Clues And Differences Of Narratives In The Historical Development Of Chinese Oil Paintings

Originating from foreign countries,oil paintings have been introduced into China for just more than 400 years.However,it is so interesting that oil paintings account for a large proportion no matter in modern and contemporary Chinese art histories or contemporary art exhibitions of China.As a tradition for creating oil paintings,narration has had new implications and contributed to a new visual mechanism in the special period from early 20 th Century to reform and opening up of China.However,it can be always perceived that traditional narrative mode is not the mainstream of paintings any longer with the rapid transmission of information.Besides,arts do not merely serve mythologies,religions or politics any more.As a consequence,such grand literary narratives which give priority to determining themes have been replaced by personal narrative.With such more individualized narratives,artists can create their works under free environment.Thus,their pursuits for painting have changed from thematic literary narratives for paintings into conceptual arts,symbolic graphs and visual languages of paintings.Hence,the author intends to analyze and interpret the evolution of narratives in the history of Chinese oil paintings,to understand the reasons why narrative oil paintings can suddenly occupy so important position in China where people convey their feelings through paintings,and why a gap appeared in 1980 s.In contemporary oil paintings,it seems as if narratives are used over again.Then,what differences exist between narratives of modern paintings and traditional ones? Likewise,the author hopes to deeply understand dialectical relations between subjects and themes of paintings,their subjects and visual languages,in order to draw some lessons for personal artistic creations.This paper is made up of five parts.In Chapter 1,research situation on Chinese narrative oil paintings is briefly introduced.In addition,research objectives and methods are described.Illustrating concepts of narratives and narrative paintings,Chapter 2 particularly analyzes categories of narrative arts.Chapter 3 discusses Chinese narrative oil paintings of the period from the early 20 th Century to late 1980 s,including narrative oil paintings before the rise of “art revolution” and 1949,Chinese oil paintings from the art revolution in 1949 to revolutionary art in 1976 and revolt against“narratives”(i.e.paintings of 1980s).Creation backgrounds of narrative oil paintings in different historical stages of modern and contemporary China are generally introduced.Particularly,typical and representative oil paintings of different stages are analyzed.The historical backgrounds of diverse narratives in contemporary Chinese oil paintings are foreshadowed from the perspective of authors' ideologies,painting themes,grammars,discussion of revolution of narratives based on visual mechanism and establishment of relatively single-faceted aesthetic paradigms.Chapter 4 introduces specific applications of narratives in contemporary Chinese oil paintings.Some artists' artistic practices are exemplified,including authentic “realism”,conceptual paintings where narratives are used,hidden narratives,microscopic narratives and materialized narratives,in order to analyze artists' use of narratives in contemporary oil paintings as a kind of material instead of dominating artistic creations in traditional oil paintings.In Chapter 5,the differences between traditional and contemporary Chinese oil paintings in narratives are summed up,in order to point out contradictions between thematic narratives and visual languages of paintings.In other words,it is inadvisable to apply literary narratives in paintings.Above all,the focus of “narratives” differs between contemporary and traditional narrative paintings.In traditional oil paintings,narratives place extra emphasis on historical macro-narratives and politically ideological narratives,whereas priorities are given to micro-narratives of individuals' survival in contemporary oil paintings.Hence,both paintings have significant differences in ideology,content,expression forms and painting language.Nowadays,human beings face different threats for survival in an age of information explosion.Artists' awareness of problems and methods has changed as well.The functions of paintings have been “weakened” all the time,and paintings return to the original state that they can only solve artists' personal problems.For contemporary oil paintings,“narratives” are not only used for narration,but have turned into minor parts or only “representations” of narratives” can be discerned after they are not used for painting any longer.