On The Artistic Features Of Yangliuqing "Dream Of Red Mansions" New Year

As one of the top four New Year paintings in China, paintings from Yangliuqing Town of Tianjin win great popularity among the public. The New Year paintings are featured with fine drawing techniques, pretty figures, bright colors, rich content, diversified forms and peaceful atmosphere. As the essence of Chinese classical novels and being the representative work of Chinese ancient literati, Dream of the Red Chamber is always the theme of Yangliuqing New Year paintings. Created by the folk artists, the Yangliuqing New Year paintings themed on Dream of the Red Chamber demonstrate flavor of the folk and embody different aesthetic taste from that in literati’s paintings. Through studying forms of artistic presentation of the paintings and taking them as the entry point, the paper is aimed to seek out folk artisans’understanding level and accepting modes for literary culture and art, and the expressing rules of paintings after being accepted by folk artisans, so as to delve into the complex linkages between folk fine arts and literary fine arts and the feasibility of promoting and developing contemporary folk fine arts.The author collected first-hand information on Yangliuqing New Year paintings through field study during the two visitations in Yangliuqing Town. Documentary research, content analysis, induction and comparison are employed in paper writing to collect and retrospect the existing relative theories. Such aspects of the paintings on Dream of the Red Chamber are analyzed as composition of pictures, sculpts of figures and constitution of colors to explore distinctive artistic features of these paintings, which makes folk artistic works popular after works of literary artists partly revised by folk artisans of New Year paintings. Compared with New Year paintings originated from other places, Yangliuqing New Year paintings are characterized with delicate and graceful artistic style. The comparison between paintings of Dream of the Red Chamber by literati and that of Yangliuqing New Year paintings reflects that the latter is influenced by literary fine arts and enjoys folk aesthetic tendency as well.Being part of the intangible cultural heritage, the Yangliuqing New Year paintings are not developing well currently because the New Year paintings of Dream of the Red Chamber in the market are created in the Qing Dynasty. New Year paintings demand urgent protection and development. Given the grand development situation in the history, the Yangliuqing New Year paintings themed on Dream of the Red Chamber, a bright pearl of folk fine arts, are worthy of learning for modern folk fine arts. To create fresh folk fine arts adapting to modern life and human spirit, folk fine arts should integrate with arts at various levels and types so as to turn folk fine arts into a living art with space for heritage and development...