The Development Of Imaginal Watercolor Painting Language In The Contemporary China

“Concretization”, “image”, “abstraction” are three important expressions of the art of painting. “Image”,which has something in common with other painting arts,has always been an usual expression in the creation of watercolor painting.As a foreigner, “western watercolor painting” carried originally with it the concepts of the art of western painting when it was introduced into China. But every Chinese artist cannot get rid of the mutual influence that the Chinese traditional culture and aesthetic spirit have exercised on us. Literati spirits, such as “according The external form and internal spirit” 、 “composing between resemblance and inresemblance” 、 “ expressing the inherent charm with appearance”, has been long rooted in the Chinese culture. As a result, under thousands years’ osmosis of traditional Chinese aesthetics thinking, imagic expression has an innate affinity to Chinese watercolor painters;and during the creation of watercolor painting, the concept of image painting can subconsciously spring up in the mind, then in the eye, and finally in the paper. Besides, during more than hundred years of the localizing practice in the course of which watercolor painting was introduced into China, “imagic watercolor ” or “freehand brushwork in traditional Chinese painting watercolor”has always been a lingering national complex that passed downed generation to generation among watercolor painters. By blending Chinese painting aesthetic spirit in watercolor painting,great masters like Lin Fengmian, Cheng Ji, and master and Zhao-min Wang has achieved high,and has created watercolor works with Oriental impression.After more than one hundred years of exploration, integration 、 transformation and innovation that Chinese painters have put into practice, the contemporary Chinese watercolor painting has present a diversity of artistic characteristics,which,at the same time,are sinicized and nationalized,and many excellent works known to world were therefore produced.The twelfth session of the national art exhibition that was just concluded was a prediction that contemporary Chinese watercolor painting creation has got to a new stage.When analyzing watercolor works exhibited on successive national art exhibitions and national water pastel painting works exhibitions of all sessions and combing this type of artwork’s new course of development in China, it is not hard to find that “image watercolor” always occupies a large proportion in many outstanding works. Many artists always have a predilection for image language.It is to note that as the conscious transformation of contemporary Chinese watercolor painting to contemporaneity, creating language of image watercolor painting has been largely developed and enriched. “Image watercolor’s” single impression that stayed previously in people’s mind with it’s casual style and that it was similar to the Chinese freehand brush work is long gone.In some contemporary image watercolor painter’s works, language of producing artworks also got further deep refinement and comprehensive utilization.With the title of “the expansion of contemporary Chinese watercolor painting language”, this paper is going to elaborate this proposition by four parts:the first chapter is aimed at doing up the concept and the characteristics “image” and “image watercolor”;the second chapter is meant to analyze the meaning and approaches of the creating language’s development in image watercolor painting;the third chapter mainly talks about how Chinese image watercolor painting’s development and creating language evolve,and trys to analyze several masterpieces sprung up during the evolution of image watercolor painting.The fourth chapter exploresthe unlimited possibilities of the development of image watercolor painting’s creating language by going deep into the award-winning magnum opuses of image watercolor painting on the national fine arts exhibitions in recent years, so as to guide my own practice of watercolor painting creation.