In the context of the current converged media and omnimedia era, big data images have a deep and extensive influence on art creation, almost everywhere. The problem of "painting photos" and "image making" has become one of the most concentrated issues. The attention and criticism of the phenomenon of "painting photos" for a time has also become a prominent and remarkable phenomenon in the contemporary art world. How to get rid of the “image” of painting? Is there an opportunity for transcendence and sublimation? In the cultural context of video media, how to reproduce past history and express contemporary society in the narrative way of painting art? How to infect the viewer with the unique charm of painting and respond to the issues of the new era? These have become important issues facing the contemporary thematic painting authors.
In fact, if only the “image dilemma” of painting in this media age is understood as the game relationship between painting and photography from the perspective of intellectual property rights, or narrowly reduced to the problem of “painting photos”, it is the level of painting history. The topic of the times is too one-sided and simple. The visual "image" of the media has a wide-ranging, three-dimensional and in-depth influence on painting, and it also has a mutual shaping relationship. Painting was once an important image resource, which has accumulated our cognition and memory of different regions and times. Especially for thematic paintings that show national history and social reality, "images" have a very close relationship with history. The British historian Peter Burke once put forward the concepts of "image evidence history" and "visual narrative history", and believed that "images, like text and oral testimony, are also an important form of historical evidence." As a visual image, the image tends to point to the past scene more than the text. Not only "images can make us "imagine" the past more vividly", but also "where we face the image will make us face history." The “image” here largely refers to paintings and other plastic works of art as works of art and historical documents.
Whether it is historical themes or realistic themes, thematic painting creation is often plot narrative. Looking back at the portraits of figures that express important and grand historical themes and the paintings that show dramatic conflicts, it helps to restore and clarify our understanding of the relationship between painting and visual images. For example, in the history of European painting, Veronese's "The Wedding Banquet of Ghana", Davit's "Napoleon's Coronation", Delacroix's "Freedom to Lead the People", Repin's "Ivan the Terrible Killing Son", etc. The classic oil paintings all have the characteristics of theatrical stage-like framing and capture the "eternal moment". This shares the same artistic laws with the modern video art after the advent of cameras and cameras, or to some extent, the former has profoundly affected the creative aesthetic interest of the latter. After entering the media age, in the process of visual images pursuing "picture sense" and showing authenticity, painting art draws on the reality of images and exploring the process of "painting" and "painting interest", the paradox of "image" to painting and its embarrassment and anxiety It also appears from this, and continues to deepen as the "image" expands.
The problem of image and painting is not only related to the relationship between the artistic reality and historical reality of thematic painting creation, but also in the context of the current media age, it appears as the mutual influence and interaction between "digital" visual images and "craftsmanship" painting creation. Game. Faced with the visual images that can be seen everywhere in daily life, how to fully "digest" contemporary media image documents, how to explore artistic images in a large number of historical image documents, and extract nutrients from life experience and visual images through selection and integration of image resources , Superimposed or focused, through grand and deep themes, reappearing history in a realistic setting, and highlighting grand themes with subtle expressions of specific parts. Looking back on the many classic paintings since the founding of New China, from Sun Zixi’s "Before Tiananmen", Zhou Sicong’s "The People and the Prime Minister" to Tang Yongli’s "The Birth of New China", many works are based on the borrowing of photos and the reference of characters. With the re-creation from images to paintings, a richly meaningful "combination of images" is constructed, and with its unique artistic appeal, it completes the poetic transcendence of real images and image documents.
The influence of visual images and technological development in the media age on painting art has made digital images truly a "double-edged sword" for painting art: on the one hand, "imaging" is quietly transforming and even devouring the art of painting. Ontology attributes. For example, during the review process of many Chinese painting exhibitions, the author and colleagues have seen some "production" that uses computer micro-jet printing to print the overall picture with pen and ink, and color "post-production", or to some existing works of themes and images. Patterned repetition, lamenting that it can be borrowed from the German scholar Benjamin's book title, which is "art work of the age of mechanical reproduction", and the appearance of these "pseudo paintings" is undoubtedly subverting the originality and ontological value of painting. On the other hand, the renewal of visual experience brought about by technological development is also changing and even reshaping the development direction of art history. The new human perspectives brought by modern vehicles such as spacecraft, airliners, drones, camera phones, imaging equipment, and even astronomical telescopes, microscopes and other optical instruments are constantly refreshing the artist’s visual experience and aesthetic perception; The attention of emerging technologies such as image media pixels, programming, and interaction has also brought beneficial enlightenment and expansion to the creation and viewing of painting art.
Needless to say, the contemporary visual “images” in the context of the media age and new technology have become visual resources that cannot be abandoned and isolated in the contemporary plastic art creation. In the face of visual images and media images, thematic painting creation does not need to deliberately avoid, but also to strengthen its understanding, digestion and research. It should adopt an attitude of participation rather than repetition, leading rather than following, so that it can better serve What I use to realize the transformation, transcendence and sublimation of media images in painting art.