Perspective·Connotation·Affection

Color language is of an indispensable element in western painting, and color began to play its unique role the moment people had the impulse to paint. During the process of development, color language has been challenging the artists continually. Nowadays, however, it challenges artists the new project—how to recur the objective world and stir the subjectivity, namely , how should the artists fully recur the charmings of it based on the former researches.The paper begins with the elaboration on the origin of color language in western painting and the long history of its evolution. Besides, the author makes an analysis of the leading artists and their typical works in the revolution periods , aiming at discovering the internal mechanism and developing rules. Moreover, associating with the developing space of contemporary Chinese color language, the author puts forward his own views on the multi-direction development of color language in western modern painting and tries to explore a new way.The paper consists of three parts. The first part is introduction. It makes a general description about the evolution of color language in western painting, including the origin of it, the exploration of materials, the appication of color, the restriction and function from the cognitive factor, as well as the main features of color language evolution, that is, the shunt from spontaneousness to consciousness, the rising and falling of sense and sensibility, the co-existence of skill and concept.The second part is the key of this paper. The author focuses on making an induction of expressive skills, cognitive process and beauty appreciation changes on color language in western painting in different periods, from primitive society to the ancient Greece, from Middle Ages to Renaissance, from the 17^th and 19^th century to the 20^th century. At the same time, the author makes a comparison between the typical works of typical artists and analyses the typical color language and its expressive approach. In addition, the author brushes the evolution relationship contained in color, such as symbolism, decoration, mitation, abstract and expressiveness of language, with the purpose of displaying the main features of color language in different periods and discovering the evolution relationship , its necessity and sequence.The third part is conclusion. Through the above-mentioned exploration and study as well as the reality of color language shunt in the situation of multi-culture, the author utters his own voice towards Chinese artists' individual choice and developing space. That is to say, how do they understand the spontaneousness, consciousness and freedom of color language evolution from the perspective of artist's subjectivity--possessing and employing his own feelings, affections and imagination.