Melancholy Beauty Of Female Images In Ai Xuan’s Oil Paintings

Female image occupies an important position in the development of painting.Female carriage beauty is one of t he reasons that makes artists never bored with c hoosing female image as a topic.Female temperaments like deli cate,sentimental and m elancholy win the good grace of artists as w ell.As a commonly used aesthetic type,melancholy beauty of female image is the representation of artistic accomplishment and aesthetic pursuit of artists.It also reflects their spiritual pursuits and understandings of the time they are living.As one of the founders and representatives of Chinese realistic painting,Ai Xuan enjoys high reputation in contemporary painting and has contributed much to the development of Chinese realistic oil painting.Being released from the depression of the Culture Revolution,Ai rode the wave of the reform and opening-up policy and studied the oil painting skill and aesthetic thoughts from the western.Finally,he found his spiritual pursuit in painting from the works of Andrew Wyeth,who is a master of American nostalgic.He started to quest for his own artistic style on the way of his learning thereafter.The first part of this thesis analyzed the formation of melancholy traits in his painting based on his family background,personal experience and social befall.Ai grew up in the absence of the caring of his parents.After graduated from high school a ttached to academy of fine arts,he went down to the countryside for labor training.Special identity of his father made him despised by others because of the strict political system at that time.All of these m ade foundations to th e melancholy tone of his works.After suf fering from depression and ademonia during the Culture Revolution,Ai learned to face his own emotion from“Trauma Art”.He expresses his inner world by unpretending lyrical tactics learning from Wyeth.The second part analyzed his unique artistic style.Firstl y,by eluc idating the culture factors of Ai’s works from the perspective of Chinese and western painting,this pa per explained Ai’s understanding towards western humanism and traditional Chinese artistic conception.Then,this thesis analyzed the Ai’s female image’s melancholy beauty in his paintings from four perspectives,namely anxieties for society,anxieties for life,cherish time and cherish life.The t hird part discove red the female image’s melancholy beauty in hi s paintings from his artisti c language.By using sentimental and poetic titles,rendering chilly and lonely scenes,arranging unique composition of the picture,combing concrete and abstract language,Ai expresses his understanding towards female image’s melancholy beauty thoroughly.The last part elaborated the artistic value and influence of female image’s melancholy beauty in Ai’s paintings.He set a good example for us in fem ale painting and discovering female melancholy beauty.He has attained a high position in contemporary art history because of his caring about female and he can face to face with his life in his paintings.This thesis tried to put Ai’s female image’s melancholy in his paintings into the background of chance,era and culture.Via the analysis of t he selection of the theme,expression techniques,color application and artistic language,an overall analyzation of Ai’s female image’s melancholy in his paintings from multi-angle and multi-level has achieved.Hoping that this thesis will be able to provide reference for the relevant research.