Folk Art at the National Museum
Now on display at the National Museum of Art is a rare glimpse of the museum’s folk art collection, the gifts of the devoted folk art researcher Wang Shucun, who carefully preserved and hid these items throughout many turbulent years of history. The exhibition only runs until April 14, but is highly recommended.
Its not rare to see “folk arts” in Beijing, dreams of tourist dollars inspire the same kitschy souvenir-style junk that is available all over the nation. But before the internet, the tourist dollar, television, industrial printing, and before the Cultural Revolution, the Nianhua was a very unique form of folk art developed in China. Nianhua are colorful pictures hung in homes to celebrate the new year, tiehua, the practice of “hanging pictures” was once an integral holiday custom. People still hang posters, but the hand printed and painted art form of nianhua is near obsolete. However, in a pre-industrial society, the incredible production speeds, line assembly, and low production costs of nianhua could have been called a “Chinese characteristic,” indeed the production mode of contemporary art from China has also become a new trend in critical analysis.
China’s common folk have been producing printed nianhua on an ever increasing scale since the Song dynasty, the practice fell out of fashion with industrial printing techniques and was abruptly put to an end during political campaigns of the last century. These block printing methods developed in China evolved into personality cults in Japan, evidenced in print artists like Hiroshige; however in China, entire towns became famous for their different production methods and distinctive styles, sometimes varying by only the colors available. These styles are evidenced in excellent surviving examples of work, and those displayed here encompass the most important nianhua production zones from across China.
Printing methods varied in different regions, but almost all were produced with assembly line methods. In a unique combination of block prints and hand-tinting popular in north China and centered in the city of Yangliuqing (a suburb of Tianjin), an outline was stamped on the page, and then a row of painters repeated one specialized motion until the painting was complete: first the outline was laid in broad strokes, others specialized in a few strokes might create a flower in a vase, and lastly, another finished off with red lips and eyes. Their strokes were practiced and quick, often times the printed outline is visible below the paint (as in photo at left).
Nianhua served a variety of purposes: obviously meant to bring in good luck and prosperity, they also kept out the bad (in the form of ‘Door Gods’), they also provided a festive atmosphere and were also used for teaching ethics and morals, they narrated historical tales or opera stories, and still others were meant to be used as games, like pre-modern board games. When scenes from historical tales were represented, a title and the names of the key figures would be printed besides their representation, and family elders would tell the stories; some narratives feature film-still like action that could be read either horizontally or vertically. If China had a comic history, it wouldn’t be any closer than this.
Nianhua and door gods of this caliber are rarely seen in China, most examples in this exhibition are Qing dynasty; targeted as “superstitious,” the inexpensive and fragile paper works were almost all lost or destroyed in the “destroy four olds” posijiu campaign of the Cultural Revolution. These fine examples shouldn’t be missed, this is most likely the most comprehensive collection of nianhua, and of the highest quality, that will be seen in Beijing for years to come.
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