Chinese folk paper-cut art
The art of paper-cutting is the crystallization of the wisdom of the working people for thousands of years. Traditional paper-cut works pay attention to modeling and emphasize the close relationship between human beings and nature. Most of them have a strong local flavor and honest, true and optimistic emotional colors. They are the embodiment of the simplest artistic thoughts and artistic language in human working life. It affects peoples spiritual and material lives in a popular aesthetic form, and educates people on morality, history, customs, production, and cultural knowledge with rich content. It has become the most popular textbook and the national spirit it represents. As a kind of cultural literacy, it has been quietly integrated into the fertile soil of national culture and has become the driving force to maintain and promote social development.
The paper-cut pattern modeling model is based on symbols and belongs to an independent visual symbol system. These symbols come from the folk, are native and rooted in the daily lives of ordinary people, and have universal social recognition. Paper-cut art is developed on the basis of primitive art, with the characteristics of primitive human thinking. When combined, it is like a riddle, which makes people have endless aftertaste. The visual symbols of paper-cutting pursue spiritual resemblance, creating images with thoughts, which are permeated with peoples psychological feelings, understanding and fantasies. This does not entirely focus on external, superficial likeness and dissimilarity, but uses symbolism, generalization, and exaggeration to create an image, so that its connotation transcends the object. Most of these auspicious symbol graphics are conventional symbols, with fixed combination methods and fixed meanings. The formation of these symbolic graphics is a long process. It is passed down from generation to generation by folk artists and is constantly modified, refined and processed. For example, the two paper-cuts "Snake Coating Rabbit" and "Eagle Catching Rabbit" circulated in rural areas of the Yellow River Basin are cute and simple in shape, combining imagination, exaggeration and normal form, and are auspicious symbols with specific meanings. There is a local saying that "if a snake coils around a rabbit, it will definitely make you rich" and "if an eagle catches a rabbit, it will definitely make you rich". "Snake and Rabbit" and the combination of a man and a woman born under the sign of Snake and Rabbit must be the meaning of a happy marriage. These symbols that transcend the norm have been passed down among the people for a long time and have a strong visual impact.
Symbols and meanings are created and enriched through highly abstract thinking.Rich imagination makes the real image imply some kind of emotional idea. The theme connotation of the paper-cut symbolic metaphor is a reflection of the ancient life consciousness of the national group. The artistic prototypes of symbolic metaphors can be traced back to the era of primitive totem culture. The dragons, phoenixes, tigers, frogs, mountains, rocks, rivers, sun, moon, etc. in folk auspicious art are all closely related to the nature worship and totem worship in primitive religions. association. For example, the traditional festive window decorations "Buckle Bowl" and "Wedding Pot" in Shanxi contain the meaning of life and reproduction. The two bowls are tied together and are related to new marriages, that is, the "joy of joining the Jin Dynasty"; the two fish or two lotus flowers in the pot symbolize the happy union of a man and a woman.
The content of paper-cutting is restricted by folk psychology, so folk art has become an important part of folk customs. On some important days, people have grand etiquette and customs with different styles and forms. For example, weddings are important festive customs in life. When most rural girls get engaged, they have to get insoles for their fiancés, embroider wallets, make belly wraps, and also embroider pillows for the wedding. They design patterns, cut and sew with happiness. A small purse, embroidered with flowers inside and out, with fine embroidery work and coordinated colors. It seems that every stitch and thread is full of their love. The pillows they used for their weddings were rich and colorful, with many themes symbolizing auspiciousness and celebration, such as mandarin ducks, lotuses and noble sons, bangs playing with toads, phoenixes playing with peonies, magpies climbing plum blossoms, the Broken Bridge Party in "The Legend of White Snake", etc., which contained a sense of happiness. The longing and yearning for life are all expressed in paper-cutting. People are accustomed to using the combination of lotus and fish as decorations. The folk proverb "fishes make lotus flowers, a couple has a good relationship", which has the connotation of life worship. People use the images of fish and lotus in nature to metaphorize the love and reproduction of men and women, which is the sublimation of art and aesthetics of human life. The patterns that combine fish and lotus include fish holding lotus, fish pecking lotus, fish training lotus, and fish stringing lotus. Fish plays with lotus. Fish piercing the lotus, fish making contact with the lotus, etc., these are artistic expressions with the theme of fertility worship. A picture that truly reflects life etiquette and folk customs.
Paper-cut art is a conceptual art, and the symbolic and metaphorical techniques give full play to the auspicious cultural concept. In the accumulation of thousands of years of national traditional culture, the art of paper-cutting has formed a large and rich system of artistic symbols (metaphors), which has brought great satisfaction and comfort to the survival psychology of folk groups. For example, "Definitely Promoted" shows two children, one holding an official hat in one hand, the other holding a brush in one hand and a gold ingot in the other. The words "pen" and "bi" are homophonic, and the words "ding" and "ding" are homophonic. The whole picture together means "will definitely be promoted", which expresses the hope that the child will succeed.
In Chinese characters, there are often one sound and multiple shapes.The shapes are different, and the meanings of the words are also different. The homophonic expression of auspicious shapes in paper-cutting is a semantic pun, homophonic borrowing, and profound meaning. The key to homophony is to clearly place the harmonious sound on the original meaning of auspiciousness and convey the theme in a unique way. In the old society, having enough food and clothing was a big deal among the people. The hope of having more than enough every year played an important role in the aesthetic psychology of the masses. They borrowed the homophony of "fish" and "surplus", and "youyu" became a symbol of "surplus". The paper-cut "There are fish (surplus) every year" has been passed down from generation to generation. Another example is the auspicious graphic "Modern Kui Fu Gui", which is composed of cats, butterflies and peonies. "Cat Butterfly" is homophonic to "Haokui", while Peony
