An Analysis Of The Artistic Style Of Yu Zhizhen's Meticulous Flower And Bird Painting

Yu Zhizhen(1915-1995)occupied a decisive position in both modern painting and art education.Li Keran praised her as"the female champion of contemporary meticulous flower-and-bird painting"and Yu FeiYan rated her as"Huang Quan of modern ages ".Her excellent techniques benefit from the traditions of the Song Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty.She not only absorbed all of the advantages from Yu FeiYan,Zhang Daqian and others,but also incorporated the unique beauty of women.As a result,her works formed a dignified,elegant,beautiful artistic style,and she inherited and developed the meticulous flower-and-bird painting and played a historical role in connecting the past and the future.Meanwhile,Yu Zhizhen,as an art educator,working with the older generation artists jointly established a trinitarian of flower-and-bird painting teaching mode,a harmonious combination of copying,sketching and creating,and cultivated a large number of excellent painters and teachers for our country.However,the research about Yu Zhizhen herself and her painting is relatively scarce,nowdays,and its artistic value has not been deeply excavated and systematically summarized.Therefore,this thesis is following the main line of the artistic style of Yu Zhizhen's meticulous flower-and-bird painting,on the basis of the existing research status,trying to make further research from four chapters:The first chapter enlightens a brief review of Yu Zhizhen's learning process of painting,in order to make clear the foundation of his artistic style formation,from aspects,incluing the childhood painting,learning with Yu Feiyan,studying the traditions in Antiquities Exhibition Center,and learning from Zhang Daqian in Dafeng Hall.The second chapter refines Yu Zhizhen's related painting ideas for meticulous flower-and-bird painting from the points of views including sketching modeling idea,composition principle,pen thought,color setting method,creative spirit,as well as excavating the inherent embodiment of Yu Zhizhen's artistic style.The third chapter explores the main forms of Yu Zhizhen's meticulous flower-and-bird painting from the aspects of meticulous drawing,ancient painting copying,flower twig folding,panoramic composition,fruit and vegetable theme,etc.,and reveals the external embodiment of its artistic style and sums up the rich artistic value of its painting.The fourth chapter summarizes the artistic influence of Yu Zhizhen's meticulous flower-and-bird painting,and probes into its outstanding contribution to the inheritance and development of flower-and-bird painting in China as a painter and an educator of fine arts.Yu Zhizhen,not only had rich humanities accumplishment,but also had left an enormous amount of painting works with great artistic value and teaching experience during her decades of painting life.It will help us to re-recognize her personality and painting,to in-depth and systematic study the artistic style of Yu Zhizhen's flower-and-bird painting and explore the artistic style of the exquisite and elegant artistic style,which will not only provide some valuable information for the relevant research of the current academic circle,but also bring the corresponding enlightenment to the creation of the contemporary meticulous flower-and-bird painting.