A Study Of Defamiliarization Schema Applied In Contemporary Flower-and-Bird Painting

Commenting on flower-and-bird painting, Xu beihong, the great master of traditional Chinese painting, once made the following remarks: "The accomplishments of traditional Chinese flower-and-bird painting can be said to be among the greatest and most important achievements in both ancient and modern world." "Flower -and-bird painting is the most beautiful kind of all traditional Chinese paintings." He even compared flower-and-bird painting to an especially sweet tree in the garden of arts. Master Xu's homage towards flower-and-bird painting in fact was deeply rooted in this painting's prosperity in Song Dynasty. Today, this "especially sweet tree" has shown signs of stagnancy due to changes and development in discourse situations, exhibiting spaces, communicating and viewing ways. Although flower-and-bird painting has survived time and history and has ever prospered as an independent art of painting, its current development actually indicates that it is still confined to its past glories of without any breakthrough. Obviously, it cannot expressively exhibit the relationship between man and nature since its traditional poetic and framing pictures have lagged behind the development of the society and fail to expose the spiritual crisis of modern man. In contemporary flower-and bird painting circle, although such painters as Xu lei and He xi try to break through by adopting the discourse of defamiliarization, we find that great and small exhibitions are still full of identical and barren paintings.Paintings, what ever kind of painting they belong to, are in fact intended to communicate with the viewers and convey their ideas, connotations and artistic languages through specific drawings. Therefore, in order to remain its initial position in contemporary artistic world, the drawings of flower-and-bird painting should avoid plain taste. Instead, they should provide super vision activation. Due to the dimensional space traditional flower-and-bird painting is carried in, the main task for innovation in this art form is how to achieve instant and immediate observation and awake people's special feelings towards the seemingly familiar elements in the painting by way of vision storm.The concept of "defamilarization" was first put forward by Russian formalist Shklovsky at the beginning of 20^th century. Defamiliarization, as the term implies, is to present the familiar things in unfamiliar forms so as to achieve the best artistic effect. It tends to avoid familiar ways but to present essence of the things in the eyes of a stranger. Thus, refreshing instead of barren effect is achieved. For artists, defamiliarization is an important means of creation to part away from ordinary life and to enhance the difficulty and period of vision.The value of artistic creation lies in its originality, scarcity and uniqueness. Flower-and-bird painting has to seek its contemporary characteristic in the process of originality transformation. While at the same time, defamiliarization provides realistic and theoretical basis for this transformation to break away from the traditions. Defamiliarization in drawings make possible the new life of flower-and-bird painting and expose the essence of life. This is the responsibility of the time and the most significant revelation of defamiliarization. Those who break away from traditions and create to the needs of contemporary world are innovators. Only by breaking away from the limits of traditions and following the breathe of the time can flower-and-bird painting achieve its contemporariness.