Tiny Area With Immense Potential

Shandong, Beijing, Hebei, Guangdong are the four main branches of interiorpainting in China. Especially the snuff bottles have different shapes, exquisite outlooksand fine art form. The snuff bottle’s shape can be round, flat, square, long, prismatic,ladder shaped or oval. The material differs also, jade, glass or crystal are all material usedin the production of snuff bottles. The interior painting is by hook shaped brush, from themouth of the bottle then paint the inside of the bottle, even with tiny area it has greatpotential, the difficulty of the art, and the fabulous finished piece is just amazing.During the Qing Dynasty, Wang Zi from Xie Mao Village and a merchant WangFenggao from Bo Shan carried the technique of interior painting to Shandong Zibo whereglass snuff bottles are mainly produced. In1890, painter Bi Rongjiu started the interiorpainting of snuff bottles by using high quality glass bottles. And solved the problem ofdifficulty of interior painting by roughen the surface of the interior glass, this techniqueand the revolution of interior painting brush was considered as an important innovationof Chinese interior painting. At that time, painters such as Sun Tanpu, Xue Xiangdu werededicated to interior painting skills and the hard work paid off, they became the foundersof Shandong interior painted snuff bottles and famous interior painters in history. Afteryears, Shandong interior painted snuff bottles became a symbol of the area, its unique artform were also complimented as “whole world in the pocket, universe in the bottle”.Influenced by the Shandong culture, the interior paintings mainly are about myth,historical stories and traditional stories. Especially about “All Men Are Brothers”,“Hundreds Horses”,“Hundreds Beasts”,thestyleis ruggedandlively,but thestylediffersfrom place to place, the paintings are not too colorful or sophisticated, it combines thedaily lives with humorous pictures, this style gives great visual impact. From the firstinterior painted snuff bottle was made, up to now, snuffs have extincted, the bottles areseen as very precious art, and with more and more types of snuff bottles are made, it isgetting more and more popular overseas.Shandong interior paintings came from Beijing interior painting, but just better, afterhundred years of improvement, it formed its own style, and by generations of hard worknow Shandong interior painting has been mature. The different inheritor have differentspecialties, and it trained great artists like Zhang Guangqing, Li Kechang, Wen Xiangjun,Sun Jijie, Zhang Guangzhong, Wang Jiquan, Wu Jianzhu, Chen Dongshun, WangXiaochen. Shandong interior painting is described as great, rugged and amazing, and occupied an important place in Chinese interior painting.From1990s, great changes occurred in society, economics and culture, urbanization,globalization, foreign culture, economics, and all other cultural changes gave a greatimpact on Shandong interior painting. Now Shandong interior painting is under greatthreat which from devastating of essence, modern handling, new techniques, loss ofinheritor, violation of intellectual property, limited forms of expression, and so on.Based on the above problems, this dissertation talks about protection and inheritance,by field research and logical analysis, the passage researched and summarized thetechniques of the Shandong interior painting. The passage mainly introduced the history,inheritance system, representing work and technique procedure of Shandong interiorpainting. Also analyzed the special art value and characteristics, observed the facing presentsituation and existing problems from the perspective of Immaterial Cultural Inheritance, then findthe corresponding protection method.This passage is one research achievement of national social science fund project ofart subject (11CG125) and humanities and social science project of Shandong university(J11WJ05). Passage starts with introducing the background of Shandong interior painting,stated the relationship between snuffs, snuff bottles, interior painted snuff bottles andShandong interior painted snuff bottles, and introduced the four Chinese interior paintingbranches. The first special feature of this passage is orderly introduced the history ofShandong interior painting, detailed record of the painting procedure of the interiorpainting, filled the gap of missing visual documentary of interior paintings. The secondspecial feature is summarized the particular art features of Shandong interior paintingfrom others, and discussed which mainly from the painting shape, painting style, drawingskill and the writing of Inner painting.The third special feature, using society, economicsand culture as basic clue, systematic analyzed the importance of Shandong interiorpainting to social studies. At last, from the perspective of protection of ImmaterialCultural Inheritance, summarized and analyzed the statistics from the field research,gathered the current problems and issues, suggested relative solutions based on currentexisting protection reforms and results. Hope can protect Shandong interior painting asan Immaterial Cultural Inheritance.