Culture of China (early XX - early XXI centuries). Experimental Chinese painting Calligraphy and painting

Chinese art, distinguished by a great variety and richness of its forms, occupies a completely independent and significant place among the artistic creativity of other peoples. In various periods of its existence, from ancient times to the present day, the art of China has had a profound influence on the artistic culture of other countries. So, in the art of Japan, Iran, Korea, Mongolia, one can observe the influence of Chinese art.

Thanks to the excavations carried out in recent decades in northern China, it became possible to get acquainted with the most ancient civilization, which existed in the Yellow River valley about four thousand years ago. These excavations provided the most valuable information about the ancient culture and art of China.

Of particular interest are found items of finely worked clay dating back to 3000 BC. The vessels, simple in shape, are usually painted with red, black and white paints on a light gray surface. Drawings in the form of complex spirals or circles, covering the surface of vases or the outer sides of bowls, reveal a wealth of techniques that clearly testify to the high artistic culture of their creators.

The most characteristic type of Chinese art of 2000-1000 BC is bronze products, the production of which began in ancient times.

The largest number of bronze vessels found in excavations near the Hai River dates back to the Zhou Dynasty (1122-256 BC), when the Chinese state began to take shape. The sacrificial vessels of this era are distinguished by their simplicity of form. They are decorated with relief images of stylized animals and symbolic ornaments.

Speaking about the monuments of early China, one cannot but recall the grandiose architectural structure of antiquity - the Great Wall of China, the construction of which began in the 3rd century BC, during the Qin dynasty (256-206 BC). Built along the northern border to protect the sedentary population from the raids of nomads, this wall has been partially preserved to our time.

In the next era - the Han dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD) - China's borders expanded greatly. Economic and cultural ties with other countries (India, Iran) are growing.

In the Chinese historical chronicles, interesting information about the art of this era has been preserved. So, historians talk about magnificent palaces decorated with wall paintings, an idea of ​​which is given by the stone bas-reliefs of the Han era that have survived to our time, which served to decorate noble burials and, undoubtedly, had a connection with the painting of that time. A striking example is a part of the bas-relief from the Wu Lan tombstone in Shandong province, dated 147-149 AD.

In some of the monuments of art that have come down to us of this era, the artist's direct observation of the surrounding nature is already visible. Frequently found images of animals, executed in stone or metal, are usually conveyed in strong and energetic movement.

Chronicles report the invention in the Han era of paper and brushes, which serve the Chinese for both painting and writing. This circumstance contributed to the even greater development of calligraphy and painting. Before the advent of the brush, written signs - hieroglyphs - were scratched with a sharp curved knife on a bone or stone. Various jewelry and toiletries made of bronze and jade stone that have survived to our time are executed with great taste and skill. At the same time, ceramic products with a thin shard, covered with glaze, appeared for the first time.

Popular uprisings and brutal wars that engulfed the entire country at the end of the 2nd century, led to the fall of the Han dynasty in 220. China is divided into several independent states, of which the Wei Dynasty (386-557), formed in the north of China, plays the largest role.

The most significant event of this era is the strengthening and spread of Buddhism, a religious teaching that penetrated into China from India in the 1st century AD. Buddhism subordinates art to its tasks, in particular sculpture, which was widely used to decorate Buddhist temples and monasteries.

In the first centuries of its spread, Buddhism experienced great persecution and persecution from other religions in China, and therefore most of the Buddhist monuments of this era have not survived. Only in the Y century, after the official recognition of Buddhism, Buddhist temples and monasteries reappeared in China, decorated with religious sculptures. In the Y-YI centuries, there are grandiose cave temples: Yong-Kang in the Shanxi province and Lun-Ming in the Henan province. In the caves of Yun-Kan, walls have survived to this day, completely covered with Buddhist sculptural images.

Particularly famous is the grandiose figure of Buddha, carved from soft sandstone, reaching thirty meters in height. Buddhist depictions from this era often reflect influences from Indian and Hellenistic art.

In the era of the Tang dynasty (618-907), the unification of the country took place again. China's borders extend to India and the shores of the Caspian Sea. Cities that trade within the country and abroad are gaining importance. The art of this era reaches a great flourishing.

During this era, the main traditions of Chinese painting were established, which were adopted by subsequent generations of artists and have survived in the art of China to the present day.

Along with calligraphy, that is, the art of writing, painting has always been considered the most important art form in China.

In Chinese painting, a special place is occupied by paintings painted with one ink (monochrome). Chinese painting does not know chiaroscuro, the main role in the picture is played by the line, which not only outlines the contour, but also reveals the shape of the object.

The creativity of Chinese artists is diverse: they beautifully convey folk legends and tales with a deep narrative power; fabulous images of Chinese mythology; landscapes full of lyricism and deep knowledge of the surrounding world; events of history saturated with the pathos of heroism, etc.

Two of the greatest painters of the Tang era - Li Si-hsun and Wang Wei - devoted their work to the depiction of the landscape, which since that time has acquired an independent meaning. The portrayal of the Chinese landscape is distinguished by its special originality. To convey space in a painting, the artist does not use the linear perspective characteristic of European painting, but by dividing the composition into a number of separate plans, visible from different points of view, and skillfully combining them into a single whole, he achieves a visual impression of depth and distance.

In addition to painting, sculpture of the Tang era is of great artistic interest. Images of Buddhist deities in this era lose their previous severity and abstraction, the interpretation of images becomes more vital. Along with the temple sculpture, small plastic is especially developed: figurines made of baked clay, depicting people and animals.

In contrast to the purely conventional temple sculpture, the funerary figures are distinguished by a realistic interpretation. With special expressiveness, the masters perform the figures of beautiful, powerful horses that were brought to the country from Central Asia.

The earliest architectural monuments in the form of high multi-tiered towers, the so-called pagodas, have survived from the Tang era.

At the beginning of the 10th century, the weakened Tang dynasty was overthrown, and the country again disintegrated into a number of separate states. In 960, a new dynasty, the Song (960-1278), was founded, during which, despite continuous wars with nomads and uprisings in the country, there was an upsurge in the field of culture and art.

During the reign of the Song dynasty, painting, living in the old traditions of the Tang period, gained importance. Not only painting techniques, but also old classical subjects are used by artists. At this time, the Academy of Painting was founded.

In the Song era, ink painting received a great development, where the expressive line of the contour plays a special role. The main theme of painting of this time was the landscape. The image of high mountains and a calm river flowing among the intricately indented banks is characteristic of the landscapes of the 11th-12th centuries.

In the 15th-13th centuries, the country experienced a well-known rise in its cultural and economic strength. Numerous works of art are created for trade with foreigners, as well as for decorating the homes of the wealthy Chinese nobility. In painting, there is again a fascination with purely decorative forms. Using the traditions of the Song era, many artists of the 17th and 17th centuries devote their work to depicting flowers and birds.

In the Ming era (1368-1644), porcelain products also gained importance, for the production of which state and private workshops were created in various parts of the country.

The highest development of Chinese porcelain, both from the technical and artistic side, dates back to the 15th-17th centuries.

In addition to porcelain, products made from Chinese red carved lacquer were especially famous.

In 1644, the Ming dynasty ceased to exist under the onslaught of a popular uprising. The frightened feudal nobility calls for help from the Manchus, who suppress the uprising, seize China and found the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644-1911).

In the works of numerous artists of the 17th-18th centuries, imitation of the old masters is noticed. As before, decorative painting, depicting flowers and birds, plays an important role. Among the artists of this genre, Yun Shou-ping, who worked at the end of the 17th century and used the style of the so-called "non-contour painting", is especially famous. This style of painting allowed to create the shape of a flower with light, transparent strokes that convey the subtlest color nuances.

Throughout the 19th century, the invasion of foreign capital into China has been steadily increasing, which leads the country to economic enslavement.

The destruction of small-scale domestic industries and the brutal exploitation of the working masses again provoked large popular uprisings against the "Western devils" (as the Chinese called the Europeans at that time). One of them is known as the Taiping Rebellion (1850 - 1864), the other, which broke out in 1900, is the Boxer Rebellion. Both uprisings were brutally suppressed by the Europeans, after which China for many years turned into a semi-colony of European capital.

Only after the fall of the Manchu dynasty and the revolution of 1911, there was a significant rise in the field of culture and art.

In the painting of the 20th century, a number of new trends can be noted: on the one hand, this is the desire for the creative processing of the rich artistic heritage of the past, and on the other, the study of European painting methods.

At the present time, when a wave of patriotism and hatred of the Japanese aggressor has swept the entire Chinese people, the national liberation movement has found its response in art.

Young contemporary artists, overcoming a number of difficulties and discarding the traditions of the past, create new forms of art for China - anti-Japanese posters and caricatures, which are a weapon in the struggle against the Japanese invaders. In the work of a number of artists - Tao Mou-chi, Ainai, Lu Shao-fei and others - one can note the desire to display the image of a new person, a courageous fighter for the homeland. With special love, the artists depict the soldiers of the People's Revolutionary Army fighting in the north of China.

Confidence in the ultimate victory sounds the slogan: "We will win!", Written on the anti-Japanese poster of the artist Ainai, depicting a young soldier of the 8th People's Revolutionary Army.

With even greater expressiveness, the artist Jiang Tao conveys in his drawing images of partisans who are located in a mountain gorge and watch the enemy. The figures of the peasants who rose to the defense of the country are depicted by him with great vitality and truthfulness.

This new young art of China, developing under the conditions of the heroic struggle of the Chinese people, saturated with the ideas of the struggle to strengthen the united national anti-Japanese front and devoid of the old convention, is especially understandable to the broad masses of the people.

For China, ink painting is the basis of the foundations, a symbol of Chinese traditional values ​​and national identity.

Therefore, the movement of Experimental Chinese painting in ink, which was born in the early 1990s, which should be considered as a continuation of the era of modern Chinese painting that began in the 1970s (in the sense of modern, not contemporary), certainly follows this tradition, but at the same time the same time shakes the core of the traditional values ​​of Chinese ink painting. Changes in the political and economic system of China at the end of the 20th century could not but lead to changes in the cultural environment.

Becoming more and more free and critical thinkers, a new generation of Chinese artists created a new language of Chinese painting. Experimenting with styles of painting, and painting of the Western tradition, they made the convergence of two civilizations - Western and Eastern - a reality that was impossible to imagine a few decades ago. Freedom of self-expression, new thinking, opening your mind to new trends, the courage to take a step beyond traditional foundations - all this was a powerful catalyst for the new movement of Experimental Chinese ink painting.

Red Gate Gallery in Beijing is the first private gallery in China

The first exhibition of the new movement was held in Beijing's RED GATE GALLERY and, like everything new, was dramatic. On the opening day of the exhibition, a bomb was reported (an extremely unusual phenomenon in China) and the opening had to be postponed. After the triumphant start of the Experimental Chinese Ink Painting movement artists' exhibition, it was closed two weeks later by the authorities. But the process was already irreversible, and an increasing number of young Chinese artists began to create new art, nevertheless, continuing to remain an integral part of traditional Chinese painting gohua.

Let's take a quick look at some of the most prominent exponents of the experimental Chinese ink painting movement:

Born in 1942 in Suning Hebei Province, participant in numerous exhibitions around the world, lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts, awarded the title of Master Artist by the Ministry of Culture of China. One of the most innovative artists in contemporary China.

Bai Hai- Born in 1940. Bai is a graduate of Shenyang Normal University and is currently a member of the Shenyang Artists Association and the Chinese Calligraphers Association. When his solo exhibition was held in Paris in 1996, he was awarded a certificate of honor from the French government. Bai Hai has participated in over 40 large-scale exhibitions and fairs.

Taking Shi Tao's advice that every artist should create and use their own unique painting method, he founded his own style of Ice and Snow Landscapes. We can say that Bai Hai is the founder of the snow-covered Chinese painting.

Wang Chuan- was born in 1953 in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Graduated from the Chinese Painting Department of the Fine Arts Institute in Sichuan City, received a bachelor's degree. Now he lives and works in Beijing. He is one of the most famous contemporary artists in China.

He started painting during the Cultural Revolution. Participant of numerous exhibitions. Practicing Buddhism.

Zhang Guanghai- was born in 1947. Zhang Guanghai teaches Chinese painting at a university in Sichuan.

Unlike Chinese artists who paint in a traditional manner, Zhang Guanghai prefers modern techniques, uses ink and watercolor in his works. The artwork by Zhang Guanghai has a unique play of color that conveys the mood of the painting. His work has been well received and well received in Chengdu, Beijing and Taiwan.

According to critics, he is a contemporary artist with a traditional heart.

Gao Xingjian 高行健- was born in 1940. in the town of Hangzhou not far from Shanghai.

In 1962 he graduated from the French department of the Institute of Foreign Languages ​​in Beijing. During the Cultural Revolution, he burned all his manuscripts.

In 1989 he became a political refugee and immigrated to France. In 1998 Gao Xinjian obtained French citizenship. Received three literary prizes in France and Belgium.

Gao Xingjian is not only a gifted prose writer, playwright and critic, but he is also an excellent calligrapher and a wonderful artist who draws in the style of "go-hua". His works have been exhibited at exhibitions in Paris, New York, Singapore, Germany.

In 2000, Gao Xinjian was the first Chinese writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Li (Li) Tingting- Born in Pingyao, Shanxi in 1982, now lives and works in Beijing. Despite his youth, Li Tingting uses one of the oldest forms of Chinese painting to portray 21st century life. Painting on rice paper with water-based ink is a challenging task for which there are ancient and well-established rules. But after all, Shi Tao said: "Brush and ink must follow the times." Lee took on the advice of the old master. Instead of traditional Chinese subjects, such as stone, bamboo, waterfall, etc., she considers very unusual objects and subjects for creativity, mainly on female themes: interior items, shoes, shoes, dresses, handbags, bears, etc. Objects related to modern life and mass production. There are also a series of works in which bottles, fruits and even seeds appear.

Cascading spills down the surface of the paper are deceptively spontaneous. In reality, the process of working with traditional paints and the techniques of working with wet and dry brushes is very laborious.

There are many interesting things about ink painting that I should experiment with. It's more than a hobby

Zhang Guiming- Born in 1939 in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, China.

Graduated from the Chinese Painting Department of the Zhejiang Academy of Arts in 1964. Subsequently, he joined the Shanghai Chinese Institute of Painting, where he now serves as Deputy Director. Participant of numerous exhibitions. Experiments a lot with styles and materials. Prefers bright and rich colors.

Y. Vinogradova

The new art of China was formed in extremely breast conditions associated with the entire complexity of the country's historical paths of development. Only in the 20th century. in China there was a final crisis and the collapse of feudalism. Backward in its development for many centuries, inert and impoverished country at this time was a picture of the wildest and most terrible contrasts, the most ugly offspring of an era that had long outlived its time. The feudal system fell into decay in China already in the 17th and 18th centuries, which affected all areas of life. Economic backwardness, ever greater isolation from the world have turned China into a country that exists, as it were, by virtue of the inertia of past achievements accumulated over the centuries. Isolation from other states completely deprived China of the opportunity to make any use of the discoveries made by the rest of humanity. While most large states took the path of capitalist development, feudal order was restored and preserved in China, which the ruling Manchu Qing dynasty used to suppress the people. The dominant ideology continued to be extremely conservative Confucianism with its archaic system of rituals and canons, which supported nationalism. The strictest adherence to traditions was cultivated, down to the smallest detail, penetrating into all areas of life, culture and politics.

In the 60s and 70s. 19th century after the "Opium Wars", which ended in unequal treaties with foreign powers, as well as after the Tainin uprising - a grandiose peasant movement, brutally suppressed, but shook the very foundations of feudalism, the growth of national self-awareness increased. At the same time, pressure from outside the capitalist world has also increased. The country has become a semi-colony. All the growing foreign influence in the economy and the extremely inert feudal system within China itself led to a deep anti-eternity in all aspects of the life of the state.

In the field of culture, these contradictions have reached an almost complete rupture of creativity with reality. The tenacity and artificial conservation of feudal traditions and canons, the struggle between the old and the still unformed new worldviews characterize the art of China up to the beginning of the 20th century. While all over the world artistic life was in a continuous process of formation, in China a century in the evolution of art did not bring any significant changes. Great skill, developed over the centuries, determined for a long time a rather high professional level of the fine arts. However, the imagination of the artists was so constrained by the chains of the medieval worldview that it could not in any way update the usual forms and figurative structure of painting, monotonous in its endless repetition.

The usual genres of landscape, flowers and birds continued to occupy the official leading position in painting. But for the most part, they already expressed the most conservative sentiments, since the ideals of the past were lost, and in the difficult situation of the country's life, the artists were required to more actively engage in the surrounding reality, to pose new, urgent creative questions. Those genres that have long been formed in the general system of world art - psychological portrait, everyday life and historical painting - have hardly been developed in China. The so-called genre "zhenu hua" - "painting of people" - formally aspiring to the role of everyday painting, in fact, in the 19th century. was very far from life, reproducing in a salon-archaizing manner scenes of palace life or plots of medieval novels. The ability to portray a living character, the modern appearance of a person, and body plastic was completely absent. The sculpture, which degenerated in the 19th century, existed almost only as a handicraft depiction of temple figures of Buddhist saints, crudely painted and made according to old standard models. Only graphics developed more intensively - the most active and popular form of art associated with pressing issues of life. However, in the late 19th - early 20th century. it has just begun to acquire its own specific character.

Applied arts and handicrafts were also in a certain decline. The penetration of foreign capital and the import of foreign goods into China increasingly ruined handicraftsmen and small artisans. The tastes of foreign customers also had a detrimental effect on the manufacture of porcelain and other applied products, where coarse exoticism, harsh pretentious forms and colors penetrated.

The general decline of culture could not but affect the development of architecture. Medieval Chinese architecture of the palace and temple type with its light one-story wooden buildings, picturesquely located among the parks, despite its rationality and beauty, could no longer meet the new social needs. In connection with the transformation of China into a semi-colony from the second half of the 19th century. In large cities, not only individual buildings of the European type appeared, but also huge blocks of territory, which in their architectural principles did not have anything similar to the traditions of Chinese architecture. Cities such as Shanghai, Nanjing, Tianjin, Guangzhou (Canton), etc., in fact, for more than a hundred years were cities for foreigners and represented a monstrous combination of the medieval poverty of an eastern city with the eclectic, human-oppressive spirit of the buildings of huge capitalist firms. banks and offices built by different states without the slightest regard for the layout and style of national ensembles. Simultaneously with the cosmopolitan architecture, however, religious and palace buildings of a traditional plan continued to be erected, many of which, with an ever-growing pretentiousness, exoticism and fragmentation of colors and decor, showed the degeneration of the medieval style. Empress Tsi Xi instead of the railways and navies necessary for the country at the end of the 19th century. rebuilt the Yiheyuan Park with numerous intricate pavilions and a grandiose gazebo in the form of a stone ship, eclectically combining elements of Chinese and European architecture. Both existing in architecture from the middle of the 19th century. until the middle of the 20th century. directions alien to each other were very unproductive for the development of Chinese architecture.

At the same time, life made new demands on art. In a tormented, impoverished and plundered country by foreign powers, popular indignation was gradually ripening, breaking through in endless uprisings. The whole atmosphere of life was tense and permeated with the spirit of the struggle for independence. A colossal role in awakening the people's consciousness was played by the 1905 revolution in Russia, which marked the beginning of a new stage in the history of China. “World capitalism and the Russian movement of 1905 finally awakened Asia. Hundreds of millions of the downtrodden, run wild in medieval stagnation, the population woke up to a new life and to the struggle for the elementary human rights, for democracy "( V. I. Lenin, Complete Works, vol. 23, p. 146.), - wrote V.I.Lenin about this period in the history of China. The need for revolutionary transformations was so ripe in China that it was already impossible not to feel it in everything. Therefore, despite the incredible complexity of the phenomena occurring in the field of culture, the period of the second half of the 19th - early 20th century. was not only a time of decline and decay of feudal art, which is living out its time. At this time, the creativity of a number of outstanding painters, writers and engravers, born of historical necessity, emerged and developed, who became the exponents of new social ideals. In the late 19th - early 20th century. advanced figures like Lu Xin and Qu Ch'u-bo were still an exception against the general bleak background. However, it was they, each in his own way, who showed in this crisis pre-revolutionary period the possible ways of development of art and literature of a new type. During these years, interest in progressive Russian and Western literature increased, the works of A.P. Chekhov, A.M. Gorky, L.N. Tolstoy were translated into Chinese.

The upsurge of the revolutionary movement, which began in China under the influence of the first Russian revolution, differed from the old Chinese uprisings and uprisings in the conscious solidarity of the democratic forces. In 1911, a revolution began in China, overthrowing the Manchu dynasty and establishing a republic in 1912. By its nature, it was a bourgeois-democratic revolution. It ended only with the overthrow of medieval monarchism, without in essence shaking either the country's feudal foundations or imperialist rule. The peasant movement, like the workers' actions, has not yet received its development. Nevertheless, the revolution of 1911 - 1912. was of great historical importance for the country, strengthening the revolutionary activity and national consciousness of the Chinese people. The destruction of the Manchu domination opened up wider opportunities for Chinese society to become familiar with world culture, to overcome isolation and isolation from world problems.

The old feudal aristocracy lost its hegemony and its exclusive role as a legislator in the field of art, and the national bourgeoisie gradually began to come to the fore. This was accompanied by complex and contradictory phenomena in art. The old Chinese methods of education in art schools through the continuous assimilation of medieval pictorial schemes and canons or copying famous works of the past were partially replaced by teaching new European methods. A number of young artists were sent abroad to study. In 1912, in Shanghai, this most cosmopolitan city in China, a school of painting of the Western European type was opened, where the entire education system was aimed at separating artists from the traditions of medieval art and mastering modernist Western trends. At the same time, another direction developed, one of which was the Gotsui school, which cultivated the most traditional features in painting and was not interested in topical issues of our time. Both of these trends in art, despite their apparent opposition and hostility to each other, in essence, were almost equally far from the progressive tasks of their time, connected one with the feudal worldview and nationalist tendencies, the other with foreign capitalist influence.

At this time, to define the traditional manner of Chinese painting, the term "gohua" (literally translated as "national painting") began to be used, meaning a peculiar way of painting with ink and mineral paints. The term "gohua" meant not only the sum of certain techniques, but also the entire traditional method of perception and reproduction of reality - in a word, the entire arsenal that painters have used for millennia. The very appearance of the name "guohua" testified to the split that took place in the previously unified system of Chinese painting.

The first and still very timid democratic tendencies in the art of China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. were outlined in painting "guohua" in the genre of "flowers and birds" and partly in the landscape. This happened because for many centuries it was nature that served Chinese poets, thinkers and painters, in fact, the only means of expressing the most significant feelings and aesthetic ideals, and artists were far from immediately able to abandon the usual forms of imaginative thinking, from the most accessible and close artistic solutions.

Such innovation had a very limited character, since it did not touch on any pressing issues of our time. However, these first timid searches were significant because painters were looking for ways to get closer to life. The first painters of the genre of flowers and birds, who managed to some extent to go beyond the vicious circle in which the art of the late 19th - early 20th centuries was located, were Zhen Bo-nyan (1840 - 1895), Wu Chang-shek (1844 - 1927) and Chen Shi-tseng (1876 - 1924). The conquest of these artists was that, breaking away from the learned formulas, they, as it were, rediscovered the beauty of the natural world. And although the range of their subjects was not new and they did not touch upon important problems of their time, their painting with its humanity and beauty played a significant role. Wu Chang-shi's paintings, depicting either bunches of ripe fruits or a blossoming delicate flower, are painted with a wide, strong brush with such skill and love for all living things that, despite their deep tradition, they make a more active, cheerful impression compared to medieval scrolls. None of these painters could, however, resolutely take the path of innovation. They did not always maintain integrity in the implementation of their artistic ideas, sometimes creating epigone paintings in the spirit of the fashion of their time.

Qi Bai-shek (1860 - 1957) and Xu Bei-hun (1895 - 1953), who, in their own way, managed to absorb the wisdom of many generations , abandon false tradition and look at the world through the eyes of a different era. Both of these painters, as if throwing a bridge from one era to another, were contemporaries of two different generations and two different periods of Chinese history. These painters had a chance to experience all the many shocks, hopes and tragedies that fell to the lot of the Chinese people in a relatively short period of history: the enslavement of the country in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, numerous repressions, devastations and suppression of the revolutionary movement in the dark years of reaction after 1927. ., when the government of Chiang Kai-shek brutally dealt with the advanced intelligentsia, and every free thought, every living word was persecuted, as well as the Japanese intervention of 1937-1945. During these decades, when the mood of hopelessness and depression dominated many representatives of the Chinese intelligentsia, the works of Qi Bai-shek and Xu Bei-hong, which asserted faith in life, faith in man, alien to pessimism, played a significant role for the advanced strata of Chinese society. Despite the fact that Qi Bai-shek devoted his whole life to the depiction of landscapes, flowers and birds, the tools of peasant labor or the fruits of the earth, and his creative method underwent quite a few changes during his almost 100-year life, he was a kind of discoverer who managed to rediscover to show humanity the beauty and bright joy of life through the world of seemingly everyday and unremarkable objects. Qi Bai-shek took an honorable place in contemporary art and as an excellent painter and the breadth and democracy of his ideals. Unlike the creativity of his predecessors, his works were no longer intended for the elite, but were addressed to a wide range of people. It took the power of the artist's individual talent to transform and re-comprehend the established schemes for centuries, using the truly valuable that was achieved in the Chinese culture of the past, to make his national art a common property of all mankind.

The son of a peasant, who lived a long life in the village, who knew the joys and sorrows of peasant labor, Qi Bai-shek was decisively different from the aesthetic Epigones of his time. He was able to tell about the poetic charm of life, which manifests itself both in the grapevine heated by the sun, and in the fragrant freshness of a newly blossoming field flower, and in fussy tadpoles, and in simple village pitchforks, put by the owner to the wall, and in every particle of nature, on which the penetrating gaze of a working man who has cognized the true value of earthly existence falls. Each small image served him as an occasion for large and important generalizations. Qi Bai-shek's painting is deeply human, despite the fact that there are almost no images of a person in it, and all of it is devoted to nature. This was the strength and weakness of the art of Qi Bai-shek, who managed, within the limits of only one genre, to go beyond the boundaries of a narrow national worldview. However, even within this one genre, he found new solutions, always avoiding monotony. The painter's method is original and unique. Often continuously depicting the same object, be it a bursting fruit of a ripe pomegranate on a branch or a butterfly that has scorched its wings on the fire of a rough village lamp, he finds a new image for each object, spiritualizes it in a new way, as if showing the same thing. seen through the eyes of different people. The simplicity and power of expressiveness of his images are such that the viewer often feels himself almost a creator, initiated into the secret of creating a work, since the artist, with his fluent, as if random sketches, evokes thoughts and images stored in the memory of a person.

However, it is in this apparent simplicity that great complexity lies, partly associated with the associative thinking that has existed in Chinese painting since time immemorial. Qi Bai-shek always highlights the hidden meaning of the phenomenon, showing, for example, not so much the fruit itself, but its glossy juiciness, emphasizing it with the even more rough softness of the leaves, not so much the flower itself, but the transparent freshness of its petals, not so much a rough country jug, braided straw, how much the caring caress of peasant hands> put a bright bouquet of flowers in it. In each, even a small scene, the painter put his memories of village life and the fruits of the earth, raised by a man with patient love. The deep poetic meaning he put into each phenomenon seemed to expand the framework of the world he showed, forcing the co-author-viewer to supplement the laconic scene with his imagination. Such an attitude to nature and the method of presenting visible reality existed long before Qi Bai-shek, however, the associations evoked by his paintings are simpler and more directly connected with specific human sensations than in medieval art. The decorative inscriptions accompanying many of Qi Bai-shek's works are full of humor and concern for people.

The works of Qi Bai-shek always captivate with the sharpness and virtuosity of their decisions. He found that elusive line that separates the world of art, the world of poetic dreams from the dry prose of life. The viewer understands perfectly well that the blurry "blots" of black ink on a white sheet of paper is far from a literal image of a pond overgrown with lotuses, but when looking at a picture of Qi Bai-shek, an image of a quiet, sleepy water space overgrown with wide soft leaves appears in his mind. Sometimes, only with nuances of black ink, it conveys the bright freshness of a blossoming flower. The decorative possibilities of the "guohua" style, where a white sheet of paper always plays a special, active role, is used by Qi Bai-shek every time with amazing novelty and courage. Discarding all unnecessary, he writes on a snow-white sheet with transparent silver ink of a catfish, the elastic movement of which makes it clear that he goes deep into the water column. And the viewer believes in this space of water, although in front of him there is only a sheet of paper and a few strokes of ink. This infinity of the master's fantasy, as it were, makes the viewer look at the world with new eyes. Qi Bai-shek owns a surprisingly subtle statement about the observance in painting of a constant distance between external plausibility and genuine internal truth. “In painting, the secret of mastery is on the verge of similarity and dissimilarity. Excessive resemblance is vulgar, dissimilarity is deception. " With these words, he seemed to define his understanding of artistic truth in art.

However, the paths paved by Qi Bai-shek's painting did not completely solve the problem of integrating Chinese art into the mainstream of modern life. It was necessary to embody new social themes and vital problems not through hints and associations, but through the direct inclusion of a person in the sphere of art. Qi Bai-shek, as it were, touched one of the strings, touched on one problem - the assertion of a person's personality through the natural world. Other contemporary painters "gohua" did not always know how to cope with this task so organically. Qi Bai-shek's contemporary Huang Bin-hun (1864 - 1955) in his landscapes was undoubtedly more archaic than Qi Bai-shek, since his searches concerned only changes in some formal pictorial traditions, and not the content of creativity.

However, many artists of the next generation, such as Pan Tien Shou (1897 - 1965) and Wang Ge. and (b. 1898), successfully continued the search for Qi Bai-shek in the creation of new images of the natural world. Both talented painters in their own way strove to master new ways of solving old themes. Painted with a strong and luscious brush, blue-black powerful pines in Pan Tien-show's paintings, combined with a matte-white background of a paper scroll, the great simplicity and laconicism of his images give his landscapes a special clarity and freshness. However, the range of searches of these painters for their time was too limited.

The largest figures of Chinese culture Lu Xin and Qu Qiu-bo, together with other advanced people of China, strove to take the culture of their country out of the limited sphere in which it had been for several centuries to a wider path, to put an end to its national isolation and to introduce artists, writers and all the people with the best achievements of world and especially Soviet art. Among the painters, the young artist Xu Bei-hong ardently took up the solution of these same problems. Unlike his predecessors, he influenced not only the development of any one genre, but also the fate of Chinese art in general. Xu Bei-hong was one of the foremost figures in China who fought to introduce into the national culture all the best that was created in world art. A convinced follower of the realistic direction, Xu Bei-hong, having lived for eight years in Paris, where he was sent to study, was never fond of fashionable modernist trends, but with eager attention he studied the art of ancient Greece and the classical heritage of the masters of world art. The plastic beauty of the human body, the psychologism in the portrait became the subject of his careful artistic research. Returning to his homeland in 1927, Xu Bei-hong devoted many years to teaching at universities and art schools. He was one of the first to introduce young Chinese painters to the techniques and methods of oil painting and taught them to paint directly from nature. Xu Bei-hung spent a lot of energy to turn the art of China from the path of dead copying of the examples of the past to the path of studying real reality, living, topical issues of arts. At the same time, the artist understood the need to preserve something truly valuable that was achieved by the Chinese culture of the past. His innovative quest consistently followed the line of using the experience of world realistic art to renew the painting "guohua", which he himself studied to perfection. However, Xu Bei-hong's paintings are significant not only because he enriched the familiar images and themes with the introduction of chiaroscuro, linear perspective and volumetric sculpting of the face. His work opened up new possibilities for bringing Chinese painting to life. Xu Bei-hong himself worked in various genres both as a landscape painter and as a master of large historical compositions. He also owns numerous portraits of workers, peasants, cultural figures in China and other countries. An appeal to a person, that important thing that determined the character of his contemporary, most of all occupied the artist. Xu Bei-hong strove to combine in his portraits the beauty and expressiveness of a linear stroke inherent in "guohua" with the depth and significance of images of realistic portraits. However, his attempt to create this connection was faced with such contradictions, coming from the figurative system of medieval canons, that in his portraits he gradually began to increasingly use the methods of European portraiture.

Xu Bei-hong's portraits are always full of love and respect for people in whom the artist tried to convey human dignity and an active inner life. In the portrait of Rabindranath Tagore (1942; Beijing, Xu Bei-hong Museum), already a mature work of the master, Xu Bei-hong showed the deep creative concentration of the poet immersed in meditation. The combination of the volumetric sculpting of the face and hands with the dashed linear interpretation of clothing and the use of colored ink give this work, written in light but bright colors, a certain degree of decorativeness characteristic of "gohua". However, the meaning of this picture was that it affirmed a new aesthetic value of man, his activity, his mind. Together with other portraits of Xu Bei-hong, she seemed to open up new paths for other Chinese painters.

In the work of Xu Bei-hong, as in the painting of Chinese artists of the past, the image of nature also occupied an important place. However, in this genre, while retaining a sense of stately beauty, he strove to break at the same time with the medieval world outlook, his contemplative passivity. In a number of paintings, he successfully combined different principles of showing space, perspectives, trying to achieve new emotional solutions. The life-affirming and heroic pathos of his landscapes, painted, in contrast to the samples of the Middle Ages, already directly from nature, gives them a different character compared to the past. The paintings "Spring Rain on the Lijiang River" (1937) and "In the Emeishan Mountains" (1940s) are indicative in this sense, in which the combination of the traditional and new principles of showing nature is noticeably felt. The usual shape of the scroll further emphasizes the novelty of the solution to the painting "Spring Rain on the Lijiang River", painted in a completely different emotional key than before. High bizarre mountains, shrouded in mist moisture, it would seem, are closely associated with tradition, but they serve as a background to a European-style river landscape. The blur of monochrome ink conveyed not only the silvery fog and distant mountains, but also the volumetric forms of visible objects and their reflection in the water muddy from the rain - a technique that had not previously been used.

Not all of Xu Bei-hong's landscapes are created equal. The novelty of his searches and, at the same time, the fear of destroying finally the imaginative structure that made up the specifics of landscape painting in China, sometimes led him to compromise artistic solutions.

Abroad in the 30s. Xu Bei-hong became known mainly as an animal painter, an attentive and deep observer of the animal world. This area attracted the artist as well as many other Chinese painters. However, in this traditional genre, he was able to find new ways to express feelings close to contemporary people. Depicting a herd of wild, frantically rushing horses or a flock of noisy birds on a spring tree, he tried to convey to the viewer his active and cheerful feeling.

And here all the same searches for the plastic grace of movements that are inherent in all his genres are noticeable.

A sincere friend of the Soviet Union, Xu Bei-hong promoted the ideas and methods of Soviet art among artists. Xu Bei-hong's personality was especially attractive for her strong and passionate thirst for new things. He provided constant assistance to young talented artists who, in the 30s, unrecognized and persecuted, fought for a new word in art.

The works of Qi Bai-shek and Xu Bei-hong opened up new possibilities for bringing Chinese painting to life. Each of them followed the path of innovation in their own way. Xu Bei-hong, although less integral than Qi Bai-shek, was more versatile in fulfilling the tasks set by life.

The third major realist painter who began his career in the 1920s was Xu Bei-hun's student, Jiang Chhao-he. Far from being the usual creative individuality of this master, first of all, it manifested itself in his choice of the genre of painting. Jiang Zhao-he turned to the depiction of a person - the most difficult and most relevant object of art. Ardent love for people, deep emotion and sublime strength of feelings, simplicity and bold novelty of his artistic style put his figure in the category of phenomena exceptional for China. During the years of the most difficult reaction, he strove in his paintings to show the image of his contemporary, to affirm the beauty and value of the human person. He was, as it were, a denouncer of his time, revealing its deep ulcers and tragedies. The heroes of this master's work are ordinary people, his compatriots, with whose feelings and thoughts the artist connected the solution of large universal human issues. It is characteristic that, very early in writing in the traditional manner, Jiang Chhao-he soon abandoned imitation of the past and began to look for new means of expression on his own. Born in 1901 into a poor family from Sichuan province, the artist was sixteen years old and had to go to work in Shanghai. The life of people in a huge and eerie indifference of a cosmopolitan city appeared before him in all its naked and rough poverty. In 1927, Chiang Chhao-he exhibited his first revealing painting "A Family of Rickshaws" in Shanghai, where, against the backdrop of huge European buildings, he depicted a poor man's family, having no roof over their heads, in the open air. This painting attracted the attention of Xu Bei-hong, who felt the significance of the young master's talent. Since then, the creative biography of Jiang Chhao-he begins, consistently revealing the social dramas of the Epoch in his works. Beggar boys, exhausted, wandering through the city, with faces full of despair; a mother distraught with grief, bending over the corpse of a girl killed in a bombing on the street; a delivery boy carrying heavy jugs of hot tea under the scorching rays of the sun - these are not just sketches of the observer. In these small scenes, the artist revealed such a deep truth of life, such a variety of complex human feelings that none of the Chinese artists had been able to express before. Chiang Chhao-he, departing in many respects from the figurative structure of the old art, tried at the same time to use the graphic sharpness and simplicity of traditional techniques, developing his own completely new artistic style, which allowed him to finally go beyond the boundaries of medieval aesthetics.

The most significant painting by Jiang Chhao-he was a grandiose scroll (about thirty meters in length), painted horizontally during the Japanese intervention in 1943. Called "Refugees", this painting, by the strength of the emotions expressed in it, is not only the best that has been made by the master himself so far - it is a work of historical significance. Merciless truthfulness and concentrated power of feeling, high universal human meaning put her in a number of significant works of modern progressive art in the world. The grandiose, previously unseen in Chinese art, the scale of the work seems to be taken in accordance with the size of the disaster itself. The hero of the picture is a suffering people, whose feelings, as it were, sharpened with special fullness.

The huge horizontal scroll is divided into a number of separate dramatic scenes, but it is so united in mood and so well thought out compositionally that it is perceived as a symphony of human feelings. Its boundaries do not seem to exist; it is unclear where the tragic procession begins and where it ends. Expelled by the war, an endless string of people wander, supporting each other, and die right there on the road, having no refuge, deprived of everything. Terrible in their simplicity and truthfulness, the tragic fates of different people are revealed to the viewer - the death of children, the horrors of the bombing, the impotence of the elderly. However, misfortunes do not deprive them of their human appearance - tragedy, as it were, reveals in people spiritual nobility, greatness and selflessness. People help each other, share the last crumbs of food.

In this work, the features of innovation inherent in all the work of the master stand out especially clearly. Unlike the past, the spiritual world of people is revealed through themselves, through their faces, through their interaction. The psychology of Jiang Chhao-he's images has reached an unprecedented strength for China. Using the traditional techniques of a sharp graphic line and monochrome ink painting, which make it possible to discard all unnecessary and focus the viewer's attention on the most important thing, Jiang Chhao-he achieves a kind of purification of images from everything petty and accidental. At the same time, the master organically combined old techniques with the use of light and shade sculpting of the face, volumetric interpretation of bodies and a new, more free arrangement of figures in space. The picture had such a deep political meaning and made such a stunning impression on the audience that after one day it was filmed by the Japanese authorities.

Jiang Zhao-he was a kind of unique figure in the painting of China in the 30s - 40s. Remaining a national artist, he showed, even more convincingly than Xu Bei-hong, the wealth of new solutions and ways of development of painting, the possibility of its inclusion in the common and exciting problems of world art for all people. The artist managed, more sharply than all his compatriots, to convey in art the ideas of protest against war, against violence against a person and his feelings.

Thus, the painting of China in the years following the 1911 revolution and the October Socialist Revolution in Russia, which caused a huge rise in democratic forces in China, as well as in the subsequent years of the national liberation war against Japan and the third civil war of 1945-1949. enriched with many achievements. However, in general, the previous long years of stagnation to a certain extent slowed down the general course of the formation of new Chinese painting. The years of war and incessant shocks experienced by a weak and devastated country also did not contribute to the intensive development of easel and monumental painting. It responded much faster to chart events. Engraving, or rather xylography, which, like painting, had very old traditions in Chinese art, received new opportunities for its development as early as the middle of the 19th century. along with the growth of democratic ideas in the country. During the years of the Tainin uprising and the national liberation wars, this cheap and massive form of art was already used for propaganda purposes. Aegis engravings, still very conventional, were closely associated with the traditional appearance of old woodcuts and had a detailed descriptive character of handicraft prints. A new engraving appeared in China in the 1920s. along with the growth of revolutionary forces under the influence of the ideas of the Great October Socialist Revolution. By this time, the appearance of revolutionary cartoons, the first political posters, illustrated newspapers that were distributed in military units. These still artistically very immature works were, however, in those years of great importance for the transfer of the experience of the revolutionary struggle to the people, since, in fact, in those years it was the only art form that addressed directly to the people and was available to them. The first to realize that engraving can be the greatest means of enlightening and rallying the masses was Lu Xin, who saw in it a way to bring art out of the dead end in which it was. Lu Xin took over in the late 20s - early 30s. the role of the leader and educator of young artists. On his initiative, the skill of engraving artists was revived and put on a wide road, whom he introduced to Russian art, Soviet graphics and the achievements of revolutionary engraving in other countries. In fact, for the first time, the Chinese, cut off from the world and closed in their isolation, saw in foreign artists their fellow artists, living with the same ideas, thoughts and feelings as they do. Lu Xin at his own expense published in China albums of reproductions and collections of Soviet prints containing the works of N. II. Ppskarev, A. D. Goncharov, A. I. Kravchenko, V. A. Favorsky and others, organized several exhibitions and wrote a number of articles urging young artists to learn from the Soviet Union, to adopt the experience of its deeply truthful art. The young engravers were so active, their activities were so inextricably intertwined with the revolutionary struggle, and their enthusiasm for Soviet art reached such large proportions that the reactionary Kuomintang authorities arrested people for belonging to the engraving society. Nevertheless, despite severe persecution in the early 1930s, many organizations arose in different cities, such as the League of Left Artists in Shanghai, the Modern Engraving Society in Guangzhou, and others. moved from time to time; some of them died out, others arose in new places in connection with constant persecution. The attractive force of the movement of engravers was so great, the need for new, contemporary art became so acute that many painters abandoned their activities and took up the chisel.

20s - 30s of our century were years when the art of painting and graphics in China, more than ever, sharply diverged in its directions and ways of development. If in painting most of the artists were still in captivity of medieval traditions, the engravers of China in the early 30s already began to grope for ways through the jungle of new and hitherto unfamiliar images and feelings and the arsenal of the past that was unsuitable for its fighting, active spirit. Young artists, who connected the legacy of feudal art with everything obsolete and reactionary in the life of China, turned to the progressive artistic experience of other countries. In those years, many masters considered all themes, except the revolutionary one, unworthy of being depicted. Different manners and styles, the lack of a single direction characterize the Chinese engraving of this period of apprenticeship. Often the pathos of the revolution in the engravings of young artists was conveyed by a gross simplification of forms, increased expression. At times, the formalistic methods seemed to young artists the most in keeping with the harsh pathos of revolutionary and liberation battles. Sometimes in the engraving of this time pessimistic moods, the image of horror and despair sounded.

The main changes in the Chinese schedule are outlined in the late 30s - 40s. - the time of the war with the Japanese intervention and the patriotic rallying of the entire people. Many artists at this time had already begun to move away from imitation. Art centers arose in the liberated regions, the main of which was Yan'an, where in April 1938 the Lu Xin Academy of Arts was established in the loess caves. The students of this Academy not only studied, but also worked together with the peasants in the liberated regions, fought a partisan war in the occupied regions. The themes of engravings began to reflect the life of the people more widely. Such masters as Li Hua, Ma Da, Huang Yan, Li Qun, Gu Yuan, Yan Han and others were formed during this period. Their works of the late 30s. were, as it were, chronicles of those years, sharply and succinctly depicting the life of China. At this time, the engraving spread widely throughout the country, closely approaching the poster, calling on people to fight for the liberation of their homeland. The works of Soviet masters exerted a huge influence on Chinese masters at this time, which helped the artists to take the path of a realistic depiction of reality. At the same time, artists are gradually beginning to turn to their national heritage. Even Lu Xin drew the attention of engravers to the fact that the broad masses of the people do not understand the engraving, completely devoid of national specifics, those familiar figurative forms that the people continued to live and think with.

New searches for expressive means became especially noticeable in the 40s. Cycles of laconic and harsh engravings from the life of a suffering and struggling people were created by the young engraver Gu Yuan (b. 1919). The engravings "Die of Hunger", "Selling Daughter into Slavery" from the series "Past and Present of a Chinese Peasant" (1942) combine the sharpness and laconicism of the traditional manner with a fundamentally new expressiveness of feelings. Three dry trees, scorched sand of a desolate and gloomy area and the silhouette of an exhausted woman bending over an emaciated child, a crow circling above them convey in a small engraving with extraordinary simplicity and power the tragedy of innocent people. His engravings “Maybe it’s still calm at home” (1949), “Drought” (1944), where heightened feelings and images of people are conveyed succinctly and conceived on small sheets of paper, mostly in solid ink, are also expressive. Li Hua's engravings of this period are extremely expressive, sometimes too harsh, as if a desperate young master was striving in such works as "Pursuit of Light" (1944), "Recruitment for Soldiers" (1947), "Plowing" (1947), etc. ., to convey the cry of mental anguish for their people, tormented by troubles. In the late 40s. created many engravings dedicated to the historical events of the liberation of the country. One of the best in this cycle was Gu Yuan's engraving "Living Bridge", depicting sparingly and without false pathos the heroic feat of the soldiers who held on their shoulders in the icy water a bridge made of logs, across which the soldiers of the People's Army crossed. In this engraving, built on the contrasting ratio of expressive black silhouettes of running people and a red background illuminated by flashes of sky and steel ice water, the master managed to convey the dynamics of the battle and the tension of a moment full of deep drama.

Many artists, including Li Qun and Gu Yuan, turned at the same time to the traditions of decorative folk lubok, which had long been loved by peasants. This new popular print, ingeniously and brightly, proceeding from the decorative and figurative methods established by the tradition, told the peasants of the liberated regions about all the events in the country, replacing the newspaper to the illiterate population and attracting wide attention with its elegance and amusement.

We can say that the period of the 40s. in the development of Chinese engraving was one of the most fruitful, as he expressed in a concentrated form all the most acute and lofty feelings of the suffering and struggling people. The works of this time breathed deep sincerity and excitement of feelings, hopes for the future, bitterness of defeat and the joys of victories achieved. Engraving of the 30s and 40s. in its public sense, it has taken an important place in the history of Chinese art and in the people's struggle for independence.

After the formation of the People's Republic of China, Chinese art embarked on the path of inevitable solution of many new problems. The year 1949 was, as it were, a borderline that separated the past millennia of the history of Chinese culture from the stage of its inclusion in the life of the modern world. Despite the new qualities of art that have developed to a certain extent over the years of revolutionary battles, in a country exhausted by long wars and just won independence, many problems have not been resolved. In particular, the issues of urban planning and the birth of a new style of architecture, especially complicated by the need to organically incorporate architecture of a new type into the ensembles of old cities, turned out to be completely new tasks of primary importance.

Ancient cities like Beijing, Luoyang and Xian, which have undergone only minor foreign influences, have since ancient times had not only a well-established tradition, a clear layout with highways crossing the city from end to end, but also grandiose palace and temple complexes located in the center and on the outskirts of the city. included in the colossal spaces of parks with lakes and mounds. These structures were destroyed, looted and devastated during the years of war, parks were turned into dumps, lakes into fetid swamps, and the countless network of extremely narrow alleyways "hutong", located on the sides of the main thoroughfares, were in conditions threatening the sanitary state of the city.

Thus, a new intensive construction for the improvement of the city began at once along two lines - the restoration and conversion of the imperial ensembles into public museums and parks and the construction of new residential and public buildings. The tasks of building stone multi-storey buildings for residential and public purposes instead of single-storey manor-type buildings that make up the bulk of the quarters of old cities posed in the very first years after the formation of the PRC the problem of using national heritage in architecture. However, neither a residential Chinese one-story house, enclosed within the courtyard, nor the palace-type architecture, consisting of a complex of separate rooms, did not meet the needs of today. In the early 50s. such structures as the Beijing hotel, the Druzhba hotel and a number of other buildings were created, where the architects tried to connect the new architecture with the ensemble of the old city by constructing characteristic tiled roofs with curved corners. This is reflected in the falsely understood idea of ​​preserving, in spite of the tasks of life, the national characteristics of the past. In order for the weight of the roof not to be excessive and the proportions of the building would not be disturbed, the builders sometimes made not one, but several roofs located on a flat terrace, which gave the impression of a mechanical artificial connection of a traditional pavilion with the box of a modern stone house. The tiled roof, which covered the entire building, turned out to be both too heavy and economically unprofitable, since it was extremely expensive. Therefore, architects in the late 50s. in communal construction, they began to tend to significantly larger deviations from traditions. Since the end of the 50s. the principle of building up microdistricts is being used more widely. A large number of public standard buildings, schools, hospitals, etc. have been built. At the same time, the architecture of Beijing, which developed after 1949, is of interest not so much for individual buildings as for ensemble solutions in connection with the idea of ​​preserving and developing a single aesthetic appearance of the city. Immediately after the formation of the PRC, the restoration and restructuring of the old garden and park massifs, which constitute the aesthetic basis of the city, were carried out. The changes were carried out in such a way that, with the new social functions, the poetic identification of the peculiarities of nature, characteristic of the best examples of gardening art of the past, was not disturbed. While preserving their old appearance as a whole, thanks to the laid wide highways designed for many people, new embankments and wide staircases, these huge gardens, included in the city, connected the ancient quarters with the modern ones more closely than before. The desire for interconnection between the old and the new city was also manifested in the reconstruction of the central square of Beijing Tiananmen, rebuilt in 1957 - 1960, significantly expanded and faced with light stone. The square with the monument to the fallen soldiers in the middle is currently the main nucleus of the city, where all the main highways converge. The huge complex of the former imperial palace and now the Gugong Museum completes it on one side. On either side, opposite each other, are the new buildings of the Historical Museum and the House of the National People's Congress. However, in solving this ensemble, to a certain extent, a craving for pomp, splendor and gigantomania manifested itself, which led to the fact that the excessive grandeur of the space of the square deprived it of its human scale, and the old building of the palace sank in this space and looks insignificant. In addition, the buildings flanking the square on the other two sides do not harmonize with the architecture of the ancient palace. Thus, the idea of ​​planning new cities in recent years in China has not always been organically resolved. National traditions have found their more organic embodiment in the decorative design of buildings, the use of polychromy, as well as in the interiors of modern public buildings, consisting of simple and sparsely filled interior spaces decorated with several objects of applied art, for example, several vases or trees in various ceramic vessels.

The fine arts of China in the first years after the formation of the PRC began to develop extremely intensively. It was during these years that Chinese painting, closely associated with the progressive aspirations and ideals of all mankind in its struggle for a peaceful, creative life, entered as one of the important phenomena in modern artistic life. The subject of art has also expanded. Man as an active active force has increasingly become the basis of the content of painting. Sculpture also began to develop, re-paving its paths. The activities of the painters who played such a great role during the years of the revolutionary struggle of China continued intensively: Xu Bei-hun, Qi Bai-shek, Jiang Zhao-he, Pan Tien-shou and others. They urged artists to break with the method of blindly copying the samples of the past and to search for new creative ways. It was at this time that numerous portraits of workers painted by Xu Bei-hong appeared - simple and modest workers, depicted without embellishment, but with great love and respect for man. It is no coincidence that at the same time, Qi Bai-shek, who wholeheartedly welcomed the liberation of his homeland, wrote a large allegorical painting "Peace" (1952), where in the lush bloom of bright herbs he wanted to show that human happiness lies in a peaceful, creative life. This theme of peaceful labor determined the peculiar lyrical and cheerful direction of art, which was reviving after the long war years. Pan Yun's paintings "Spring Morning" (1954) or "A Girl Reading" by Jiang Chhao-he are full of comfort, glorifying the quiet freshness of the morning day, the peaceful joys of human life. In these works, the artists sought to combine traditional ink painting techniques on scrolls with a reflection of the real life of their time. Such searches for new means of expression, begun by Xu Bei-hong and Chiang Chhao-he, led to the emergence of very different artistic solutions in the painting of "guohua". Many painters, like Ye Qian-yu, Zhang Ding and Pan Yun, turned to the decorative possibilities of wall paintings, to the old folk popular prints with their colorful brightness and specific tiered arrangement on the plane of the sheet, creating on an elongated strip of a scroll or screens images of folk dances, demonstrations , using this elongated format for a kind of amplification of the rhythmic effect. Such works, although not deeply touching upon contemporary themes, were a great innovation for China and attracted attention with their active and joyful sense of life, the dynamics of their feelings and actions.

The Chinese painters "guohua" managed to reveal the area of ​​human feelings especially subtly during this period in lyrical terms. Zhou Chang-gu and Huang Zhou showed the possibilities for the development of painting in this direction. The life-affirming clarity of mood, characteristic of the best works of ink painting, and at the same time the calm restraint of human feelings, is felt in the small scroll of Chou Chang-gu "Tibetan Shepherdess Girl" (1954), where a barefoot girl leaning on a hedge with a thoughtful affection looks at the frolicking in the meadow lambs. The simplicity and naturalness of her posture, great freedom in placing the figure on an almost empty plane of the sheet, where only a few blades of grass create the feeling of a free meadow, the brooding softness of the mood that permeates the whole picture, give it great charm. Huang Zhou also lyrically depicts in the painting "Date" (1957) the scene of the explanation of a young man and a girl, not showing their faces, but conveying their state with a familiar system of hints through their postures, through several green spring branches.

The world of human feelings, directly transmitted through the image of the person himself and his actions, gradually expanded the scope of painting "guohua". In the mid 50s. such thematic paintings as Eight Heroines Throwing into the River (1957) by Wang Sheng-le, which tells about the death of female fighters during the Japanese occupation, or Yang Chih-guang's Food Delivery on a Snowy Night, who revealed the appearance of a new youth of China. The absence of far-fetched feelings, the clarity and clarity of the composition are the attractive qualities of these paintings.

At the same time, the paths of development of the new art of the PRC turned out to be very complex and contradictory. The division that took place at the beginning of the 20th century. between painting "guohua" and painting in oil, their large internal discrepancies caused many discussions regarding the goals and prospects of painting "guohua", which was not a single phenomenon in style and method, but united all paintings written in ink and mineral paints on scrolls under a common very conditional the term "national painting". Already the activities of Xu Bei-hong and Chiang Chzhao-he showed that the so-called "national way" cannot develop outside the big problems that worry people all over the world, and therefore, without big internal changes. However, the isolation from the world, which constrained Chinese art for so long, did not end even after the establishment of the PRC, which was associated at the first stages of the country's development with deeply rooted nationalist vestiges and tendencies. Traditional rules and schemes, preserved for many centuries, prevailed over many artists even after 1949. It is characteristic that in the mid-50s. In the "gohua", among the huge total number of paintings, an extremely large place was still occupied by landscapes and paintings of the genre of flowers and birds, painted in the archaic manner of the 19th century. Not all landscape painters were able to really overcome the wall that dead traditions erected between them and the world. In an effort to connect their landscapes with life, many painters, like Li Xiong-tsai in the scroll "Let us hand over the surplus bread to the state" (1954), limited themselves to introducing images of construction sites, blast furnaces, highways into their traditional paintings, artificially connecting the grandiose landscapes of the past with modern themes ...

The modern new landscape in "gohua" was born slowly and painfully. Only in the works of the most advanced masters did it gradually begin to acquire its new look. The landscapes of Li Ke-jan (b. 1907) - one of the most significant landscape painters of "guohua", a student of Qi Bai-shek, especially created in 1954-1957, are characterized by a dynamic, acute and inquisitive attitude of our contemporary to reality. Li Ke-jan, creatively comprehending the possibilities of applying traditions, managed to look at the world in his own way. The nature of Li Ke-jan's paintings, in contrast to the contemplative passivity of traditional landscapes, is more sensual and sensible; its power is made up of black fertile land and dense greenery of grasses, stony rough rocks, rusted and weathered by bad weather. Li Ke-jan usually encloses nature in the narrow framework of the picture, limiting the kozho position to the format of a rectangular sheet, cutting off the fields, which is why a special powerful dynamics appears in the appearance of his landscapes, as if the squeezed mountains grow and swell, fill with strength, and the villages and buildings located on their slopes, crowded together, rise to their heights. This sense of vitality is also manifested in the painting "Spring Rain in South China", where the little white village houses, which are cheerfully located along the entire mountain range, with their bright elegance, purity and clear strength of forms give the black and wet after rain to the ground and carmine-red plum flowers meihua special real persuasiveness, earthly joy of the mighty flowering of nature. Sometimes Li Ke-jan combines landscape with genre scenes, endowing them with warmth and humor. Fu Bao-shih, Guan Shang-yue, Ying Ye-ping, Tszun Tsi-hsiang and Zhang Ding worked in the same direction in the search for a new attitude to the natural world.

Oil painting, despite the intensity of its development, in the 50s has not yet reached a high artistic level. Leading masters working in this technique, such as Wu Tso-jen and Dong Si-wen, depicted in oil paintings the best people, workers. "Portrait of the machinist Li Yun" (1950), "Peasant Artist" (1958). Wu Tso-ren and Selfless Labor in Liberated Areas (1950) by Dong Xi-wen show people at work, simple everyday work. Oil painting, like "gohua", in the 50s. she followed the path of quest, the path of mastering and disclosing a new human image for China.

The same contradictions and difficulties as in painting arose in Chinese graphics, which developed in several different directions. Widely responding to all events in the life of the people, the engravers of China in the 50s. depicted construction sites, industrial landscapes, schools, heroes of the country, using not only woodcuts, but also lithographic and offset techniques, linocut, and also widely referring to various genres and methods, bringing engraving closer to painting "gohua", then to oil painting , then with an old splint, then borrowing the handwriting of engravings from other countries. The engraving of the 50s, continuing the traditions of the revolutionary years, strove to be the most popular and relevant art form. However, its content has changed significantly. The pathos that the Chinese graphics breathed in the 1930s - 1940s was replaced by an interest in narrative, peaceful, everyday themes. The best engraving masters - Li Qun, Li Ping-fan, Mo Tse, Li Huan-min, Zhao Tsung-tszao and many others - managed more freely than painters to combine new figurative content with the national art form. These masters created the face of the new Chinese graphics. In the mid 50s. numerous landscapes appear, poetically depicting the peaceful everyday life of the country - views of the outskirts and new buildings, new districts, villages in the mountains, etc. National in spirit, at the same time they are completely different in their attitude to the old landscapes. Showing a small closed corner of Beijing, quiet courtyards covered with snow, Li Qun in his engraving Winter in Beijing (1957) - in an intimate and full of humanity scene - reveals the charm of nature no longer through its immensity and detachment from man, but through the world of a cozy urban human life, and even the traditional point of view from above helps the viewer to take a closer look at this landscape inextricably linked with man. The same continuity is felt in Zhao Zong Zao's engraving "Going to the Meeting," where a vertically oriented snow landscape like a scroll is enlivened by an unusually dynamic crowd of people under paper umbrellas that fill the entire field of the sheet from top to bottom and create a new, clear, as if swaying rhythm movement. Li Ping-fan's engravings, reflecting the most exciting themes of today's life - themes of peace, brotherhood of peoples, etc. - are distinguished by extreme clarity and simplicity of artistic techniques and, at the same time, are closely related to the conventionality and beauty of amusing folk clippings that have been so widespread since ancient times in China.

Sculpture, which, like painting, did not have a long tradition, developed much more slowly than painting. However, in this area in the 50s. a number of realistic works were created, such as the lyric group "In Difficult Years" (1957) Pan He, depicting a boy listening to a peasant's pipe during a break between battles and dreaming of a bright, peaceful life, as well as portraits of workers and fighters created by Liu Kai- qui.

After the formation of the PRC, folk art became one of the inexhaustible sources to which the masters of all types of Chinese art resorted. Themselves folk crafts, as well as applied arts, in the 50s. more and more turned to their ancient origins. General decline of art in the late 19th - early 20th century. so painfully affected the development of all folk crafts, as well as the production of ceramics, porcelain, products from stone, wood and bone, and export orders had such a detrimental effect on tastes that the freedom and easy simplicity inherent in the best traditions of the past were largely lost and modern masters are engaged in their revival. After the formation of the PRC, new artels were formed, many craftsmen returned to artistic crafts, the forgotten industries began to function again. In most industries, the arts and crafts of China have retained a high level of products and a delicate sense of the material. At the same time, the exotic pretentiousness that has penetrated into products of applied art and has not yet been eliminated to this day, is especially manifested in hand-painted stone and ivory carvings. Ancient geometric ornaments and pictorial motifs, combined with great imagination and freedom to place a pattern on a surface, help craftsmen to introduce essentially new principles of ornamentation on an ancient basis. This is felt in the decoration of porcelain items, in the strict forms of Yixing ceramics, and in new lacquer items. The ancient art of cut-out has been greatly developed in China - a form of art, as it were, adjacent to painting and graphics and at the same time possessing its own specificity and charm. Craftsmanship developed over the centuries allows folk craftsmen to cut out the finest openwork decorations called "window flowers" in a thick packet of rice paper with simple scissors or a sharp chisel in several quick movements. Almost every district, every province creates its own type of "window flowers". In black, red, colored, and often gold-edged patterns, pasted on white paper or directly on windows and walls of houses, the world of folk fantasy, dreams of happiness, and affectionate humor are reproduced.

In subsequent years, the art of the PRC continues to develop, overcoming a number of internal contradictions and difficulties.

At the end of the 19th century, a national bourgeoisie appeared in China, despite the growing penetration of foreign capital. Among its advanced strata and the intelligentsia, a revolutionary movement is brewing, directed against the feudal system. A revolutionary political organization emerges, led by the revolutionary Sun Yat-sen. At the same time, the spontaneous struggle of the popular masses is spreading, developing into a major anti-imperialist uprising "I-he-tuan", brutally suppressed by the forces of Europe, the United States and Japan. Popular actions prepared the revolution of 1911, which overthrew the Qing dynasty, but did not destroy the feudal and imperialist oppression. The people's liberation struggle that flared up in the early 1920s eventually led to the formation of the People's Republic of China.
Since the end of the 18th century and especially in the 19th century, artists have appeared in China who strive to free Chinese painting from dryness, imitation and European influence, to return painters to the path of studying wildlife. The artist Ren Bo-nian (1840-1896) did a lot in this direction. His search for new artistic techniques, which he found in the constant study of nature, was clearly revealed in the painting of "flowers and birds", as well as in portrait and landscape. Among his students and followers there were many strong artists - Xu Da-zhang, Wang Yi-din, Huang Bin-hun, Qi Bai-shek, Xu Bei-hun and others, who significantly advanced the development of the style of "gohua" (literally - "national painting"). Adhering to the direction of "flowers and birds", the traditional landscape and, to a lesser extent, figural compositions and at the same time using the best traditions of medieval painting, they brought a lot of freshness and spontaneity to their works. The most powerful and thoughtful masters who actively worked in this style until the 50s were the artists Qi Bai-shek and Xu Bei-hun.
Qi Bai-shek (1860-1957) is the most prominent representative of the "Guohua" style. He worked in various genres, but showed most fully his exceptional talent in painting "flowers and birds". The best traditions of medieval art have found a new expression in his works. The special individuality of his work was manifested in subtle observation and the ability to catch and convey in several strokes the most characteristic features. His paintings are distinguished by a variety of artistic techniques, along with originality and freedom of compositional decisions. As a talented calligrapher and seal carver, Qi Bai-shek always introduced inscriptions in the compositions of his paintings. He brilliantly combined the high skill of using the color spot with the virtuoso calligraphy and expressiveness of the line. So, for example, images of crabs or insects, wisteria or bindweed, a pair of birds and flowers, repeatedly performed by the master in a new composition with black or colored ink, are always original in a new way, saturated with deep meaning and present a complete picture.
Xu Bei-hong (1895-1953) was a major artist who was looking for ways to renew and develop the national realistic art. During his eight-year stay in Paris, he mastered the methods of European painting, which allowed him to creatively combine them with the best progressive traditions of Chinese classical art. Xu Bei-hong was attracted by various genres. He paid much attention to landscape and especially animalistic subjects, which he always performed with great feeling. In the painting Geese on the Lake (1932, Hermitage) one can feel the air, the rustling of reeds, against which a group of birds is vividly reproduced. The painting "The Crow of a Rooster before the Storm" (1937) is of a different nature, symbolizing the revolution. The artist is fascinated by the decorativeness achieved by the relative simplicity of the composition and bright colors. While creating paintings on historical and literary themes, such as "Tian Heng and Five Hundred Heroes" and others, he constantly worked on a portrait in which he deeply revealed the psychological image of a person (portrait of Rabindranath Tagore, 1942). His broad interests, high culture and tireless search for the new contributed to the development of stylistic features inherent only in his works.
In his creative quest and appeal to European realistic art, Slay Bei-hun is close to the strongest master of "figured" painting - Jiang Chzhao-he. He created his wonderful works on the basis of deep observations of life. Beggar Boys (1938) or Begging for Alms (circa 1930) vividly convey the suffering of the Chinese people during the 1930s and 1940s, when the Japanese aggressors, supported by internal reactionary forces, raged in the country. The artist achieved the greatest power of expressiveness in the scroll "Refugees" (1943), in which he spoke with stunning realism about the severe national disasters of that cruel time. The Great October Revolution, which had a significant impact on the further course of the people's liberation struggle, was of decisive importance for the development of the revolution in China.
The people's liberation movement has found a vivid reflection in the work of many artists. A great role in the development of art was played by the great Chinese realist writer Lu Xin, who encouraged artists to learn from the leading engravers of Europe (for example, Masereel, Kete Kollwitz), from the masters of the Soviet Union, who covered revolutionary events and the successes of socialist construction in their works. In search of the greatest acuity and purposefulness of their works, Chinese artists turned to depicting the selfless struggle of the masses against all aggressors, against all oppressors of the working people.
Among the works devoted to historical and revolutionary themes, the engravings of Hua Shan ("V. I. Lenin - the great helmsman of the revolution", 1939), Chen Yan-tsiao ("Fighters by the fire", 1939), Li Qun ("Maxima" , 40s), Li Hua, Ma Da, Wang Qi and many others.
The largest painter Pan Yun, choosing the most significant phenomena of our time for his paintings, kept the old painting traditions ("Old age, but a vigorous spirit", 1939; "Sentinel", 1939).
In 1938, the Lu Xin Academy of Arts was established in Yanan, which educated many revolutionary Chinese artists. In the most difficult conditions, in the ranks of the People's Liberation Army, behind enemy lines and in remote liberated regions, they created vivid propaganda mass works. They chose engraving, an old traditional art of China, as their main weapon. The themes were suggested by life itself. The largest engraving artist Gu Yuan vividly showed in a series of engravings created in the liberated area, "The Past and Present of the Chinese Peasant" (1942). As well as in the work of other artists of this time, episodes of the people's liberation struggle occupy an important place in his works.
Along with engraving, popular prints and paper cuttings are becoming widespread in the liberated regions. The best artists of China take part in their implementation, taking the most poignant, exciting events with their plots. During 1944-1949, 400 paintings were created, which were reproduced in the woodcut technique in thousands of copies. With a large percentage of illiterates, these simple, intelligible pictures were understandable to everyone and, along with posters, were of great agitation and educational value.
Art of the People's Republic of China
On October 1, 1949, the People's Republic of China was proclaimed. By this time, the country possessed a whole detachment of mature masters, whose work touched upon the pressing problems of life, topical topics. The agrarian reform, which stirred up the masses, found wide coverage in engraving and popular prints, in gohua scrolls and oil painting, which appeared in China just a few decades ago. Shi Lu's engraving "The Accusation of the Landowner" is extremely expressive. Interestingly resolved in engravings by Gu Yuan, Xia Feng, Li Qun, Li Hua, Ma Da and many other artists, the themes of the new village life. The struggle for literacy led to the creation of prints such as Xiao Su's School, and others.
The artist Pan Yun created the long narrative picture scrolls dedicated to the themes of new life in the village. Labor in the liberated land is the theme of the oil painting by the artist Dua Xi-wen.
The theme of rebuilding an industry destroyed by enemies has also provided rich material for Chinese artists. "Restoration of the plant in An-shan" was depicted in color engraving by Gu Yuan (1949), who also created many engravings on the theme of new life in the village.
"Restoring the Power Plant" (1949) showed Li Hua, who applied a pictorial technique in the engraving, built on the contrasts of chiaroscuro. Many other works of art have been created, vivid in plot and execution, inspiring people to build a new life.
During the existence of the People's Republic of China, all types of fine and applied arts have come to life. Many secrets of production lost in the 19th century have been restored in the porcelain industry. Painters of lacquerware find new ways. Carving on wood, stone, and bone is widely developed. Silk weaving provides brilliant samples of artistic fabrics and embroideries. National painting "Guohua" has put forward a galaxy of new strong painters working in various genres, but united by the desire to develop and strengthen the realistic direction in art.
Such masters as Qi Bai-shek and Xu Bei-hun were of great importance for the formation of the creativity of artists of the new generation.
After the final liberation of China, Qi Bai-shek painted hundreds of paintings that celebrate nature and the joy of life. He created a large school, from which many painters of the new generation emerged. In 1955, Qi Bai-shek was awarded the International Peace Prize.
Xu Bei-hong, simultaneously with his creative activity, continued to work a lot with young artists, being a professor at the Shanghai Institute of Painting, and later at the Central University in Nanjing. In 1949, he was appointed president of the Academy of Arts and until the end of his life was chairman of the All-China Association of Artists.
The struggle for peace and a peaceful life was reflected in the works of Chiang Chzhao-he - "Child and Doves" (1953), "Reading a Newspaper" (1953). Long horizontal scrolls by old master Pan Yun tell about life in the co-op.
The student of Qi Bai-shek Li Ke-jan works in a talented and peculiar way. Huang Zhou also showed himself to be a large, mature master, who in his own way sees and reveals the surrounding phenomena of life in his paintings. His "Date" (1957) attracts with the originality of the composition and color, the economy of artistic means.
In the landscapes of Fu Bao-shi, the nature of China comes to life in all its diversity, with a subtle transfer of illumination, moist air, achieved by washing out mascara and soft colors.
"Three Gorges of the Yangtze River" shows the power of creativity of the mature artist Tsung Tsi-hsiang.
Many more masters of painting and engraving are improving their creativity, looking for and finding new artistic methods, leading modern painting in new ways that the old art of China did not know.

BBK Ch 11.3 (5 Kit)

Han Bing,

graduate student,

Transbaikal State Humanitarian Pedagogical University named after N.G. Chernyshevsky (Chita, Russia), e-mail: [email protected]

transformation of the cultural functions of Chinese painting in the 20th and early 21st centuries: a comparative analysis

The cultural-historical method used in this study helped to trace the relationship between the formation of Chinese culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. and the evolution of the socio-cultural functions of Chinese painting. Chinese painting has always readily fulfilled the functions of cultural reflection and played an important role in the development of cultural identity throughout the modern history of China. But if at the beginning of the XX century. Chinese painting was in the process of acquiring its own identity, in search of a national idea, then at the beginning of the XXI century. it has its own stable national traditions. In addition, overcoming the pressure from ideology, autonomizing the creative process allows practitioners and theorists to focus on theoretical issues, expand the scope and variety of styles. This determines the development of such tendencies in the formation of Chinese painting as psychologization, aestheticization and axiologization.

Key words: cultural functions, cultural approach, modern and traditional Chinese painting, painting evolution, cultural identity.

Graduate Student,

Zabaikalsky State Pedagogical Humanitarian University named after N. G. Chernishevsky (Chita, Russia), e-mail: [email protected]

Transformation of Chinese Painting Cultural Functions in the 20th and Early 21st Centuries: A Comparative Analysis

The cultural and historical method used in this research helps to trace the relationship between the emergence of Chinese culture of the 20th and 21st centuries and the evolution of Chinese painting socio-cultural functions. Chinese painting has always readily fulfilled the function of cultural reflection, occupied an important place in the development of cultural identity throughout the modern history of China. But if at the beginning of the 20th century Chinese painting was in the process of gaining its own identity, finding a national idea, then, at the beginning of the 21st century it has its own national traditions. In addition to overcoming the pressure of ideology, autonomization of the creative process allows practitioners and theorists to focus on theoretical issues and expand the subjects and variety of styles. It leads to the development of such tendencies in the development of Chinese painting as psychology, aesthetization and axiology.

Keywords: cultural functions, cultural approach, modern and traditional Chinese painting, evolution of painting, cultural identity.

Theoretical and methodological foundations for studying the problem Over the past hundred years, traditional Chinese painting has come a long way in its development. In this case, we are not talking about the formation of new forms, technologies or styles. Their evolution, like any socio-cultural phenomenon, is not

an intrinsic property. First of all, the socio-cultural functions and tasks of art, in general, and painting, in particular, have changed. In this work, an attempt is made to trace the relationship between the formation of the culture of China in the XX and XXI centuries. and the evolution of the cultural functions of Chinese painting. Cultural approach used

© Han Bing, 2012

is intended to help understand the logic and content of this evolution. We proceed from the assumption that the problem of the search for the author's and national style by Chinese artists persists throughout the entire XX century. and continues at the beginning of the XXI century. However, the tasks that determined these searches are profoundly different.

Chinese and Russian researchers dealt with the problem of the evolution of Chinese painting. Teng Gu, a modern Chinese art critic, in his works examines the regularity of the functioning of the style system in traditional Chinese painting. Hong Zaisin, a famous Chinese theorist in the field of art and aesthetics, traced the formation of new directions under the influence of innovations and borrowings from Western painting traditions. Wu Yaohua, a modern Chinese thinker and researcher in the field of aesthetics, tried to identify the patterns of mutual influence of culture and painting. Chinese art critic Xue Yunnian described the manifestation of the national-cultural spirit in the national painting "Bimo" ("Brush and ink"). In the Russian scientific literature, we have found works that analyze certain issues of the formation of Chinese traditional painting. EV Zavadskaya, art critic-Sinologist, in the book "Aesthetic Problems of Painting in Old China" presents a brief overview of various styles of painting and painting schools of Old China. NA Vinogradova, Russian art critic, in the monograph "Chinese Landscape Painting" analyzes the formation and development of Chinese landscape painting and examines in detail the examples of this type of art. However, none of those known to us has resorted to considering the formation of modern Chinese painting in a cultural perspective.

Socio-historical context

the formation of various directions in Chinese painting of the first half of the XX century.

The genesis of modern Chinese painting can be traced back to the end of the 19th century. It is determined by the presence of a difficult historical period when the formation of self-consciousness of the modern Chinese nation took place. The most important problem for Chinese culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. is the search for national identity, which is realized in a complex interweaving of internal (the rule of the Manchu Qing dynasty) and external challenges (colonization of territories

China, opposition to Western and Japanese influence).

The presence of a large number of political movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ("Westernization Movement", "Reform Movement", "Revolution of 1911") predetermined the search in the political, economic and social spheres. This led to the discussion of the issue of applying the achievements in the development of Western society, for example, the use of Western political institutions to strengthen the state in order to resist the world powers that pursued the policy of colonizing China. If the participants in the movement agreed on the goal of the necessary changes - overcoming the national crisis, then the proposed means of achieving it were different. For example, the "Movement for Reforms" strove to establish a "constitutional monarchy" and defended the need for political reforms. The historical result of the May Fourth movement is the undermining of the dominant feudal ideology, the development of science, the formation of democratic ideology, which required an appeal to the deep layers of culture that are found in the public consciousness, the mentality of the nation.

There is an understanding in society that the crisis in China at that time is not only the result of the inertia of the state system, but is also determined by the dominance of traditional national psychology. Thinkers of the XX century. drew attention not only to the external aspects of the required transformations, but also to the internal ones, for example, to the psychological aspect of the search for national identity. The events of this period stimulated an intensive creative search, a revision of the outdated traditions of the recently abolished Chinese Empire and the understanding of borrowings in the Chinese national culture, which were strongly associated with Western influence. Depending on ideological preferences, scientists and philosophers carried out cultural searches in the corresponding directions.

In the context of rapid changes, practice and theorists were looking for cultural forms capable of adequately expressing the new self-consciousness of the Chinese people. This was, among others, painting. Its importance for culture is confirmed by the attention from the cultural reformers of China, which determined the formation of different directions and schools in Chinese painting.

XX century (the so-called "Hundred Schools" period). It is impossible to change national identity in such a short period of time, it is a deep layer of culture and determines the existence of its other levels. In this respect, the Chinese historian Pan Pu was absolutely right in stating that the May Fourth movement did not fully fulfill the task that history had set for it. During this period, several directions in painting took shape at the same time, which advocated different paths for the development of Chinese art. Some argue the need for closer contacts with the Western European, including Russian, school of painting, others continue to defend the purity of national traditions, and finally, others have tried to implement a synthesis of both.

Supporters of Europeanization believed that China needed a comprehensive Europeanization, implying the modernization of society, which, of course, includes cultural modernization. Supporters of national identity, on the contrary, are the stronghold of the conservative movement, and they defended the position of the need to preserve the traditional culture of China. Finally, there were practitioners and theorists who insisted on the need for a certain eclecticism, asserting a kind of possibility of combining "everything indiscriminately": the humanitarian tradition of old China and Western modernity. This, in their opinion, should have removed the binary confrontation between Chinese and Western culture.

The cultural background of China at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. determined by the influence of thinkers who put forward and substantiated the three indicated paths to the renewal of China. Kang Yuwei (1858-1927), a well-known Chinese ideologist, politician, reformer, showed great interest in Western culture. However, his position is conditioned by a certain contradiction. Kang Yuwei tried to overcome "parochialism" and narrow nationalism, proceeding from the ideas of "Zhong Ti Xi Yun", which involves the study of the foundations of Confucianism using Western achievements, such as the sciences of nature, trade, education, etc. On the one hand, for culture Kang Yuwei considered it justified to use the achievements of the West. On the other hand, he defended the possibility of self-isolation of his native culture, which allows him to be defined as a prominent theorist of Chinese nationalism. Kang Yuwei believed that painting should pay attention to

the development of the form, in particular, to borrow the best traditions of Western European realism, and its ideological content and content should preserve and convey the national spirit. In his opinion, only in such a combination of China and the West is it possible for a new era for artists to come. His ideas have had a significant impact on the transformation of traditional culture.

Cai Yuanpei (1868-1940), as a teacher, paid great attention to the development of the theoretical foundations of education. He understood that for China, science-based education, especially the humanities, is of great importance and relevance. In his understanding, science and art should become the basis of a new education. He defended the introduction of aesthetic education designed to replace religious consciousness. Aesthetic education is a symbol of freedom, progress, self-liberation of human nature. This admiration for art in general and the visual arts in particular influenced the formation of the philosophy of many artists of the early 20th century, in particular the work of Xu Beihong, Liu Haisu, Lin Fengmian, etc. In a sense, Tsai Yuanpei is not only the founder of modern education in China, but also a theoretician of Chinese art education of the 20th century, his ideas directly influenced the formation of the system of art education.

Concept of the development of Chinese painting of the XX century.

The development of Chinese painting and its interpretation is associated not only with the ideas of the leaders of cultural and educational circles at the beginning of the 20th century, but also with the activities of practitioners who paid attention to the development of mastery, its theoretical justification and the problems of art education.

Despite the fact that almost all thinkers agreed on the need to preserve the heritage of traditional Chinese painting, their understanding of the content of traditions differs. We will demonstrate this using two theories. Jin Cheng (1878-1926) and Pan Tiansou (1898-1971) contributed to the development of Chinese painting, are masters, keepers of national traditions. Jin Cheng was interested in the traditions of the Jin, Tang, Song, Yuan dynasties; Pan Tiansou drew attention to the painting of poets and sages "wenrenhua". Jin Cheng put forward the concept of preserving the traditions of Chinese painting, subject to its further

its evolutionary development without revolutionary upheavals. As a thinker and practitioner, he paid more attention to the study of traditions, which, in his opinion, were the source of contemporary trends. Pan Tiansou, also advocating the preservation of traditions, believed that they are contained in the intellectual painting "wenzhenhua" as the best embodiment of the traditional cultural spirit, reflecting the national characteristics of China.

The understanding of the nature of borrowing also differed. Thus, Gao Jianfu (1879-1951) suggested using ready-made samples of the synthesis of Western European and Eastern directions in painting, which had been developed earlier in Japan. He borrowed the realistic technique of Western painting and the color scheme inherent in Japanese painting. Their combination gave birth to a special style "Ling Nan Hua Feng", that is, the style of "provinces located to the south of the ridges (Guangdong and Guangxi)". Gao Jianfu also advocated the use of traditional Chinese painting tools (for example, brush, ink, Xuancheng paper, ink).

This understanding of the synthesis of the East and the West can be contrasted with the work of another master of Chinese painting, Xu Beihong (1895-1953). He believed that Chinese painting could develop its own patterns of combining Western and Eastern traditions. Borrowing the realistic technique of painting, the Chinese artist considered it possible to directly connect it with the form and plot characteristic of the Chinese national school. He was one of the first to paint in oil.

Thus, the Chinese painting of the early XX century. is in the stage of self-awareness. She tries to come to terms with the inevitable need to adapt to the flow of influences from other cultures. This stage of genesis coincided with the emergence of new cultural forms necessary for the emerging modern Chinese society. Artists and theorists needed to comprehend the multi-thousand-year history of Chinese traditional painting in order to clarify their own identity and their place in the world cultural space; to indicate the degree and depth of possible borrowing in order to "preserve oneself" in these conditions. This determined the coincidence of theoretical concepts in art and social practice. Their ideological justification was not conceived in ot-

Socio-cultural background of the development of Chinese fine arts in the late XX and early XXI centuries.

Chinese thinkers and artists returned to spiritual and practical searches in the 1980s and 1990s. XX century Late XX and early XXI centuries is a special stage in the development of Chinese fine arts, which determined the formation and development of many different and contradictory points of view on the development of the material and spiritual side of society. First of all, we are talking about the need to build new economic relations, renew the socialist concept of China's modernization and comprehend the recent past. These basic problems not only found their reflection in painting, but also determined the intellectual atmosphere in which theorists and practitioners realize spiritual quests. The complexity of modern cultural reality has given rise to a variety of trends in the fine arts of the late 20th century. First of all, we are talking about the socio-cultural movement in the second half of the 80s, which had a great influence not only on the visual arts in the future, but also on the formation of the modern self-consciousness of the Chinese nation as a whole.

The emergence of new directions in the development of painting, as well as at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, is manifested in the next appeal to the history of art and the past of culture. Questions about the content of fine art again arise, scientists and artists turn to its origins. But under the influence of the general socio-cultural situation, these searches quickly left the original channel. They found themselves embroiled in a cultural reform movement. Here you can trace the fundamental difference between these searches from those that were initiated at the beginning of the XX century. “The new trend in the visual arts has grown into a social and cultural movement. This movement did not consider the creation and improvement of any art schools and styles, but the artistic activity of entire societies and cultures, therefore its art criticism is associated with the criticism of entire cultural systems. " In this regard, we can talk about the presence of practitioners and theorists of the second half of the XX century. vast experience in comprehending the traditions of Chinese painting, various attempts to combine them with the traditions of Western cultures

round, their ideological justification. Spiritual searches of the beginning of the century are distinguished by the absence of this experience.

The art of this time is distinguished by the breadth of the topics covered, since now it is not just about comprehending one's own national tradition in its opposition to others, but also about comprehending one's own recent experience. This is reflected both in the expansion of the topic (the emergence, for example, of social and industrial topics), and in the style. At this time, the dominant style became the "Shanghai" style of writing, which the artists chose to depict the events of history. The fine arts of "Shanghai" realistically reflected the events of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which became the main theme of the works, along with works on historical, cultural and military themes. Basically, it was about portraying the everyday life of ordinary Chinese people. Its goal is to reveal the people's emotional wound received during the reforms. Her style was consistent with the goal: cold, gray, dark shades, meticulous strokes (a technique of careful drawing) were used to reflect the gloomy atmosphere of the time. Fine art "Shanghai" found a way to express feelings, drew the attention of artists to the deep layers of individual and collective psychology. In the future, the list of plots has expanded significantly due to the attraction of topics from the more ancient history of China. A mournful and sentimental mood gave way to a calm place. The artists turned to the problem of finding the meaning of life and the essence of human existence. The landscape returns to painting.

The return to the traditions of Chinese painting is also determined by the need for an ideological revision of its content. If at the beginning of the century there was a question about its socio-political context, an increase in its ideological content (first of all, class), now the question arose about the development of philosophical problems related to the problems of painting. This takes place in the context of allowing thinkers and practitioners more ideological freedom. The fine arts figures who came out of politics defended the principle of self-government. Partial weakening of attention to ideological content and the granting of freedom to artists made it possible to focus on the study of the formal features of art.

We can confidently talk about the aestheticization of Chinese painting of the late 20th century. It manifested itself in the appeal of artists to the question of the beauty of form and the study of its language, the return of formal elements to the visual arts. In theory, this was reflected in the discussion of the content of the concepts of "abstraction", "formal beauty", "artistic essence". Theorizing about these problems consolidated the results of the aestheticization process in Chinese painting at the end of the century.

Thus, Chinese painting of the late XX and early XXI centuries. performs the following cultural functions:

1. The position of cultural criticism and the need for a philosophical revision of contemporary fine arts has been established. This contributed to increased attention to the cultural side of life. “When art is not discussing artistic essence, but human issues, then it can restore its former glory. From the point of view of the social function, the artistic extension of the cultural strategy is of great importance, which is combined with the art and the spirit of human life. " The new movement in the visual arts has become a striking phenomenon of the era of cultural rebirth. The task of the movement was the search for moral principles. The development of Chinese painting during this period is distinguished by three trends: psychologization, aestheticization and axiologization.

2. The fine arts movement of the second half of the 80s. borrowed elements of Western artistic thinking, Western artistic means, which greatly expanded the horizons of Chinese artists. Ten years later, the following assessment was given to creativity, performed in a new direction: “In the period of the second half of the 80s. the fine arts began to pursue more practical goals, it reflected the courage of Chinese artists, their inherent spirit of adventurism, a new vision, a new understanding of art. A new approach to the study of art has also appeared, which has absorbed the ideas of world art and culture. The creativity of the artists was included in the general world cultural field ”.

3. New trends in the development of painting are accompanied by de-ideologization and instrumentalization, which has led in part to a departure from social themes in painting. The ability to ignore artistic restrictions in one form or another has led to the development of

the destruction of the unified ideological foundations of the fine arts, their theoretical concepts and requirements. A free cultural environment formed new concepts. The fine arts departed from utilitarianism and became one of the important prerequisites for the "healthy", natural development of the fine arts, especially in the 90s. XX century Various artistic images received the opportunity and space for their embodiment and existence, experiment and development. The development of the visual arts entered the era of pluralism - another important feature of the formation of Chinese painting in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This made it possible to develop a new attitude towards borrowing from other cultural traditions. Unlike their counterparts at the turn of the century, contemporary Chinese artists are spared the fear of cultural assimilation. In the renewed cultural environment, artists began to comprehend the influence of Western culture in a new way. Visual art practitioners believed that normal cultural exchange would not lead to breaking with tradition and simply copying Western art.

Thus, it is possible to identify the common and different functions that the Chinese painting of two different eras performed. There is a continuity between traditions

Chinese painting of the early and late 20th century, since Chinese painting helped to understand Chinese culture as an integral part of the world's cultural space. Chinese painting has always readily fulfilled the functions of cultural reflection and played an important role in the development of cultural identity throughout the modern history of China. However, at the beginning of the XX century. she herself is in the process of acquiring her own identity, she is occupied with the question of the forms and degree of borrowing, since this can lead to the erosion of her own traditions, to their dissolution in the realistic tradition of Western European painting, which had a shorter history, but went far ahead in its development.

At the beginning of the XXI century. the situation is changing. Chinese painting is confident in how it can be different from other national traditions, and understands the importance it represents for world culture. The newfound confidence made it possible to address the theoretical issues of the visual arts, expand the subject matter of works, and shift the focus from social and ideological problems to individual psychological and spiritual moral ones.

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