Symbolic Interpretation Of Contemporary Chinese Oil Painting Phenomenon

The development of contemporary Chinese oil paintings in the new century has shown a significant tendency of the symbolic representation. This tendency reflects the contemplation and the introspection of the Chinese contemporary artists who have experienced a series of social changes about some realistic problems from an artistic perspective. In the contemporary context of globalization, when faced with the impact caused by the infiltration of various foreign cultures, some Chinese artists try to use some more rational, abstract, individual languages such as the symbolic representation to express their artistic conception. This article will explain how the tendency of the symbolic representation form by outlining and analyzing those most characteristic symbolic painting of Chinese contemporary art, and try to search the artists'constantly changing thought with social development by research their symbolic painting.In Chinese contemporary paintings appear more and more obvious symbolic pattern full of personal characteristic and these paintings are always created in series. Because increasingly numbers of artists tend to use the symbolic pattern in their works, further more these paintings have made up an important artistic expression in Chinese contemporary art. So this paper will put the phenomenon of increasing use of symbolic pattern as the entry point to study. This paper can be generally divided into five parts: The first part is summary. Mainly to clarify the purpose, the scope and the significance of this research. The second part is the introduction to the meaning and the feature of the symbol, plus the analysis of the current situation of the symbolic art. The third part is trying to explain why and how the symbolic phenomenon form in art. The main reason is that the contemporary art has received a lot of influence caused by the social, economic and cultural factors, specifically including image consumption simulation, reading habits change, the impact of new media art and multicultural penetration. The fourth part is researching the expressive way of the symbolic painting through analyzing the most representative symbolic work in contemporary oil painting, and then seek out the artistic conception of the creator from those symbolic pattern. The fifth part is concluding remarks.The symbolic painting is the result of artists'continuously research and exploration, and it is a kind of choices following the needs of The Times. Selecting or creating one symbolic pattern is based on the artist's psychology and spirit. The pursuit of creating symbolic pattern reflects not only the exploration in art form, but also the understanding to the social reality.