General Introduction to Chinese Painting

Author: Ruan Rongchun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-07-01
Features: Over the ten years of exploring and advancing cultural quality education, contemporary Chinese people have gained a renewed and more comprehensive understanding of public art education: Public art education is the primary pathway for implementing aesthetic education. Specifically, public art education helps improve the aesthetic taste, humanities literacy, and comprehensive qualities of its educational subjects; it fosters their innovative awareness, innovative thinking, and innovative abilities; and it contributes to cultivating healthy personalities and promoting holistic human development. In the systematic project of cultivating high-quality innovative talents, public art education has played and will continue to play an indispensable and irreplaceable role.
Painting is a branch of art that depicts images using color and lines on a flat surface. As a concept and aesthetic form, Chinese painting, from its inception to its development and maturity, resembles an ever-flowing river—vast and magnificent. While naive and rustic primitive rock paintings still captivate us, colorful painted pottery quietly appears before our eyes. As mysterious and fierce bronze taotie designs, and fantastical lacquer paintings and silk paintings follow one after another, they inspire endless wondrous imaginations. Then, "carving moral education and aiding human cultivation" relief stones and relief bricks arrive. When the echoes of Buddhist cave temple paintings fade, silk-mounted colored figure paintings, landscape paintings, flower-and-bird paintings, and literati paintings swiftly emerge, each excelling in its own right. Throughout this long developmental process, Chinese painting embodies the artistic pursuits and spirit of the Chinese nation, becoming a magnificent historical scroll for interpreting and understanding ancient Chinese culture.