Image-conveyance-Heart

The essence of Chinese traditional flower-bird painting lies in the abundance of the timestaste and human natural feelings.Though with the impact of multiculturalism, Chineseflower-bird painting turns vigorless, the western arts enrich and stylize the Chinese paintingand flower-bird painting expands its scope by absorbing features of western painting.However, the innovation and development of flower-bird painting is still in stagnation. Manyexperts and scholars in the academic field of Chinese painting claim that Chinese traditionalflower-bird painting, with deeply-rooted cultural and aesthetic tradition, has not beenimpaired by the overwhelming trend of westernization. Bird-and-flower painting is a kind ofart form with the broadest and most profound traditional artistic cultural foundation andspecific spatial patterns. As a result, it withstands the test of “natural selection” and isunwilling to transform. Conservative China-centrism has been rejected while western artscentrism, on the contrary, stimulated Chinese people’s dignity and confidence. After nearlyone-century retrospection, Chinese people got aware of the necessity of revitalizing nationalconsciousness and national culture, and of cultivating a global vision as well.Global vision tends to be a critical factor in the creative evolution and modernizationof Chinese flower-bird painting, which is not only the demand of Chinese cultural but theneed of world culture. The aesthetic meaning of the flower-bird painting lies more in theintegration of the non-visual factors such as human feelings, minds, thoughts, creativity, andvitality than the mere expression of human feelings and thoughts through physical subjects bymeans of the artistic devices “Fubixing”. What’s more, the innovation of flower-bird painting also embodies the interaction of Chinese spirits, artistic concepts and artistic techniques,which is able to make people perceive its cultural taste and distinct artistic personality andfertile human nature.Now, the Chinese painting has entered the stage of “image-conveyance-heart”.“Image”is far easier than “conveyance of heart” as Gogol said “Outer looks is the only path to aman’s inner world.” With the world developing at an unprecedented speed, human aestheticvalues and ways of perception change accordingly with the modern civilization. The questionthat how the paintings approach the human nature and represent contemporary aestheticvalues is significant to the study focusing on non-visual factors of bird-flower paintings. Thethesis aims at the exploration of the connotation, contributing factors and practicalpresentation of the non-visual factors. The author proposes that non-visual factors containthree main elements, namely, the spirit of the times, painter subjects—the expression of theirmind, feelings, thoughts and love for life, receiver objects—their interaction andinterpenetration.