Door painting: The door is the access to the courtyard and residence, which plays a role in ensuring safety. Doors are divided into street doors, hall doors, home doors, fence doors and so on. The primary and secondary position of the door is different from that of the owner of the room, as well as the size of the door, single fan, double fan and so on It is suitable for folk customs from content to form.
Window grilles: Woodblock New Year pictures used to decorate windows. There are three main forms: window top, window side and moonlight.
Kang painting: a painting posted on the wall around Kang, commonly known as Kang painting. The forms are horizontal account, vertical account, square tribute, main party and so on.
Nave painting: Also called axial painting, it is mainly composed of large-scale pictures, which are mounted in the living room or a relatively large room.
Idol paintings: Most of them are superstitious sacrifices for the New Year, and there are three kinds: Kitchen God, God of Wealth and God of Heaven and Earth.
Other forms of New Year pictures include lucky lanterns and birthday lanterns hanging on the screen, phoenix chess for entertainment, thousands of words for imparting knowledge, songs used by various places, geographical maps of the world, imperial maps and so on. And practical decorative paintings for life, such as kang paddock, table paddock and car paddock. Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures take the road of pure peasant paintings, which are neither imperial grain nor land rent and must be sold. In order to get more buyers for New Year pictures, the authors of New Year pictures must consider the needs of farmers. In the old society, the government and the literati in feudal society were indifferent to folk New Year pictures and thought it was difficult to be elegant. However, this indifference is not a bad thing. New Year pictures artists can let go of their hands and feet, adapt to the needs of farmers, and create new year pictures with rich content and various forms that farmers like. Below I mainly introduce two representative New Year pictures-Door God and Kitchen King.
Door-keeper painting belongs to a kind of door painting, which is divided into military commanders and literati door-keepers. The door-keeper is a portrait of a general door-keeper armed with weapons and wearing armor. When he enters the street gate of the first passage in the courtyard and the house, he bears the heavy responsibility of eliminating disasters and protecting the well-being. Wumen God can be divided into top code, big code and small code. According to legend, this is the earliest form of New Year pictures, and the Hanting Archives contains shentu, Qin Qiong's Interpretation of Virtue, Zhao Gongming Taoist Burning Lights and so on. For the keeper, two military commanders, Wu Kui, were magnificent and wide-eyed, looking at everything outside the door, making thieves and ghosts afraid to enter. In the solemn and serious door god "shentu Relic Map", God holds a pen in his left hand, a gold ingot in his right hand, and a jade in his right hand, which symbolizes the general who sincerely wishes people "all the best". From the point of view of the wizard, the theme of his picture is to guard the street gate and prevent monsters from entering. Artists chose the sacred shrine that the masses believed in most, which was specially used to supervise and punish evil spirits and monsters. In line with the principle that men take health as beauty, they exaggerated the goalkeeper's head and painted his eyes wide and red, his body wide and his limbs stout. The image of a military commander with a sledgehammer jumps from the paper, and his expression is terrible, daunting, majestic and indestructible. It is true that the gate is decorated brightly and beautifully, and there is a hundred kinds of security to celebrate the Taiping Year. It looks very comfortable and has no unnatural feeling, which fully embodies the artistic charm of exaggerated modeling. The door god is an official door painting at the entrance of a hall. The characters are dignified, elegant and pleasant, hoping to receive happiness, usher in auspiciousness and be safe all the year round.
Kitchen God painting is a kind of idol painting, which has different specifications such as big stove, second stove, third stove and fourth stove. Yangjiabu's woodblock New Year picture "Kitchen God" is totally superstitious at first glance. Every year on the 23rd of the twelfth lunar month, people stick it in front of the kitchen to show their support, but after careful study, it also reflects the farmers' pursuit in some aspects. The upper part of this painting is "God of Wealth" and the lower part is "Kitchen God". Although the record of the kitchen king can be found in ancient books, it is not the "kitchen king" in the minds of farmers. In the past, there was a folk song in Wei County called "Zhang Lang divorces his wife". According to the lyrics, Zhang Lang's name is Zhang Layue, and his ex-wife Lilac is diligent and kind. Lazy and coquettish Wang Haitang got in the way, and Zhang Layue was greedy for money and lustful, so Lilacs were taken away from home by Zhang Layue. Since then, Lilac Girl has remarried, and life is getting better and better. Zhang and Wang are sitting on the mountain. Zhang is a beggar. While begging, Zhang Layue accidentally broke into Lilac Girl's house. Facing the old friend, Zhang Layue was ashamed and finally died in front of the kitchen of Lilac's daughter's house. Lilac women sympathize with peace and yue, and have the heart of repentance. The portrait was worshipped and spread, and it became the "Kitchen God". However, the uniqueness of Kitchen King printed by Yangjiabu is that Zhang Layue is no longer alone in the second half, but Lilac Girl and Wang Haitang are added. There are two interesting questions worth studying. First, are farmers really superstitious about "Kitchen God"? If you really believe that Lilac Girl is respected for a reason, and "heartbreaker" Zhang Layue and "romantic bitch" Wang Haitang enjoy the incense? Why did the peasants gag Zhang Layue with honeydew melons, as Mr. Lu Xun said, to prevent him from talking nonsense in front of the Jade Emperor? Second, if farmers don't believe in "Kitchen God", why do they worship it every day every year? In fact, the "kitchen god" that farmers believe is not Zhang Layue, but themselves. This can be proved by what farmers said when they "retired from the stove". "Heaven pays more attention to good deeds, while the lower bound brings more cowherd, more grains, less treasure and less gossip." Harvest crops, prosperity of people and animals, strong financial resources and harmonious families are the common good wishes of farmers, not Zhang Layue's lament. This is a portrayal of farmers' well-off life in feudal society and their hope.
Sticking to king of people is an act of flattering God, which has a long history. The "Door God" and "Kitchen God" in Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures have obvious feudal superstition. No more printing is advocated today, and thousands of farmers will die again. Instead, I want to strip off the cloak of feudal superstition, see the pursuit, interest and unique artistic expression of farmers in history from a wider scope and a deeper level, and analyze the reasonable core of farmers' thoughts hidden in these New Year pictures in the old society. The doorman and the kitchen king are degraded in the minds of farmers. Qin Qiong and Weichi Gong enshrined in Lingyange in the Tang Dynasty became the "gatekeepers" in farmers' homes, which is the embodiment of farmers' equality thought. The emperor did it. How can I not do it? The spread of this idea also led to the emergence of "door gods" and "kitchen kings". Put up New Year pictures during the Spring Festival. The folk custom in China is that everything should be auspicious during the Spring Festival. This can't be completely regarded as superstition. Mainly because of hard work for a year, we should try our best to get comfort during the Chinese New Year, so as to alleviate the hard work and fatigue in the past year and stimulate the working mood in the coming year. New Year pictures are just in line with farmers' psychology, and pasting New Year pictures has become a popular custom among Han people. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, Yangjiabu had developed into more than 10 New Year painting workshops, with more than 300 kinds of paintings and more than 600 drawing boards10. Products sell well all over the country. During the reign of Kang Gan in Qing Dynasty, Yangjiabu woodblock New Year pictures industry reached its peak. At that time, it was known as "a hundred painting shops, a thousand paintings and ten thousand pictures", and the highest year produced 65.438+35 billion New Year pictures. With the development of production, a more detailed natural division of labor appeared in Yangjiabu New Year pictures industry in the late Qing Dynasty. There are "door god shops" specializing in door gods, and there are also "kitchen king shops" specializing in kitchen kings. There is a folk song that sings, "I specialize in the store of door gods and become a color seller. I will engrave a new edition every year, and I will definitely do it." Door gods use more colors than ordinary New Year pictures, so the door gods shop laughs at itself as a color peddler. In the past, the gatekeeper printed a considerable number of copies, which caused great wear and tear on the wooden blocks. Therefore, a new version should be engraved every year to keep the lines clear and attract customers.