The study examines Chinese oil painting from the early stages of formation to the end of the XX — the beginning of the XXI century. Despite the constant interest of art historians and scientists in the question of oil painting of China, it remains insufficiently studied.
The need for a generalization study on this topic is urgent in Eastern European countries, which in the process of internal transformation in the political, social and cultural spheres make the most of their efforts to study their own arts history, while the world experience, in particular Chinese one, is very important for the formation of the national art science science.
To clarify the essence of the influence of the European realistic art traditions on Chinese painting, in order to reveal the rules of the transformation of Chinese art in the XXth - the beginning of the XXIst century the dissertation research includes the following parts:
analysis of the published sources on the chosen subject, which resulted in comprehensive description of the cultural and historical background of the emergence of oil painting in China; revealing of the role of European influences on the transformation of concepts and the search for artistic forms in Chinese painting from the early stages of its emergence to the establishing of artistic higher education institutions; the discovery of key features of the transformations in Chinese oil painting after 1949 by the most illustrative examples, the disclosure of significance of these features for the further development of Chinese art; the analysis of peculiarities of artistic processes in the late XXth — the beginning XXIst century in Chinese oil painting, demonstration of the similarities and differences of the transformations that took place during the periods of the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of the reform and openness period; substantiation of the main trends found in the emergence and development of the stylistic peculiarities inherent in contemporary Chinese painting; research and systematization of the genre variety of the work of Chinese artists of the XXth - the early XXIst century; identification of techniques, technologies, materials used in Chinese painting of the studied period, tracing of the relationship between the introduction of new tools into the artist’s practice and the external influences on Chinese art.
The dissertation is a comprehensive detailed study of the influence of European art traditions on the Chinese ones, given that new persons, facts, documentary materials were introduced into scientific discourse, and their influence on the painting of China of the studied period was evidences. The work of the artists who went to study abroad at the beginning of the twentieth century to develop and raise the cultural level of their homeland is explored in this thesis Finding the new artistic styles, examples of western painting, adoption of advanced Western technologies and ideas became for old China the necessary steps in its struggle to keep pace with the progress in the global artistic culture. The important role of the emergence of artistic educational institutions for establishment of modern Chinese art is described in the thesis.
Both negative and positive factors of the influence of Soviet art on Chinese art have been analyzed by the examples of creativity of artists and educational activities of professors, those from China and invitees from the USSR. The advantages of the Soviet model of academic artistic education for the formation of Chinese oil painting school have also been revealed. The influence of the above model on the development of Chinese art in general has been analyzed. The peculiarities of the Chinese variant of socialist realism have been studied and reviewed in the thesis.
The changes in techniques and stylistics of oil painting during the period of the Cultural Revolution are revealed. A striking feature of that period was the new artistic ideal, the romanticism and heroization of both the communist elite and ordinary people in the plot of the class struggle, the construction of a new communist society, etc. First of all, it was the result of political pressure, which led to the disfigured beauty and nobility in the pictures, and rather monotonous scenes and techniques.
