As a visual art, painting forms an extremely accurate, concrete and personalized picture through certain colors, lines and shapes, so as to convey aesthetic experience for people to feel.
The schools and styles of painting are extremely diverse. We can classify the art from different angles, such as portrait painting, landscape painting, still life painting, historical painting, poster painting, New Year picture, comic book and so on, as well as oil painting, ink painting, watercolor painting, pastel painting, printmaking and so on, regardless of schools and styles.
If the aesthetic characteristics of sculpture emphasize the simplicity of modeling and the purity of ideas, then painting tends to be precise and concrete in these two aspects. Hegel said, "the basic content of painting should not only have rich and profound emotions, but also have individual special factors that deeply describe the personality characteristics of characters;" There should be concrete and affectionate deeds about the general content. Situations and situations should not only explain the personality of individual characters, but also make the special factors of individuals appear profound or rooted in the soul and facial expressions, and completely absorbed from the form of external things. " He also said: in the process of painting changing from a profound and serious theme to a special and concrete phenomenon in the outside world, "it is inevitable to go to the extreme of paying attention to simple external phenomena". "Here we can see the rapidly changing scenes of the sky, seasons and forests, the flickering light and shadow released by clouds, waves, rivers and lakes, the wine in the returning wine cup, the flow of eyes, the instantaneous look and smile, etc. And set it down with the highest artistic skills. " From Hegel's point of view, it can be seen that the art of painting is the aesthetic feature of painting, and the details of the object depict the unity of the internal performance of the subject. In a word, painting is more personalized than sculpture, and it expresses the personality of the soul in the external form.
The real life scenes, characters' expressions and spiritual personality depicted by painting are all in the ever-changing long river of life, but painting freezes them with the help of lines, colors and shapes. This is obviously a contradiction, so this contradiction must be solved. Lessing once put forward a solution, that is, to turn motion into static state and write motion in static state. He called this method "hinting". He said, "Painting depicts objects, and through objects, it depicts movement in a suggestive way." So how to express movement in a dynamic way? He believes that "only a certain tilting moment can be used in the action, so we should choose a tilting moment with rich connotation, from which we can best understand the tilting moment behind and the tilting moment in front." In other words, painting must be good at capturing and selecting from the life of movement, extracting the static tilting with the cause and effect of movement, and expressing the continuity of movement through this static and concentrated tilting. " The external appearance can express everything inside, which is static. This is a method to solve the contradiction between still pictures and moving reality in painting.
Whether it is oriental painting or western painting, traditional painting or modern painting; The content and form it expresses are all an artistic means reproduced through the accumulation of artists' life practice. Painting reflects the artist's own thoughts, expresses an emotional sustenance for things, and records the history and development. Although a painting is still, the content it expresses is a kind of artistic conception that is either joyful or romantic and vulgar, divorced from reality, close to reality and surrealism. No matter the style or content of painting, painting is not only a language, but also an art, and it is
Painting is not only aesthetic and practical, but also eternal. As a means of communication, it can grasp people's hearts, which is a transcendence of material and spiritual levels. It is precisely because of this that its value can be reflected. The education of painting works to people is often that the appreciator is unconsciously infected without coercion, which has a subtle educational effect under this long-term effect. Through art appreciation activities, people's aesthetic needs can be met, and spiritual enjoyment and aesthetic pleasure can be obtained, so that the mind can be pleasing to the eye, relaxed and educated, and the body and mind can be happy and rested. Just as painting creation is a free and conscious activity, artists are completely selfless in their creation, intoxicated with it and get great satisfaction and happiness.
Painting is not only rich in types and forms, but also has obvious differences in artistic forms, means of expression and artistic styles due to the differences in social, political, economic and cultural traditions between countries and nations. It is generally believed that oriental painting developed from ancient Egypt, Persia, India and China and ancient Ming Dynasty, and western painting developed from ancient Greece and Rome with Europe as the center are the two most important painting systems in the world. They have influenced each other in history and made their own important contributions to human civilization.
However, both oriental painting and western painting, as a major art form, have the same characteristics, which are mainly manifested in: they all reflect and express the painter's feelings about objective reality through concrete artistic images that can be directly seen. In shaping concrete and directly visible artistic images, it is more concrete than novels and poems and more easily accepted by the masses. However, because a painting can only show a relatively static moment, it cannot show the development process of people and things like novels, poems, movies and dramas, nor can it introduce people and things from people's dialogues or through general explanations like novels and dramas. So there are certain limitations. In order to overcome this limitation, excellent paintings are good at choosing the most general and expressive moments of people or events. Although this instant image is fixed on the screen, because the characters provided by painting are concrete and intuitive, as long as they are well portrayed, they can also have fascinating artistic charm. Many famous paintings at home and abroad can illustrate this point.
Secondly, the materials and tools used in painting, such as paper, wood, cloth, pen and ink, pigments, knives and so on. Other arts (such as literature) have other special functions. This is mainly manifested in the following aspects: although some material materials (such as pens, ink and paper) are also used in literary works, they simply play the role of tools and are inseparable from the artistic image to be created by the works. However, painting is different. The material itself is not only a tool, but also a major factor in creating artistic images, especially its aesthetic value, such as the pen and ink interest of Chinese painting, the pen angle of oil painting and rich sense of color. The cutting technique and "wood taste" of woodcut are not only inseparable from the artistic image, but also have aesthetic value.
In addition, the subject matter of painting is wider than other arts. For example, novels and plays can't describe natural scenery or still life. But in painting, landscape painting and still life painting are completely independent painting schools, which once became the main body of painting art in history. It is precisely because painting is more extensive than other artistic themes that painting is one of the most colorful art forms in the whole art and even the whole art category.