A Study Of The Visual Value Of Taoist “Talisman” Images And Innovative Practices

Taoist talisman image is an important part of Taoist system. It is the unique and special cultural symbol and artistic image that gradually formed by Taoist adherents after they learned the essences of Confucianism, Mohism and doctoring thoughts, and widely adopted many elements of Chinese traditional culture. It is said that”there would be no Taoism without its talisman”. The forming and completing of Taoist talisman massively reflected thousands of years of Taoist wisdom. Talisman has very strong visual value and possibility of re-study, because of its unique formation and abundant contents.Through the way of reading documents and sorting out different kinds, this article traces back to the talisman history of originating, changing, forming, and inheriting, and then divides Taoist talisman into different categories, and further sort out the characters, materials, functions and colors of talisman images. At the same time, this article also explains and analyzes the primitive belief influences carried by talisman image.Then it analyzes the visual value of Taoist talisman image in details, and states the relations of talisman and other Taoist image systems and the relations of Taoist talisman’s image and Chinese character calligraphy. Thus, it revalues the visual research value of Taoist talisman images from the perspective of symbol and image study. In the specific statement of this article, the author analyzed some relative national and international cases to find out the advantages and disadvantages in the visual performances. Bring this kind of researches and experiences into the innovative designing, and according to the basic concepts and aims of Taoist talisman image, reassemble, rebuild and reforge a visual images which can be appreciated by general people and contains explicit information.The innovation of this thesis is to make the original symbols and images have wider applications and flexible changes without loosing its inner meaning through the way of visual reassembling upon traditional Taoist talisman images. Further more, the reassembled Taoist talisman image could be used in the tourism development and culture promotion for the domestic and overseas cultural relics, thus accelerates the combination of Taoism culture industry and innovative designing.