Jianzhi art in the works of Chinese artist Ku Shulan (analysis of the creative method on the example of the work "The Goddess of Paper Cutting")

Tszin' Fen PhD in Art History Postgraduate student at the School of Arts and Humanities, Far Eastern Federal University (Russia); Senior Lecturer at the Department of Art and Design, Heihe University (China) 690922, Russia, Primorsky Krai, Vladivostok, Russian Island str., FEFU campus, building 6.2, sq. 449 tczin.fen1@dvfu.ru

Fedorovskaya Natal'ya Aleksandrovna Doctor of Art History Professor, Director of the Department of Arts and Design, School of Arts and Humanities, Far Eastern Federal University 690922, Russia, Primorsky Krai, Vladivostok, Russian Island str., Building F, office 406 fedorovskaya.na@dvfu.ru

The art of paper carving or jianzhi (Chinese: jianzhi) is a Chinese decorative technique that has been widely used in China for many centuries and is rightfully considered a folk tradition. In different periods of Chinese history, jianzhi art was popular among both ordinary and noble inhabitants of the Celestial Empire. According to Chinese research, the first mention of this technique is associated with the era of the Shang Dynasty (160-1100 AD), from where information came about the carving of decorative elements from gold foil, leather and silk fabrics for making jewelry. Currently, Jianzhi has not lost its relevance, the Chinese still cut out various patterns during the New Year holidays, paste them on windows, walls and doors to create a festive atmosphere. Paper cutting is a traditional folk art of women and children of different generations. It should be noted that paper cutting in recent decades for China is not only a tribute to tradition, but also a way to embody new artistic ideas.

Having gone far beyond the borders of the country, jianzhi has become part of the Chinese tradition broadcast externally, attracting attention in different countries, including Russia, both artistic and aesthetic, and practical components. We note the works of N.V. Martynova and D.R. Slipetskaya ^[1], Wang Keying ^[2], Wan Jianye ^[3], which consider jianzhi.

Along with the study of traditional Jianzhi forms, the study of modern trends in their development is of considerable interest. For example: "One of the master artists of the XX - early XXI century, who made a significant contribution to the development of Jianzhi art and filling it with new technological and expressive techniques, was the folk craftswoman Ku Shulan."

Ku Shulan (1920-2004), a native of Xunyi, Xianyang, Shaanxi Province, is one of the outstanding masters of the Chinese folk art of papercutting. A master of Chinese folk arts and crafts, known as the "Goddess of Papercutting"The goddess Jianzhi, the name of the most famous series of her works among Chinese artists, is now firmly associated with her name.

        The life path of the master is the story of the life of a simple Chinese woman. Born into a poor peasant family in 1920. Zhou Lu notes that it was her mother's influence that made Ku Shulan who she is. Because she started learning papercutting from her mother at the earliest.From early childhood, Ku Shulan tasted the suffering of the world: at the age of 9, her mother bandaged her legs, because "lotus feet" were considered the ideal of female beauty at that time. Ku Shulan got married at 17 by family decision, she gave birth to a total of 13 children, and survived only two sons and one daughter. She was disliked in her husband's family, she was subjected to domestic violence, suffering humiliation for more than 60 years [4.p.120].

An accident in 1985 changed her life forever, making her believe in divine powers. Ku Shulan accidentally fell into a ditch more than five meters deep on her way home, and was in a coma for more than 40 days, after which she miraculously woke up. She remembers that she met there with a certain Lady cutting flowers, sent by the gods to help the suffering. This image greatly influenced the craftswoman, filling her works with symbolic associations.

Since 1985, most of the images of Ku Shulan have been her own interpretation of the image of a Deity, a Goddess. Researchers of her work note that in creating the image of a Lady cutting flowers, this is no longer a realistic style of the past – this is her main symbolic composition: heaven and earth, the upper part of the work is the sky, the lower part is the earth, and the middle is a man, which in the picture are joined together, forming a path of unity between heaven and man. Regardless of whether they are sitting or standing, the common denominator is that they all have gorgeous and colorful headdresses and costumes, they sit on lotus flowers, in a temple hall with a triangular roof, and often hold scissors like Guanyin and like a fairy. The image of each Goddess of papercutting gives people a sense of grace, dignity and luxury, which not only emphasizes the position of a woman, but also expresses Ku Shulan's own desire for self-respect [5.p.162].

The master died in 2004, and at the end of her life the world learned about her and her unique technique. In 1994, her work won the gold medal of the Chinese Folk Art Exhibition.  In 1996, Ku Shulan was named the "Outstanding Master of Chinese Folk Art" by UNESCO, and she became the first Chinese woman to receive this title ^[6].

In 1997, a book titled "The Goddess of Papercutting Ku Shulan" (volumes I and II) was edited and published by the Taiwanese publishing house Hansheng. Ku Shulan's colored clippings have been included in the national List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. In 1989, Ku Shulan used her work to draw attention to folk art by relevant experts, scholars, and folk art workers from 23 provinces and cities across the country.

During her life, Ku Shulan made more than 1,000 paper-cut works, creating her own special artistic style and creative method, which distinguishes layering and multicoloration.

Features of the creative method (style, technology)

To understand Ku Shulan's contribution to Jianzhi art, let's pay attention to some of the most significant innovations. Traditional folk paper cutting in China mainly uses monochrome in the image (one color) or no more than two colors. Red paper is most often used, due to the special symbolic meaning of this color for Chinese culture. The Chinese love the color red, whether it's a five-star red flag or a paper clipping and red lanterns hung during the New Year. The red color symbolizes enthusiasm, warmth and celebration.

Ku Shulan uses more than a dozen different colors, cutting out a multi-figure collage from colored paper and is the recognized founder of color paper cutting. The saturation and brightness of the color, the combination of red and green. Chinese art historians have associations with the work of A. Matisse [7.p.120].

Thus, Ku Shulan's works go beyond the traditional monochrome jianzhi model, the cutting technique includes not only a planar two-dimensional image, but also an attempt to show a peculiar volume due to the contrasting division of a dark and light substrate, which was complemented by light and bright patterns. This, in particular, is written in an article by N.V. Martynova and D.R. Slipetskaya, where the authors point out that this technique created a volume effect similar to the art of shadow theater. The master uses this technique in the complementarity of color transitions, conveying the compositional space [1.c.16].

In many of Ku Shulan's works, four paper cutting techniques can be identified: cutting, collage, gluing and lining. Wang Yaqin, analyzing the creative techniques of Ku Shulan, notes that cutting with scissors is the main technological technique, it is used, among other things, for single cutting, folded scissors and overlapping scissors (example 1.2.3).

In the work "The Goddess of Papercutting", the small dots used as decorations are made using a single cutting technique. Fold all symmetrical patterns of paper in half, cut it with scissors. This method is called Folding the cut, For example, lotus flowers, figures, lotus-shaped lamps to the left and right of the figure and plants next to the figures are used in the work.  The overlapping cut is used to create patterns on the heroine's clothes [8.p.83].

The next technique of gluing is to connect different patterns layer by layer, gluing them to each other, creating a collage to collect a common composition. The lining is the base on which the image is assembled (example 2). The technology consists in gluing a large sheet of paper of different colors on the last layer of the cut composition, this is gluing the main background color so that the color of the lining can be seen through the cut places, which increases the layering and volume of the image. The lining connects the elements of the cut-out collage, scattered in color, into a single whole.

The technological scheme of Ku Shulan is given in Wang Yaqin's study "Analysis of artistic elements and connotations in cutting out colored paper clippings of Ku Shulan"^[9].

Formal, stylistic and symbolic features of the work

"The Goddess of papercutting"

One of Ku Shulan's most famous works was the decorative painting "The Goddess of Papercutting" ("", "Ji?n hu? Ni?ng Z?"), created in 1988, which includes many elements: a woman dressed in a rich costume, sitting, apparently, in the Buddha pose, flowers and plants etc., cut in different colors (example 4). Currently, this work is in the collection of the National Art Museum of China. Let's look at the details of the costume and headdress of the "Goddess of Paper Cutting".

The Goddess's clothing is a traditional Chinese wedding dress Fengguan xiapei (f?nggu?n xi?p?i), a type of Chinese Hanfu dress with a Fengguan headdress. This dress was worn by rich women when they got married in ancient times to show their social status, as well as during official events, it was worn by the wives of officials. The headdress is called the phoenix crown or Fengguan, a characteristic feature of it is the presence of long pendants ^[10]. Example 5 shows a photo of a girl in Fengguanxiapei. (example 5)

The phoenix crown and the red dress of Wu Ku Shulan bear a structural resemblance to the phoenix crown with pendants and the bride's dress. In addition to the base of the red color, multicolored decorative patterns have been added. On the shoulders and cuffs, their pattern is mostly repeated and arranged in such a way as to represent a perfect combination of dots and lines. The clothes are decorated with chrysanthemum patterns or a series of random combinations such as zigzags and small dots.

The lining of the painting includes a large area of white at the top and black at the bottom, which enhances the volume and three-dimensionality of the work (the Goddess is sitting on the floor), and also invisibly plays a guiding role in the viewing order, looking from top to bottom.

The image of a woman in Ku Shulan is the embodiment of the ideal image of traditional Chinese women: with big eyes, a high bridge of the nose, a red cherry mouth, pink blush on the face, bangs of Qi and a pair of dexterous hands, the image is generalized and exaggerated. The figure is sitting cross-legged on a lotus flower, and the sitting position is similar to the figure of Buddha, In the eyes of Ku Shulan, the Goddess of papercutting, is also her idol and embodiment. [11.p.95].

Let's pay attention to the fact that the artist's painting is filled with symbols reflecting her religious beliefs. It is known that Ku Shulan's mother professed Buddhism, which strongly influenced Ku Shulan when she was a child. Not far from the school where Ku Shulan studied, there is the Chenghuangmiao Temple (chenhuang miao), which contained carved statues of gods and brightly colored frescoes that inspired her awe and subsequently inspired the creation of paper-cut images. [12.c.162].

In this example, the Goddess depicted is sitting in a lotus flower, where each petal is made in the shape of a fish. The traditional Buddhist plot in modern China acquires its symbolic meanings along with the generally accepted ones. So, the lotus symbolizes purity, can emphasize the sanctity and nobility of the characters. The appearance of fish as petals symbolizes excess, prosperity, long-term well-being, abundance.

The female character is dressed in a full suit, with a magnificent crown and a calm expression, holding scissors that symbolize her status and type of activity. The structure of the headdress: a black bang Qi as the first row, followed by a double row of red and green dots, followed by a series of floral patterns, with pink and red flowers alternately. The last row of the headdress is a pattern of green leaves. This creates five rows glued one after the other (example 6). The shape of the hair ornament in the "Goddess of Papercutting" is similar to the phoenix crown of an ancient Chinese woman, but papercutting is mainly expressed by patterns and dots [13.p.8].

Let's pay attention to another Buddhist symbol (example 7-8). The red dot in the center of a woman's eyebrows has many meanings. For example, in China, a red dot was applied to little girls as makeup, "for beauty." The red dot on Bodhisattva Guanyin's eyebrows has several meanings, firstly: As a religious symbolism, in Buddhist art, the red dot on the forehead of Bodhisattva Guanyin is sometimes interpreted as a symbol of Buddhist practice. Secondly, as makeup, in Chinese physiognomy, the red dot of Guanyin is sometimes referred to as the "beauty mole" and is considered a symbol of good luck. Thirdly, artistic expression, in some works of art, the red dot of Bodhisattva Guanyin can be used to enhance her external beauty, as a decorative element. Thus, the red dot on the eyebrows of the characters of Ku Shulan should not only reflect beauty, but also express worship of God.

The depicted lotus position in which the heroine is sitting is also symbolic. The researchers note that the woman is represented in two images as a man and as a goddess. In China, along with Buddhist symbols, a woman sitting cross-legged symbolizes an elderly woman. Young people usually stand, while older people sit cross-legged[14.p.133]. Sitting cross–legged is a traditional custom when people did not have chairs, and this sitting position was designed to maintain the stability of the landing. In the painting by Ku Shulan, the Goddess of papercutting sits cross-legged, which emphasizes the age of the woman and at the same time the ancient Chinese culture.

In Ku Shulan's modeling, the interpretation of the character's hands is detailed: the shape of the hands is open, emphasizing their elegance, the presence of scissors, reflects the ingenuity of a woman and her "type of activity", the ability to cut paper.

Another Buddhist symbol is the lotus-shaped lanterns, which symbolize the light of the Buddha in China and represent the artistic realm of innocence and simplicity (example 9). The magic of lotus lanterns is used for prayer and worship at religious events. As a decoration in traditional Chinese folk events, especially during the Spring Festival and other traditional holidays, lotus lanterns are placed in homes or public places to create a peaceful and peaceful atmosphere.

Under the lotus-shaped lantern there is a plant that resembles a peach in shape (Example 10). Peach is a symbol of longevity and immortality in China, they represent longevity and health in the Chinese art of papercutting and are used to convey good wishes.

Ku Shulan's life is inseparable from nature. The shape of the plant in her works arose from observations: peach flowers, pears, daffodils, begonias, plums, peony flowers, bergamot, pomegranate, lotus, chrysanthemums, plants, fruits and trees (grapes, peaches, persimmons, pomegranates, melons, etc.)[15.p.41]. All plants are symbolic for China and their appearance in the works is not accidental. So, pomegranate, for example, symbolizes many children and grandchildren, pines – immortality, peaches – longevity, peony – wealth, etc. For Ku Shulan, the introduction of these elements is her longing and prayer for a happy life.

The researchers point out that Ku Shulan's painting "The Goddess of Papercutting" shows the heroine's detachment from reality. In the life of ordinary people there is a domestic space and a spiritual, sacred space, in everyday space we must face firewood, rice, oil and salt, and in the spiritual world we can make guesses about the sun, moon and stars. Practical problems are inevitable in life, but there can be no fewer unearthly prayers and fantasies so that life complements each other between the virtual and the real, and it is not too specific and does not fall into some kind of mediocrity of life. The sacred space is turned to the spirit so that he obeys the call of divinity, allows his spirit to go beyond the limits of the concrete life of reality [14.p.143].

Having inherited the traditional folk art of papercutting, Ku Shulan introduced innovations into it using collage skills. Unlike monochrome clippings, her work is rich in layers and compositional elements. Vivid characters, animals, plants and flowers are applied layer by layer to give a three-dimensional feel to the image. "The Goddess of papercutting" is just one of the striking examples of the embodiment of a unique technique, an author's creative method for creating an important image for a craftswoman. Note that this is not the only decorative painting inspired by the images of the Goddess. Ku Shulan has created a series of repetitive works with a typified female image.

The use of Buddhist symbols in her paintings was important for the master. Each element of Ku Shulan's work translates the traditional culture of China, reflecting spiritual values. Ku Shulan conveys emotions with scissors, praises life. This is also the perception of the vast universe and the life of the Chinese for thousands of years. Ku Shulan paper cutting inherited and contributes to the development of Chinese paper cutting, and has made an outstanding contribution to the traditional art of China.