Chinese Traditional and Modern Art

Introduction

Culture is the spiritualization that the person has within himself, all he has learned, has been taught, or transmitted from his society. Culture is human manifestation that is the outward expression of interiority. On the other hand, art is the power or ability of a person to do something, it is the manifestation of human activity that reflects something real or imagined trying to show the beauty of what a person want to represent. Art is one of the special expressions of man. Since human creation, we have witnessed the creative ability and creativity of men. Different samples around the world show that man always wants to communicate something, and for that there are many ways to do: music, dance, painting, sculpture, etc.

Today art discloses through its multiple expressions, the most characteristic forms of culture. For example, it often speaks of the great cultural mix that is observed in large cities like California, New York, Paris or Berlin (Stanley, 18). In these places we found all kinds of artistic expressions. Similarly one could say that the artistic manifestations observed in Temuco represent our own cultural creatively. Art conveys the creative ability available in a culture (there highlights the issue of whether a culture is closed or open, allowing changes or not in its forms of expression). In other words, the art reflects how a culture is able to create with the materials available, including the human body (such as seen in the dances of Bali). Thus it can be said that art has essential impact on culture. However the concept of art we have in general and art in particular is changing continuously with the time because of which its impact on culture is also changing. In this paper I am going to discuss how Chinese tradition art is different from Chinese modern art with specific focus on painting. The difference will be discussed in general and specifically by demonstrating the example of Yue Minjun's paintings.

Difference between Traditional and Modern Chinese Art

Classical Chinese painting appears around the third century BC, but it was not until the first century BC when this technique was formalized on paper. While the modern art era's beginning is from 1979-1984. For several thousand years of Chinese history, artists used bright colors for painting. In the traditional Chinese system, four colors: black, teal, white, and yellow were considered as standard colors. However, today, the red color is very popular in Chinese painting. In the ancient Chinese concept of color white represents several things. White color represents the gold, which indicates that the ancient Chinese believed that the white color symbolizes brightness representing the quality of purity, brightness and fullness (Sickman, 12). Yellow is the color of the center, symbolizing the color of the earth. Green and blue color symbolizes spring, when all full of energy and vitality. In past, these colors have been widely used in the design of the frescoes and paintings. The ancients did not pay particular attention to ...