What is The Primitive Charm of Clay Sculpture?
Clay sculpture art is a kind of Chinese folk art. Folk artisans are able to make small exquisite handicraft to win people's favor. After the Ming and Qing dynasties, painted sculpture won favor of the common people of all ages. 'Clay figurine zhang' in Tianjin and earthen figures of Huishan are the most famous of all. It has already walked out of the country and been the emissary of the Sino-foreign cultural exchanges. It goes all the way across the ocean and is accepted and favored by more and more countries and people. Although the clay sculpture is not the same with science and technology content, it does add new window in your life. It is plain, intuitionistic, and real and is in 'zero distance'. It is extremely challenging collection time and also has the collection value. That is to say, each piece of works is manual making; they are all unique in the world. Counterfeit, duplicate, pirate and other tort phenomenon do not exist. It differs from form of expression of oil painting, the paper-cut, relief and other arts. Clay sculpture art has strong visual impact effect and its appreciate angle are extremely rich and diverse, which draws more close to the life of people. In the rapid development of high technology today, it is the specific portrayal people's pursuing returning to their original nature. At the same time, it is a reflection that people pursue fashion and personality today.
Here, I'd like to talk about Fengxiang clay sculpture. There are three types of clay sculpture in Fengxiang: one is the clay toys, animal models of twelve zodiac images are the majority; two is hanger. There is mask, Hudu, the Eight Fairies and so on; three is Realan and they are mainly character sculptures in folk legends and historical stories. There are more than 170 colors and patterns of Fengxiang clay sculpture. Smonite, big white powder and leather cement are used in making clay sculptures. Mould can finalize the design. Modeling is exaggerated, decoration is gorgeous, and the color is bright and the shape is plain and clumsy lovely. Clay sculpture develops a school of its own in numerous folk clay sculptures.
Fengxiang clay sculpture has full-bodied Agrestic breath, higher folk culture and folk art and esthetics research value. It gets great attention from some experts. But in the influence of the business environment, now Fengxiang clay sculpture artists often produce according to sales to cater to the needs of the market blindly. This makes many traditional products endangered and makes Fengxiang clay sculpture art gradually lose cultural connotation.