Complete Collection of Modern Chinese Art: Farmers' Painting

Author: Farmers' Book
Editor-in-Chief: Li Xiaoshan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-03-01
Features:
Chinese Farmers' Painting Theory by Zuo Hanzhong and Li Xiaoshan
Farmers' painting is a special genre of art that emerged under specific historical and social conditions in China. In Europe, the painting phenomenon similar to Chinese farmers' painting is called naive art, while in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia, it is known as folk art. "Farmers' painting" has been a conventional term in China, and later some people referred to it as "modern folk painting." This article, starting from a macro historical perspective, still refers to it as "farmers' painting." Chinese farmers' painting originated in rural areas and has deep roots in ancient folk customs and traditional folk art. Over the decades since its birth, growth, and development, it has extended a historical trajectory marked by hardship and resilience, as well as progress and confusion. This article attempts to systematically explore the developmental context, cultural characteristics, and artistic style of Chinese farmers' painting.
1. Developmental Context of Chinese Farmers' Painting
China is an agricultural country with hundreds of millions of farmers, and rural areas occupy most of the land. For thousands of years, Chinese farmers have lived and worked on this land, gradually forming their own customs and culture. Agricultural production and daily life have served as a source of vitality, accumulating strong potential for farmers' art. Various folk crafts closely tied to practicality, expressing religious ideals and familial emotions, emerged accordingly. Broadly speaking, the history of farmers' painting can be traced back to ancient times, such as temple murals and water-land ritual paintings in religious customs, embroidery and appliqué patterns in clothing customs, colored patterns in textiles and dyeing, painted roofs, lacquered cabinets, stove paintings, and kang bed paintings in housing customs, New Year paintings, paper-cutting, colored lanterns, and kites in seasonal customs, and face paintings, shadow puppets, and playing cards in folk entertainment customs. Examining all these forms of folk art, some belong to the category of folk painting, while others have direct or indirect connections to it. From a historical perspective, due to the strong practicality and self-entertainment nature of these folk art forms, they also carried a passive color in their development. Since the 14th and 15th centuries, with the rise of urban capitalism in China, the development of woodblock printing, and the popularity of opera and novels, urban woodblock prints flourished, which also gave rise to the farmers' woodblock New Year painting industry across the country. These woodblock printing workshops were operated by farmers themselves. During the farming off-season, they would rush to print New Year paintings to meet market demand at the end of the year. Woodblock prints were rich in content and diverse in form, including door gods, illustrations, theatrical scenes, New Year calendars, and divine horses, as well as categories like lantern paintings, ceiling decorations, window designs, table paintings, grain rain notes, and stove paintings. They also expanded the content to include flowers and birds, rural scenes, folk stories, and satirical paintings. In terms of artistic expression, they absorbed techniques from rural temple murals, fire rituals, lacquered cabinets, paper-cutting, and stele carvings, differing from urban woodblock prints in their fine lines, light colors, and rich rural artistic temperament. Compared to authentic family, clan, and village self-sufficient folk art, these works exhibited a clear commercial awareness and a much larger market. Therefore, rural woodblock New Year paintings possessed strong vitality. Despite the winds and rains of the times over the past century, they have continued to survive with vigorous energy. Overall, the "New Year Painting Movement" that emerged in the early 1940s in Yan'an and other liberated areas, as well as the three peaks of the "New Farmers' Painting" movement after the founding of the country, all had close ties to traditional rural woodblock New Year paintings. During the revolutionary war years, soldiers who joined the army would depict their own or their comrades' battle lives in their spare time, with many works published in frontline newspapers or army wall newspapers, and many revolutionary artifacts still exist today. The emergence of farmers' painting in its true sense came after the founding of the new China in the 1950s.