Research On Color Application Concepts And Methods In Chinese And Western Painting Art

There are two main clues in the color development in traditional Chinese painting:"red and green" and "ink painting". The colors in Chinese paintings were abundant before Tang and Song Dynasties, which was intensively reflected in wall paintings, paintings on silk, lacquer paintings, blue and green landscape paintings as well as heavy-color figure paintings. Among them, blue and green landscape paintings played a leading role in Tang and Song Dynasties. Ink landscape paintings (light crimson decoration paintings of fancy light) became the mainstream paintings after Tang and Song Dynasties."Painting of man-of-letters" was started by Wang Wei in Tang Dynasty, and developed and grew stronger in Song and Yuan Dynasties. The colors applied in the paintings were not heavy-color anymore; instead,"ink painting became the paramount among landscape paintings"①, and the paintings were mainly reflected by ink. In terms of emotion, the paintings emphasized on expression of subjective consciousness; in terms of artistic expression, the painters often represented the artistic images on the paintings through artistic imagination as well as processing and remolding on the basis of observing the nature, thus showing the beauty of the natural life owned by artistic images on the plane painting effects. They were featured by the artistic characteristics of imagination, planarity and ornamentality in respect of expression form. The color application concept of western paintings underwent proper color concept of classicism paintings, the principle of light source color and ambient color of impressionism, and was evolved and developed by impressionism and Matisse et al. with subjective consciousness which expressed inner world; as a result, its form characteristics moved from "representation" to "expression" and "concretization" to "abstract". In a sense of speaking, western realistic paintings emphasized on the representation of objective objects; their basic color application method was to create artistic images which complied with human visual truth and was provided with three-dimensional spatial sense on a two-dimensional painting by applying realistic expression method through observation and analysis on various color relationships among objective objects. They were featured by the artistic characteristics of precision, individualization, three-dimensional and naturalization in respect of expression form. In the19th century, realistic paintings were impacted and affected after the invention of camera technique. The painters’artistic practice also headed from "representation" to "expression", which intends to express the painters’inner world from representing the natural form of objective objects. The colors were mostly used for expressing the painters’emotions and subjective wishes, so the color application was bold, personalized and flamboyant.Based on the different color concepts in Chinese and western paintings, this paper profoundly analyzes and researches the color application features and expression laws in the two paintings respectively, which is conducive to the deepening of our knowledge on the two paintings’different aesthetic concepts and our understanding on their artistic forms. This is worthy of referencing and innovating in artistic practice. Chapter I is Origin and Progress of Colors in Chinese and Western Paintings. Chinese and western paintings are significantly different from each other since they have their respective origins and systems. Chapter I discusses the respective progress of colors of Chinese and western paintings based on the different color concepts in China and western world, i.e., philosophical color concept in Chinese paintings and scientific color concept in western paintings. Chapter II is Color Application Concepts in Chinese and Western Paintings. Since the color concepts of Chinese and western paintings are different, the color application concepts of the two painting system are opposite. The author concludes and summaries the respective color application concepts of Chinese and western paintings through analysis and demonstration. Chapter Ⅲ is Different Color Observation and Analysis Methods in Chinese and Western Paintings. This chapter carries out comparative analysis on the typical painters and their works in line with the respective color application concepts and characteristics of the two. Chapter IV is Blending of Color Application Concepts and Methods in Chinese and Western Paintings. This chapter analyzes and researches the methods and approaches of the blending of Chinese and western paintings. In line with the author’s major, this chapter analyzes and discusses how should the color language of contemporary Chinese oil painting reference and absorb the different color application concepts of Chinese and western paintings, thus forming Chinese oil painting art with national characteristics.