Zhuxian Town Wood Print New Year Picture

Zhuxian Town Wood Print New Year Picture

Zhuxianzhen Wood Engraving New Year Picture is one of the ancient Chinese traditional crafts. As the originator of Chinese woodcut New Year pictures, is mainly distributed in Kaifeng, Zhuxian Town and its surrounding areas in Henan Province. Zhuxian Town woodcut New Year pictures have full composition, rough and concise lines, simple and exaggerated shapes, fresh and brilliant colors.

On May 20, 2006, Zhuxian Town woodcut New Year pictures were approved by the State Council and listed in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.

Historical Origin

Zhuxianzhen woodcut New Year pictures were born in Tang Dynasty, flourished in Song Dynasty and flourished in Ming Dynasty.

In the early Northern Song Dynasty, Tokyo, the capital of the Song Dynasty, was the political, economic and cultural center of the country. Businessmen from all over the country flocked to the capital. The huge citizen class promoted the development of secular literature and art, and the active secular literature and art provided abundant soil for the creation of New Year pictures. With the invention of movable-type printing, China's woodblock printing industry has been booming. Since then, New Year's pictures have also changed from brushwork to engraving printing. At that time, the printing and sales of Tokyo woodblock New Year pictures were unprecedented. Not only did the folk workshops spread all over the capital, but also the official court of the Song Dynasty presided over the opening of the New Year's Painting Workshop. The integration of government-run and private workshops makes the development of woodcut New Year's pictures inevitable.

In the late Northern Song Dynasty, due to the invasion of Jinbing, Kyoto was occupied, and the prosperous civic culture gradually declined. A large number of artists of New Year's paintings are living in the south of the Yangtze River. The wood engraving industry in Tokyo has moved to Zhuxian Town, 45 miles away from Tokyo.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Zhuxian Town was a commercial town in the Central Plains. Wood engraving New Year's pictures recovered rapidly in prosperous commercial ports, with flourishing sales and a great reputation. According to reports, at that time, Zhuxian Town engaged in this industry more than 300.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, because of the blockage of the rivers in Zhuxianzhen and the inaccessibility of the waterways, the woodcut New Year pictures and other businesses became increasingly depressed.

In the early period of the Republic of China, there were more than 40 production workshops in the town and more than 2000 people engaged in the production of New Year's paintings. Customers from Shandong, Anhui, Hebei and Jiangsu flocked to the town. There were Wantong, Jinyongtai, Tianxingde, Deshengchang, Tianyide, Tianchengde, Datiancheng, Ertiancheng, Deyuan Chang, Wansheng, Sanchengyi and so on.

Before the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Zhuxianzhen's woodcut New Year painting industry moved to Kaifeng. Since then, the third climax of woodcut New Year painting prosperity has been set off. At that time, there were more than 60 New Year's Painting Workshops in Kaifeng, mainly concentrated in East Street, West Street, Zhongshan Road and Bookstore Street. Famous old shops are Huichuan, Zhenyuan Yong, Yunji, Hongji, Tianwei, etc.

After 1949, Kaifeng City has established the Kaifeng New Year Painting Society, Henan Zhuxian Town Wood Engraving New Year Painting Society and other organizations to excavate and sort out the traditional craft of wood engraving New Year Painting .

artistic characteristics

Expressive techniques

Zhuxianzhen woodcut New Year pictures come from the folk and spread among the people. They are different from the gentle and elegant style of palace literati paintings in past dynasties. It is bold and unrestrained in line, vivid in plot, full and symmetrical in composition, simple and vivid in image, strong in color, rich in decorative effect, and has distinct local characteristics.

In terms of expressive techniques, Zhuxianzhen New Year's Pictures absorb traditional painting techniques and rich and colorful decorative techniques to create lifelike stories of characters, but they can do just right without deliberately describing the backdrop of the characters. Zhuxianzhen woodcut New Year pictures deal with pictures and portray characters in a concise, clear and exaggerated way. For the image of God only, especially the head image, the body proportion is exaggerated, very infectious. The most prominent feature of Zhu Xianzhen's New Year's Pictures is that the characters are handsome and handsome without glamour.

Zhuxianzhen New Year's Pictures originated from the folk, experienced the hands of artists and integrated into the aesthetic concept of traditional national culture and the sense of worship of god, reflecting the peasants'desire for a prosperous grain, prosperity, harmony, peace and auspiciousness, the prosperity of six animals and other good life aspirations, as well as the ideological feelings of strengthening the right and dispelling evil spirits, love and hate.

Zhuxianzhen wood engraving New Year pictures inherited the fine traditional artistic techniques of ancient China, and formed its own local characteristics: the whole picture is full, compact and tight, basically without leaving blanks, can achieve a clear primary and secondary, the main body is prominent, not cumbersome, showing a uniform and symmetrical pattern of decorative taste. The artists also use the scattered perspective method of Chinese painting, so that everything can clearly show the subject and serve the subject. The arrangement of the picture will not make people feel unreasonable .

Technological characteristics

Zhuxianzhen woodcut New Year's pictures are made by combining woodcut with engraving. Watermarking is used in a variety of colors. The raw materials used are processing procedures. Paper is exquisite, colorful and solemn. Most of the themes and contents are based on historical dramas, romances, myths and folklores. New Year's pictures have strong local flavor, strong folk interest, unique local color and simple and ancient national style.

Zhuxianzhen woodcut New Year's picture knife skill line is rough and bold, thick and thin, strong contrast between Yin and Yang. Especially on the clothes of the God portrait painting, it is more prominent, with the local flavor, with the simple, thick, robust and neat artistic style of the northern nation .

Application of color

Zhuxianzhen woodcut New Year's pictures are very particular about the use of color. They use minerals and plants as raw materials and grind the pigments by hand. The color of the pigments is very pure. The New Year's pictures printed by them are bright and bright, and will not fade for a long time.

Zhuxianzhen New Year's Pictures pay great attention to the appreciation habits of the Chinese nation. They mostly use three primary colors: green, yellow and red. The total number of colors used can reach 9-10. Folk people often say: "yellow see purple, ugly to death", and Kaifeng Zhuxian Town New Year Painting yellow and purple two-color collocation, thick color, strong contrast, not only not ugly suspicion, but bright color, and folk New Year's joy in harmony with the atmosphere.

Zhuxianzhen New Year Pictures advocate the use of warm colors, such as red, wood red, peach red, Sophora yellow, orange and so on, which appear warm and unrestrained. Color plate settings are: black line version (black embryo), water-black version, red version, face plate (wood red), purple version (sunflower purple), green version (copper green), green version, blue version, yellow version (plate yellow) and so on. Character costumes are mainly made of wood red, bronze green and sunflower purple, which blend the color of secular life into the religious color pattern of God worship. For example, "Zhenzhai Zhongkui" red-crowned green robe; "Kitchen horse" in the kitchen master for red robe, kitchen milk for green robe; "Guanye" for red-faced green robe. It is also the unique style of Zhuxianzhen's New Year's paintings to adorn people's eyelids with Guangdan, such as Zhao Kuangxu, Yang Kung, Guo Ziyi, Jiaguan Jinlu, Chai Rong, Chai Rong, Li Siyuan, Wang Yanzhang, and Horse Whip in Huotang Village (copper hammer for jade belt), Guo Ziyi, Landing in Jiaguan Jinlu, Chai Rong in Chai King's cart, and Li Xiyuan, Wang Yanzhang in Goujiatan. Qin Shubao and Lieutenant Chi Gong in order to show the distinct aesthetic personality of the characters.

Composition Skills

Zhuxian Town woodcut New Year pictures have full composition, simple lines, simple and exaggerated shapes, fresh and bright colors. The characters are big and small, both comic and comfortable. In some places, people in New Year's paintings often wear red cheeks to decorate their faces, while those in Zhuxian Town do not wear red cheeks, which looks natural and harmonious. In traditional Chinese folk arts and crafts, tigers are mostly made or painted as yellow tigers or red tigers, while the New Year paintings of Zhuxian Town are black tigers. This kind of creative technique, which is not rigid to the tradition, has been valued and praised by the Chinese and foreign art circles .

Manufacturing Technology

Zhuxianzhen woodcut New Year's pictures are made with exquisite craftsmanship.

The first step is to select the best solid pear wood for engraving. Before engraving, apply vegetable oil on the surface of the board three or four times. After natural drying, rinse with top boiling hot water. Then use a special scraper to scrape off the oil slick on the board surface. The artist calls it "ripe plate". In the early years, wood carving tools were mostly self-made, including carving knives, sewing knives, article files, Gong files, scrapers, shovels, hammers and more than 20 pieces. Later, the engraver also used a set of special engraving knives.

The printing tools of New Year's pictures are mostly local materials, which are made of the hairs and browns on the top of local wild plants and tied with ropes.

Grass conical color brush, one color brush can not be mixed.

There are also hammers, sandbags, brushing and other auxiliary tools.

The paper used for New Year's pictures was mostly made of cheap local paper and fur-edged paper. Since the Qing Dynasty, Japanese oil-gloss paper with large specifications and good toughness has been used for New Year's pictures. Later, traditional Chinese rice paper was used for printing.

200 New Year pictures are one "block". When printing, the paper is clamped on the self-made bamboo clip according to the number of sheets and "block". After the paper is clamped, one end is inserted into the "pipe nail" and the other end is placed in the self-made grey brick trough. The paper folds in an "S" shape.

Printing black line plate requires both hands to make the line clear and solid. The whole set of movements and processes requires clear-sighted, quick-handed and close cooperation between hands and eyes, and must be devoted to meticulousness with all one's heart and soul.

The color plate contains more color than the line plate, and the paper with too much force is rotten easily, and the color block with too little force is not solid. Left-handed exercise "wake" as a sweep, each process requires careful operation.

High-end New Year pictures and God portraits of the eyes, beard, clothing need to add a set of ink, gold powder, set color up to nine times. Ordinary New Year pictures are printed in six colors: black, yellow, red, red, green and purple.

The sequence of color matching is: first printing black, then yellow, then red, green, green, and some of the drawings need to be added with water red, or face printing.

It takes several hours for the color to "eat" into the paper after the painting is finished. In the evening, "air" again, just right to air.

Zhuxianzhen woodcut New Year's pictures are very particular about printing color. Artists use traditional stir-frying, boiling, filtering and other multi-channel color matching technology, elaborate processing. Make the New Year paintings more bright and colorful. They add alum and lime to green and purple. Purple and green should be fermented fully, and foam should be adjusted when making the colors. The remaining tea water is added to the color, and when the painting is aired, it will not stick to each other, etc. .

Inheritance and Development

In fact, the origin of wood engraving New Year pictures in Zhuxian Town is not entirely in the town. All the villages around the town have artists who set up small workshops to make production. Zhuxian Town is just a distribution center. The town's largest and largest workshops can reach more than 300, which shows its large scale. The annual output of woodcut New Year pictures reaches 3 million. Besides being sold to Henan Province, it is also exported to Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, Fujian, Ningxia and other places. It sells nearly half of China's radiation, which shows the great influence of woodcut New Year pictures.

In 1961, woodcut New Year pictures were restored and developed, and the "New Year Picture Production Co-operatives of Zhuxian Town, Kaifeng City" was established.

In 1983, the Provincial Press and Publishing Administration approved the establishment of "Kaifeng Zhuxian Town Wood Printing New Year Picture Society".

In 1986, with the support of Kaifeng Tourism Bureau, Zhuxian Town Party Committee and the government, Zhuxian Town of Kaifeng County established the "Kaifeng Zhuxian Town Wood Engraving New Year Picture Society". It undertook the excavation, collection and arrangement of woodcut New Year pictures. The establishment of Zhuxian Town Wood Engraving New Year Picture Club marks the opportunity of inheritance and development of Zhuxian Town Wood Engraving New Year Pictures. There is a professional organization for the inheritance and development of Zhuxian Town Wood Engraving New Year Pictures.

In 1987, Kaifeng Municipal Association approved the establishment of "Zhuxian Town Wood Printing New Year Picture Research Association".

In October 2003, Zhuxian Town was awarded the title of "Town of Chinese Wood Engraving New Year Painting Art" by the state.

In 2004, the Kaifeng Museum established the "Kaifeng Zhuxian Town Wood Printing Research and Protection Center".

In May 2006, Zhuxian Town woodcut New Year pictures were listed in the first batch of "national intangible cultural heritage list" .

In June 2006, Zhuxianzhen Wood Engraving New Year Picture participated in Hangzhou World Leisure Expo and won the Gold Prize.

In July 2006, he participated in China Midwest Craft Exhibition and won the Gold Prize.

In 2006, with the provincial, municipal and county people's associations, the compilation of "Chinese Wood Engraving New Year Picture Integration - Zhuxian Town New Year Picture Scroll" was completed.

In November 2006, through Henan Business Department, it was qualified for export.

In October 2006, Zhuxianzhen Wood Engraving New Year Picture Society was named "Henan Cultural Relics Copy Research and Development Base" by Henan Cultural Relics Administration.

In 2006, Zhuxianzhen Wood Engraving New Year Picture was designated as the practice training base of fine arts and film and television by Zhongyuan Institute of Technology, Zhongyuan Film and Television Institute and Zhengzhou Light Industry Institute.

The wood engraving New Year pictures in Zhuxian Town are not only of great artistic collection value, but also of great ornamental value. Kaifeng has excavated and sorted out more than 220 old New Year's pictures, reprinted more than 300 sets of historical old New Year's pictures, and compiled "Kaifeng Zhuxian Town Wood Engraving New Year Pictures Selection", "Zhuxian Town Wood Engraving New Year Pictures Collection" and "Zhuxian Town Wood Engraving New Year Pictures Stories Collection", which have done a lot of useful work for the protection of traditional wood engraving New Year Pictures.

The government of Zhuxian Town has increased the training of talents and the protection, inheritance and development of old artists. As of 2010, more than 70 people were engaged in woodcut New Year printing in Zhuxian Town. One was named "first-class folk artist" by UNESCO, five were members of the Chinese Association of Folk Literature and Art Artists, five were masters of Henan Province's Folk Arts and Crafts, six were artists, 25 were members of the Provincial People's Association, and four were natural protection villages of woodcut New Year pictures. 。

One of the important reasons hindering the development of Zhuxianzhen wood engraving New Year pictures is that high-quality traditional wood engraving New Year pictures are impacted too much by low-price commodities, and the market foundation of traditional wood engraving New Year pictures is relatively weak. Due to the homogeneity of commodities in the market of new year pictures, improper competition means such as rough manufacturing and sub-filling constantly appear, if necessary. With the encouragement and support of all parties, it is difficult for Zhuxian Town's woodcut New Year Pictures to have a long-term foothold in the market, thus causing the development crisis of the traditional culture of Zhuxian Town's woodcut New Year Pictures.

In 2016, Kaifeng Zhuxian Town Wood Engraving New Year Picture Group, a state-owned group jointly established by the Xiangfu District Government of Kaifeng City and Rhino Club (Beijing) Information Technology Group, came into being . With the authorization of Kaifeng Municipal Government, the Group has the sole right to operate the woodcut New Year pictures in Zhuxian Town. And all Zhuxianzhen Wood Printing New Year Pictures produced by Kaifeng Zhuxianzhen Wood Printing Group will be printed with pure plant mineral dyes. Although this process has been lost for nearly a hundred years with the changes of the times, Zhuxianzhen Wood Printing New Year Pictures Group has finally restored the ancient plant mineral dye printing through Ingenious Development of ancient methods and long-term repeated experiments. System. Choosing the national "non-legacy" paper to make four pieces of paper, and using traditional technology to make the wood engraving New Year pictures of Zhuxian Town, it will also adapt to the current people's aesthetic view, continue the traditional cultural and craft works, and inherit the traditional technology and craft on the premise of preserving the traditional characteristics of the current era.

On November 20, 2016, "China Kaifeng Zhuxian Town Wood Engraving Industry Development Seminar and Brand Press" was held at Diaoyutai State Guest House in Beijing .

Subject form

In Zhuxianzhen's woodcut New Year pictures, the door gods are mostly painted by Qin Qiong and Wei Chigong. They are either dressed differently or in different shapes: step down the whip, immediately whip, turn back the whip, hold the whip, vertical knife, robe, etc., no less than 20 styles. In addition, there are all kinds of cultural and military gods. Wenmen gods include five sons, nine lotus lanterns, Fu Lushou, etc. Wumen gods are often loyal ministers and loyal men and heroes of all kinds in operas. Different people often stick different contents of door gods: married children's door sticking "Tianxian to send children", "Liansheng Guizi", "Sanniang Godfather"; middle-aged people's door sticking "Jiaguan Jinlu", "Bubu Liansheng"; old people's door sticking "Songhe Yannian" and "Shouxing" and so on; young people's room door sticking "Five sons to win the championship", "Liu". Sea Opera Golden Bug, etc.

There are drawings for adults to play games (like checkers), such as Baiding, Xiucai, Liren, Jinshi, Zhuangyuan to Cabinet elders. They are promoted to ranks and titles step by step, so they are called "Promotion Map". The spiral upgraded game maps printed with yuan bao, jewelry, firewood splitting and keys are specially used for children's games, commonly known as "catching up with small maps".

There are also dragons and phoenixes used by men and women to fix a marriage (for small posts), flowers and wrapping paper to beautify the environment, paper and painting fans for the Dragon Boat Festival, and "Moonlight Bodhisattva" for the Mid-Autumn Festival to offer sacrifices to the moon.

There are also varieties specially used for Zha's "social fire", with many characters and large scenes, mostly opposite and full-size. There are many kinds of flower paper "table skirts" used for sheltering sundries and decorating the environment, but most of them have been lost.

Family hall paintings are images of three generations of deceased ancestors, also known as ancestral throne, which are used as simple ancestral worship places for poor farmers. The picture is divided into three layers, with great-grandparents and grandparents on top, parents in middle, and celebrating the New Year with celebration of the whole family, with celebration of the celestial officials, boys, girls, money-spinners, treasure troughs, halberds, helmet, gold ingots and jewelry on the bottom. Protect the family's prosperity and well-being by praying for the soul of the ancestors in heaven: encourage the descendants to strive for earth and shine their ancestors. Because it is mostly pasted in the middle of the hall, it is called "home hall", which has a variety of specifications and styles .