The dissertation is devoted to the study of artistic pictorial principles in modern Chinese painting. A certain “philosophical nature” of scientific discourse is a natural feature of reasoning about art, which is oriented towards the search for universal norms. As the study shows, for Chinese scholars, pictorial principles constitute a system, therefore, they are generalized and understood in the universal context of art perception. This is precisely what can explain the practical lack of research on individual pictorial principles.
Object of research: the development of Chinese fine arts in the second half of the 20th – early 21st centuries. Subject of research: artistic pictorial principles as a toolkit for the artistic language of modern Chinese painting.
The dissertation first introduces into scientific circulation a significant amount of Chinese professional scientific literature on the research topic; identifies the main artistic pictorial principles in the evolution of Chinese fine arts of the specified period of time; investigates and summarizes the formal and compositional features of the development of the artistic language of Chinese painting in the second half of the 20th – early 21st centuries in the context of the functioning of the system of pictorial principles; reveals and analyzes pictorial trends of graphicity and polystylism in the context of the figurative and stylistic development of Chinese painting. The dissertation consists of an introduction, three chapters, conclusions, a list of sources used and appendices.
The first section, entitled “History, Sources and Research Methods” examines the Ukrainian and foreign historiography of the problem. Particular attention is paid to the issues of the pictorial principles of Chinese modern painting in the works of Ukrainian researchers, the essence of the issues and the forms of its interpretation in Chinese studies on art are analyzed. A separate component of the analysis is Western studies of the problem of the artistic language of Chinese painting, which were formed in the field of Oriental studies in the second half of the 20th - early 21st centuries.
The second section, entitled “Artistic pictorial principles in the context of formal and compositional approaches of Chinese fine art”, explores the issue of representation of form, which raises the issue of the correspondence of figurative search to objects and forms that reflect the surrounding reality through artistic means. It is noted that the “formal language” is represented by means of pictorial principles, which in the context of the conceptual categories of Chinese art criticism can be generalized within two mutually related groups, namely, expression and aesthetic generalization of form. The first group combines structural issues that are mainly related in one way or another to the interpretation of the technical features of oil painting. The second group considers the issues of the figurative foundations of the representation of the depicted.
It is concluded that in modern Chinese oil painting, the formal characteristics are based on the imitative nature of artistic generalization, which is associated with the artist's ability to "appropriate" certain aspects of reality, to generalize them with his own point of view on the world.
The third section, entitled “Pictorial Principles as a Toolkit of Artistic Language”, explores the system of means of expression that is represented in modern Chinese painting through the category of imagery and the features of coloristic solutions. The study of approaches and models of representing color as a pictorial principle in modern Chinese painting allows us to distinguish two approaches: figurative-plastic, which regulates color relations in the context of formal decisions and compositional integrity of the work; and emotional-figurative, which focuses artists’ attention on issues of speculative perception of color and represents the relations of color and form as sign-symbolic references.
The text of the chapter proves that in Chinese painting the system of pictorial principles has a direct relationship to the symbolic characteristics of the artistic image. This is reflected not only in classical approaches, but also in the formation of the Western school of xianghua, in the context of which the symbolism of Chinese artistic imagery has acquired a full-fledged modern meaning.
The dissertation ends with meaningful conclusions that summarize the results of the research and correspond to the defined positions of scientific novelty, the goal and objectives of the dissertation.
