Hometown of New Year pictures. Mianzhu New Year Picture is one of the four major New Year Pictures in China, which enjoys a good reputation at home and abroad. It was named "the hometown of China folk art (folk woodcut New Year pictures)" by the Ministry of Culture 1993. Mianzhu New Year Pictures, as one of the four major New Year Pictures in China, originated in the Ming Dynasty and flourished in the Qing Dynasty. Its production scale reached its peak during the Qianlong Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty. Mianzhu New Year Pictures have a strong local flavor and local characteristics, which mainly include avoiding evil spirits and welcoming auspicious, local customs, drama stories, history and culture, myths and legends, etc. Mianzhu New Year Pictures were invited to be exhibited in more than 50 countries in Europe, Asia, North and South America, and were favored by foreign art circles.
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Mianzhu makes full use of the good ecological environment and beautiful natural scenery along the mountain, especially the 40,000 mu pear garden and other resources, and strives to create a sightseeing and leisure rural tourism boutique of "enjoying flowers in spring, enjoying the cool in summer, enjoying fruits in autumn and watching snow in winter". Up to now, seven Mianzhu New Year Pictures Festival, nine Sichuan Mianzhu Pear Flower Festival, Mianzhu Fruit Appreciation Festival and the first Pomelo Flower Festival have been successfully held. The natural scenery of Yinxinggou, Nanmugou and Xuanlanggou attracts many tourists. The excavation of the ruins of Jiannanchun's "Tianyilao" winery was rated as one of the top ten new archaeological discoveries in China. Jiannan Old Street, Hu Yun National Forest Park and other tourist attractions are under construction and development. As the saying goes: "There is something in the world, and there is something in the play; There are in the play and in the painting. " This sentence illustrates a truth: all art comes from life. Both drama art and painting art reflect the rich and colorful social life. Painting belongs only to art, while drama is a comprehensive art including painting, music, dance and language. Stage scenery, facial makeup, costumes and props are dramatic expressions of painting art.
But there is a scene in the painting, and it is also an art form to express the drama content with painting. We can see many scenes of hundreds of dramas and dances on the brick of Han Dynasty in Sichuan, such as Seeing Keith, Jumping Pills, Acrobatics, Camel Dance and so on. Especially at present, when we are excavating and sorting out the traditional Sichuan opera art, we can also find some repertoires that have never been discovered from a large number of stone carvings, woodcuts and paintings preserved in history, or get some useful enlightenment from them. Because of this, in the process of collecting and studying the famous Mianzhu traditional New Year pictures, we have noticed some information about Sichuan Opera in the past and now, and obtained some words from it.
Mianzhu New Year Pictures and Drama
Sichuan Mianzhu New Year pictures have a long history. According to Mianzhu County Chronicle, Mianzhu New Year Pictures made great achievements as early as the Ming Dynasty. In fact, as early as the Tang and Song Dynasties, woodcut prints appeared in Chengdu. The Record of Ancient and Modern Chengdu written by Yu Shizhen (1008- 1084) in the Northern Song Dynasty described Futao City in Chengdu in mid-December, that is, the New Year picture market. Most of the New Year pictures in Fu Tao are provided by Mianzhu, Jiajiang and other neighboring counties. This is because Mianzhu and Jiajiang are famous places for producing paper, and block printing is also quite developed. Mianzhu County was named after many bamboos on both sides of Mianshui River in the Han Dynasty, that is, as recorded in Mianzhu County Records: "If the bamboo paper is insufficient, it will be printed as a book and made into a peach title (New Year picture). According to textual research, Mianzhu New Year pictures began in the Song Dynasty, flourished in the Qing Dynasty and declined in the Republic of China. In the Qing dynasty, it was the most prosperous period. At that time, there were more than 300 New Year pictures workshops in urban and rural areas of the county (about 90 in cities), with more than 0/000 employees in the county. Large and small painting market stalls stretch for more than ten kilometers, with unprecedented pomp. At that time, New Year pictures sold well in Yunnan, Guizhou, Gansu, Shaanxi, Hubei, Qinghai, Tibet and other places, and were also exported to some countries in Southeast Asia. Mianzhu New Year pictures have a wide range of themes, covering the following aspects: exorcism, folk customs, life and production, flowers, birds, insects and fish, romantic figures, myths and legends, and drama stories. After long-term development and innovation, these New Year pictures have formed a unique artistic style. Its composition is complete and full, the characters are exaggerated and distorted, the lines are Gu Zhuo, and the colors are vivid and vivid, which conforms to the theme of the picture and the appreciation habits of the masses. Mianzhu New Year pictures are also quite different from other famous New Year pictures in color, and they are good at hand painting, which is different from other overprinter-based New Year pictures.
Mianzhu, as an ancient historical city, was very prosperous in the early Qing Dynasty. In the fifty-first year of Kangxi (A.D. 17 12), Lu Jiyong, the magistrate of Mianzhu County, once wrote in a poem "Zhi Zhu Ci": "The village social drama is a theater of gods, and the iron plate is full of people; Qin sheng in the school is constantly humming, and sometimes he talks in a low voice. " During the Qianlong period, Li, a Jinshi from Luojiang, also wrote in "The New Search for God" that "there was a novice monk in Dongyue Temple in Mianzhu who was famous for his ability to play. Suddenly he stole a thousand dollars from his teacher and fled to a middle school in the class". This shows that in those days, Mianzhu's drama activities have been very active. Mianzhu New Year pictures, as a kind of folk art with the same reputation as traditional operas, have also formed an indissoluble bond with traditional opera art. At the latest, during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, new year pictures of operas such as The West Chamber came out.
Second, the paintings in Mianzhu New Year Pictures
Because the New Year pictures belong to the works of folk artists, they are regarded as "artisan paintings" with poor quality in feudal society. Therefore, few New Year pictures have been handed down, and most of them are changed every year, which has brought us difficulties in studying the development history of New Year pictures today. Fortunately, since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the state has taken measures to rescue folk art, especially many artists. As early as 1950s and 1960s, they went deep into Mianzhu urban and rural areas to collect and investigate Mianzhu New Year pictures, and collected a large number of valuable traditional New Year pictures through their own efforts. At the same time, Mianzhu New Year Painting Society and Mianzhu New Year Painting Research Society were established in 1960s led by the county government. Through long-term excavation and collection, a considerable number of masterpieces have been accumulated. Up to now, more than 0/00 prints of Qing Dynasty New Year Pictures have been collected, and nearly 1,000 New Year Pictures with different contents and varieties in different periods have been collected. In these colorful New Year pictures, we found many sketches with drama as the content.
Third, opera paintings and folk life opera New Year pictures are the favorite paintings of the masses (especially farmers) in the old society where there was no film and television. As the saying goes, "You can never get tired of seeing a picture." In the past, farmers bought towels and New Year pictures every Spring Festival. They like to put up New Year pictures from the Longmen, the hall door to the bedroom door. Some people even put up interesting or auspicious drama New Year pictures in the bedroom and living room. After a hard year, the family sat around the room and often couldn't help humming the Sichuan opera they had seen. Children seem to be more novel about dramatic New Year pictures that change every year. They often pester their parents to ask questions about the content of the picture, and adults often chat with relish. It is no exaggeration to say that the drama New Year pictures in the old days are an integral part of people's lives. Many children are influenced by New Year pictures and dramas in New Year pictures before they enter school. Their social function of "winning the joy and brilliance of childhood" should not be underestimated.
It is no accident that there are a large number of drama New Year pictures in Mianzhu, which reflects the appreciation and preference of writers of past dynasties for local dramas. Only when their screenwriters love and are familiar with Sichuan Opera can they grasp the wonderful and typical plots in the drama and conceive and embody vivid drama pictures. These dramatic New Year pictures are all realistic works, and the most representative is the New Year pictures created by Huang Ruige, a famous Mianzhu New Year picture painter in the 30th year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty. In this long scroll of New Year pictures, five stories of Sichuan Opera performed on the traditional high-piled platform are faithfully described, such as Qiu Jiang, Xiang Lian's entering the palace, grabbing an umbrella, Yu He Bridge and Yifen's Journey to the West. The picture vividly reproduces the scene of the Spring Festival in Mianzhu County at that time. The combination of pictures, figures and costumes, as well as masks and costumes all reflect realistic techniques. At the same time, through the lively festival scenes, it reflects the drama life of Mianzhu people in the late Qing Dynasty from one angle.
For a long time, New Year pictures have increased artistic charm through drama, and drama has spread more widely through New Year pictures. This traditional marriage, which brought out the best in each other, continued until the founding of New China. In recent years, many drama New Year pictures created and printed by Mianzhu New Year Pictures Society are still very popular in the vast rural areas.