On The "formal Meaning" Of Whistler's Paintings

Long settled in England James Abbott McNeil Whistler(James Abbott Mc Neill Whistler,1834-1903),the art of narrative features different from the traditional British painting,a continental art characteristics of the pursuit of the beauty of form,the Defamiliarization of artistic techniques and the sense of distance image is completely different from the people on the traditional classical painting aesthetic style,especially the sense of music emphasizes synesthesia,become the main aspect of theorists criticism.The reason is that he replaced the conflict of picture plot with the conflict of "form meaning" in painting and subverted the expression of traditional Chinese painting’s "proper" stylization,which has the characteristics of Formalistic Aesthetics.Contact the formalism development of painting and aesthetics can be seen that the influence of Whistler’s painting "form means" super utilitarian by aestheticism,symbolism and other genres of popular pre-Raphaelitism,the pursuit of "art for art" aesthetic ideal.He expressed visual feelings in the form of a painting language,as the subject of the feeling of natural objects,not a narrative scene.Whistler can see "beauty" in a developmental way.He has grasped the pulse of art development and has advanced nature,so that British art has come into contact with the art concept of European avant-garde.Different from the French painter Cezanne in the form of the pursuit of pure reason picture,a Whistler retains the British tradition of painting Chinese of poetry;and at the same time,the different pre-Raphaelite painting form,before the content,the content is from the point of view of form.It is a non-utilitarian feature that is based on the image of "Defamiliarization" and the image of a sense of distance from the reality of the new form of beauty.In composition,Whistler combines the Defamiliarization perspective with the rational form arrangement through the subjective reconstruction of the picture,transforming the traditional painting constitution method into the modern language form language.The pursuit of picture experience made Whistler more unique and innovative in composition,and achieved the form meaning of non-utilitarianism through defamiliarization.In the shape,Whistler borrowed the exotic ornament and the plane modeling technique to make the painting shape and reality and make the content of the picture distance from the reality.In color,Whistler sought the pure feeling of music.It emphasizes the "form meaning" of the sense of color music,and the expressiveness of color is the most important.Through the arrangement of the form and color,the classical traditional painting hue to the eternal pursuit,in the form of color of the development of the form.It made the spirit of classical art inherit in modernist art and played an important turning point in the transition from Aestheticism to Russian formalism.It provided a direction for the later Russian Formalism’s abstract painting.