A Research On Deference Of Formal Language Of Tujia People’s Funeral Painting Between From Qing Dynasty And From The Republic Of China

Tujia people’s Funeral painting is also called God’s Painting, which is made by fete host and acted as fete decoration. It shows the unique custom and culture of Tujia people in the memorial ceremony. For Tujia people who have no writing system, the Funeral Painting is not only the image information for studying the funeral culture of Tujia people, but also an important part of Tujia people’s folk art. As the form of burial in the ground gradually gone, the funeral activities in Tujia people’s area are also less and less. Now most of the existing works of Tujia Funeral Paintings are from Qing dynasty and the period of the Republic of China. When we study these existing works, it’s not hard to find out there are obvious variances between the two form language of the works from the two different period, and that’s because Tujia people live in a adjacent area of Hubei, Chongqing and Guizhou. Due to the geographical position, the ethnic culture of Tujia people shows the uniqueness of its own but also the diversity affected by the geographical culture. Especially during the period of bureaucratization of native officers in Qing dynasty, Tujia people’s Funeral Painting was obviously influenced as the Tujia ethnic came back to it own origin, after years of the assimilation with Central Plain Culture. This paper will list the works of Funeral Painting which are collected by Xiang Jun, Zhang Changfu and Qin Chunyuan as examples to sketch out the basic state of the Tujia Funeral Paintings which are from Qing dynasty and the period of the Republic of China. On the basis of the studies and field visits on relevant works, I will use ways such as comparative studies, common sense inference, schematism and so on to do the following researches, including the difference of skills and materials, the difference of brushwork and skin texture and the difference of contents and the composition of pictures. Through researching, I will conclude each of their features of form language, and distinguish their differences in order to provide the theoretical basis of identifying Qing dynasty’s Funeral works and the works made in the Republic of China, and also provide the theoretical basis for researching the evolution of the Tujia people’s funeral custom and the development of Tujia people’s culture from Qin dynasty to the period of the Republic of China. In the same time, I will analyze, from the aspect of Funeral Painting, about the state of development of Tujia folk art from the Qing dynasty to the period of the Republic of China and infer the impacts which the other ethnic people’s funeral custom on Tujia people during that time. At last, from the aspect of protecting the traditional culture of Tujia people and helping develop and inherit Tujia people’s intangible culture, the status and functions of the Tujia Funeral Painting will be also researched and discussed. Besides, I will give some suggestions about how to develop and inherit this kind of folk art.