The Study On The Visual Symbol’s Characteristics In Contemporary Art

Chinese Contemporary Art started since the mid-1980s and faced to the audience with a special taste which is quite different with the traditional art form. Compared with Chinese art creation lasting from the Cultural Revolutionary, this kind of Contemporary Art got various expression ways and deep idea content. Meanwhile, how to read and understand the contemporary art works becomes a topic in the fine art field.Visual symbol is a academic concept which is commonly used in visual communication design discipline, it is a name for the visual element appeared in visual communication designs and does a great effect on expressing the concept and creative idea of the designs.The paper chooses four Chinese contemporary artists during the appearance and development of the Chinese Contemporary Art since1980s, who are Wang Guangyi, Fang Lijun, Cai Guoqiang, Liu Ye. It has made a case study on the creation process and the representative works, and tries to find the visual symbols that existed in the contemporary art through their works. The paper also starts from the concept and characteristics of the visual symbol, discovers the reason that visual symbol appears in the contemporary art works, looks for the active meaning that visual symbol does for expressing the creative idea of the works, and reads and analyzes the contemporary art works through the point of visual symbol.