and brilliant scenes by interweaving myth with reality and imagination with realism, which were extremely appealing. From the perspective of a painting practitioner, this article attempts to makes a analysis on the content, composition of painting, modeling, line utilization and space, allowing us to have deep understanding of traditional arts and to experience aesthetic values of totem paintings, arousing reflections on character creation in present Chinese paintings, and trying to play a positive role in character creation in present Chinese paintings. This paper includes the following three chapters:In the first chapter, an analysis is made on relevant reasonsfor generation and popularity of Australian aboriginal art from perspectives of sociology, philosophy and archaeology. Australian aborigines use totem paintings to illuminate their genetic connection with the land of Australia. Fairy tales, ancestors and miracles in the "Dreaming" Time are main contents of these paintings. Totem paintings are made to carry on from generation to generation by the tradition of "civil artists"In the second chapter, analyzing the five aspects include content&subject, composition of painting, modeling, line characteristics and space performance, finding out that the Australian aboriginal art do have rich connotation, clever composiyion of a picture, the formal mondelling, the rhythm of the lines and unique space.In the third chapter, analyzing the aesthetic characteristics of Australian aboriginal art, get the result that it do have decorative, music and romantic aesthetic meaning, profoundly experiencing aesthetic values of totem paintings, and arousing reflections on artistic creation nowadays.