The incident of the chicken and the worm goes beyond what the villagers see in daily life and the striking contrast highlights the artistic technique of exaggeration. Besides, the painting is closely related to the Chinese traditional arts of embroidering, batik (a kind of coloring method),paper cutting, and wall painting.
The above brushworks bear the distinctive quality inpapercuts that are signs of good fortune and are pasted on house and restaurant windows. Chicken and fish serve as the common subjects of Chinese folk art in that the Chinese words of ji and yu sound like the term for auspiciousness and plenty respectively.
Moreover, The rural elegance that comes with peasant paintings spreads out the smell of vegetations in thewildernessas compared with the urban life -- noise of business. This feature helps give Chinese peasant paintings their edge and accounts for the folk art attracting more favorable attention in recent years.
Chinese peasant painting, as an art genre, first emerged in the 1950s and took shape in the 1970s. After decades of development, it demonstrates strong momentum as quite a few counties are titled "Painting Villages" nationwide. The famed folk painting centers are Huxian, Ansai, Longmen, Wuyang, and Xinji. Now let's look at this traditional brushwork in detail.
Huxian is located 38 kilometers southwest ofXi'anCity (In North China'sShaanxi Province), the ancient capital renowned by the cultural heritage of the Qin-Dynasty (221-206BC)terracotta warriors, the old city wall, and thedrum tower. Picturesque in nature, the local people in Huxian have kept up the fine tradition of drawing the dynamic scenes of their daily life. Due to their outstanding achievements in developing this folk art since 1950s, the stateMinistry of Culturein 1988 awarded the region the honorary title of "a Village of Chinese Modern Folk Painting," Huxian paintings feature notable regional tones, marked by pictorial landscape and the rustic life.
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