The Founding Ceremony, Dong Xiwen

Good works of art can transcend the barriers of different times and bring people lasting spiritual experience. These works of art, like rich fragrance, will eventually become classics with the passage of time.

The oil painting Founding Ceremony, created in 1953, is such an art classic.

After the founding of New China, the new era has put forward new requirements for artistic creation. Artists urgently need to use new artistic languages and expressions to tell the stories of New China, so realistic creation has completed the localization and transformation of the theme of "theme", and also promoted the nationalization of oil painting and the development of Chinese painting in the new social context. During this period, a large number of actively exploring artists emerged, among which oil painter Dong Xiwen was the best.

Dong Xiwen is a painter who clearly defines the "nationalization of oil painting" in theory and creative practice. In order to deeply study the laws and characteristics of Chinese traditional painting art, he spent nearly three years studying and copying a large number of murals in Dunhuang. He believes that the figures on these murals can be comparable to the masterpieces of European Renaissance masters, with strong oriental artistic characteristics, and are unique.

At the beginning of the creation of the Founding Ceremony, Dong Xiwen "tried to paint it as a national style oil painting different from the ordinary western style painting."

In the creation experience of the Founding Ceremony published later, Dong Xiwen introduced in detail how he absorbed the traditional creation methods of ancient Chinese painting in dealing with the relationship between characters and the environment.

Use the perspective principle of Chinese painting to compose boldly

First of all, in terms of composition, if we rigidly follow the perspective and perspective of general western paintings, we can't generalize the distance between Tiananmen Tower and the square in one picture. To deal with this problem, Dong Xiwen used the flexible approach of Chinese painting, which is both scientific and not naturalistic in perspective, that is, it is not bound by mechanical rules, but also conforms to the sense of stability and reality of vision.

This bold composition is one of the successful elements of the painting, which has been talked about by later generations: for the momentum and openness of the picture, a pillar in the front right of Chairman Mao has been omitted, as well as the direction and layout of all the main characters in the picture, The people on Tiananmen Square and the vast blue sky are presented to the audience at the same time.

Use the method of Chinese painting to express the complete character style and spirit

Dong Xiwen believes that the main characters in the performance of the Founding Ceremony should conform to the complete and clear appreciation habits loved by the people. Therefore, he used the method of image description in Chinese painting to simplify some appearance details that are irrelevant to the spirit and character of the characters, avoiding the feeling of tedious image description; At the same time, it also strengthened the description of the important links in the image, making the important parts of the image prominent. This approach can focus on the spirit, style and features of leaders and the essence of various objects.

The habit of using Chinese painting colors makes the picture full of national style

Chinese people like bright and enthusiastic colors, which is also in line with the theme of the painting "Founding Ceremony". Therefore, Dong Xiwen boldly adopts the use habit of Chinese painting colors, regardless of the complex changes of pigments and the rules of thick oil color in general oil paintings. Dong Xiwen said that, on the basis of realism, the intensity of light and shade and the contrast of cold and hot colors were appropriately lowered, especially after grasping the true colors of various objects, the contrast and unity of the colors of the whole painting were achieved in various bright natural colors, so that the effect produced a relatively warm and bright style. If the painting is full of national style, it has much to do with the use of this color.

In the process of creating the Founding Ceremony, Dong Xiwen encountered many difficulties and problems, but when he encountered difficulties, he remembered that the only principle to solve the problem was that it should conform to the traditional appreciation habits of Chinese people, so that the effect of the whole picture could be seen from afar as well as from close. In painting creation, after the practice of Chinese painting methods, this work can more fully convey the atmosphere and style of the great theme.

(Part of the data is quoted from Dong Xiwen's signed article "The Creation Experience of Oil Painting at the Founding Ceremony", New Observation, Issue 21, 1953)

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