Writing In The Oil Painting

The writing character is a term in the present context. The study on it had been done in Chinese ancientry, and had been used in the practice of painting by the Chinese ancients. The writing character is "put the writing into the painting" said by Chinese ancients, its meanings is that applying the certain formal language of calligraphy, aesthetic factors and spiritual content to Chinese painting.Since the 19th century,, some Western artists began to pay attention to the Oriental Art (mainly calligraphy and painting) with the East-West cultural exchange. The planimetric space, the concise style, the writing character of language and abstract structure of the Oriental Art brought a new refreshing sense for the Western artists. And the distinct writing character of the Oriental Art made that the spirits of Western was in the high. The Western oil painting was facing the challenges of photography at that time, the Western artists must change the expression style of oil painting, or else the oil painting would be replaced by photography.The emergence of Oriental Art provided various probability for the Western artists who were seeking the way out. Many Western artists began to notice the pure visual factors which was the unique for Oriental Art and was missed in the Western tradition painting. So under the combined effect of the inner driving forces and the external opportunities, the Western artists learned the language character of Oriental Arts and creatively transform it. One result of the learning and transformation is that the strongly expressing feeling language of writing character appeared on the paintings, and we can discover the Oriental Art's influence on the paintings of Impressionism, Vangogh and Matisse.Since the 20th century, painting language itself liberated from the theme and content of painting and became the purpose of painting. Because the frequent culture exchange between China and Western, the Western artists paid more attention on the Chinese and Japanese calligraphy at that time, and these painters one after another imitated and drew on the experience of calligraphy which injected the new vitality into Western painting. Some of these painters effectively imitated the technique of writing character of calligraphy, some followed the process of automatic writing of calligraphy, some emulated the black and white structure of calligraphy, some pursued artistic conception and lingering charm and some tried to interpret the spirit of calligraphy, so a new kind of painting called calligraphy painting was born.However, Chinese oil painting at the moment began to think much of native culture resource because of the effect of the Western abstract expressionistic painting. Some painters one after another sought their own painting language from natively unique culture resource.Some painters began to pay more attention on the writing character which is an old and new proposition -"put the writing into the painting". So these painters in succession used the writing character on the paintings, such as Jia Difei, Wang Huaiqing and Zhou Chunya and so on. Because Chinese artists and Western artists live in different culture environments, their comprehension on the writing character is different and the writing character on their paintings also is different.