Western paintings. Idioms, proverbs, witty remarks

Author: Lu Zhongmin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-04-01
Features: The use of folk sayings, proverbs, and witty remarks in the theme of Western-style paintings is so abundant that it allows us to feel the love of the Chinese urban class in the first half of the 20th century for them. Broadly speaking, proverbs, sayings, slang, set phrases, famous sayings, and idioms all belong to folk sayings. They are the result of long-term accumulation and creation by ordinary people, forming a fixed language that is popular, widely used, and straightforward. Folk sayings are numerous, concise, profound yet vivid, and often rhyme, making them easy to remember. They employ various rhetorical structures that are popular and enjoyable, such as allusion, analogy, and antithesis, directly reflecting people's life experiences and desires. From the Western-style paintings that depict folk sayings, we can see the emotions and helplessness of people in that era. Witty remarks, through various relationships between people and animals, people and objects, and people themselves, as well as local customs and linguistic differences, combine with the warmth of the paintings to create dislocated associations, leading to laughter and deep reflection. Such language is often created by individuals, with a humorous and personalized touch. It belongs to the category of humor that selects folk dialects and customs as the source of jokes. Western-style paintings also commonly feature idioms and maxims. For example, a large print produced by Huacheng Company mostly selected images that served as guiding maxims for human behavior. Every one of them tells of a summary of life experience. No wonder people often quote a proverb appropriately when encountering any problem.