Architectural Painting
01 · Historical Records
Northern Shaanxi jiangyi danqing (artisan painting and coloring) originates in the painting, sculpting, woodworking, and paper-framing crafts that folk painters carried out for temples and vernacular dwellings. From the Ming dynasty onward, temples flourished in the Yulin and Yan'an areas, and the demand from large and small temples for murals, painted sculpture, and the making of spirit tablets, ceremonial pavilions, and sedan chairs led folk painters to form a professional community transmitted through family and master-apprentice lines; in the late Qing and early Republican period, everyday decorations such as trunk-and-cabinet paintings, kang-surround paintings, and stove paintings entered cave-dwelling life in large numbers, and with them the technical system of jiangyi danqing became complete.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Architectural painting is a fairly broad term. One of its meanings, the same as what is commonly understood, refers to using colors, paints, and lacquers to depict images in a flat plane on the walls of buildings; another meaning refers to using materials such as earth, stone, wood, cloth, paper, and pottery to decorate buildings and their interior furnishings. For geographical and folk-custom reasons, the architectural painting of China's various regions and ethnic groups differs markedly in overall style and treatment of detail; from materials and techniques to colors and subject matter, it displays strong local characteristics, fully demonstrating the ingenuity of the working people in adapting to local conditions. Northern Shaanxi jiangyi danqing is a folk painting art completed by folk painters of northern Shaanxi who rely on various craft means such as construction, carpentry, and stonemasonry, combining them with all kinds of applied implements. It is widely distributed across the towns and villages of every district and county of Yulin and Yan'an cities in Shaanxi Province, and is most often seen in people's cave dwellings, public landscape buildings in towns, and the large and small temples of the countryside. Northern Shaanxi jiangyi danqing takes various expressive forms, including temple murals, non-official-style architectural colored painting, painted sculpture, Water-and-Land (shuilu) paintings, colored paintings for spirit tablets, ceremonial pavilions and sedan chairs, and the passing-of-obstacles (guoguan) rites, as well as kang-surround, stove, and trunk-and-cabinet paintings. Its practitioners are mostly peasants, many of whom come from well-known folk-painting families. Northern Shaanxi jiangyi danqing encompasses multiple skills, including painting, sculpture, woodwork, stone carving, architectural design, paper-framing installations, and even yin-yang (geomantic) arts. Drawing on materials such as earth, stone, wood, cloth, paper, pottery, tung oil, and mineral pigments, it applies its craft to public buildings, religious implements, and the environment and furniture of vernacular dwellings, linking the material and spiritual lives of local residents. After several hundred years of development, Northern Shaanxi jiangyi danqing has formed a distinctive and complete system of artistic creation and ecology, with transmission genealogies and a repertory of images and patterns that are complete and clear.
Temple murals and water-and-land paintings
Its forms include temple murals, unofficial architectural painting, painted clay, water-and-land scrolls, spirit tablets, palanquin and cabinet painting, mostly by peasant craftsmen.
Painting, sculpture, carpentry and stonework
Craftsmen command painting, modelling, carpentry, stonework, building design and paper construction, working in earth, stone, wood, cloth and mineral colour.
The painters' nest at Zizhou
Spread across the towns and villages of Yulin and Yan'an, the craft is practised in cave dwellings, public buildings and temples, especially at Shegou village in Zizhou.
Painting cabinets without a draft
The third-batch inheritor Li Shengbin, born in 1945, paints cabinets without any draft, his compositions full, lively, brightly coloured and fluid in line.
Lineage and image repertoires
Over centuries it built a complete system of creation and transmission with clear craft and motif lineages of value to art anthropology and art history.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Northern Shaanxi jiangyi danqing is distributed across the towns and villages of all districts and counties of Yulin and Yan'an in Shaanxi Province, and is most often seen in people's cave dwellings, public landscape buildings in towns, and rural temples. Among these places, Shegou Village in Zizhou County is known as a nest of painters and is an important settlement of painters.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Architectural Painting · Architectural Painting · Architectural Painting · Architectural Painting · Architectural Painting.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Jiangyi danqing is an organic component of the life of the people of northern Shaanxi. With folk artisans as the main body of its creation and transmission, it is rooted in the agrarian culture of the ravines and grasslands while also connecting vertically with the urban market culture of farming, herding, industry, and commerce. The blending of multiple cultural elements has produced its own characteristic mechanism of fusion and coordination, demonstrating research value in fields such as artistic anthropology, folk ecology, religious studies, and art history. Li Shengbin (from the official archive records of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in February 1945, from Zizhou County, Shaanxi Province. He grew up in Shegou Village, Zizhou County, known as the nest of painters, and was deeply influenced by the local community of painters; through diligent study he learned and came to master the folk art of painted trunks and cabinets. Rich in life experience, he can paint without consulting drafts or reference materials. Constantly striving to improve in practice, he has developed his own artistic individuality: the trunk-and-cabinet paintings he produces have full compositions, lively images, gorgeous colors, and fluent lines, carrying a strong rustic flavor and a distinct northern Shaanxi regional style. His creative activity has fostered the growth of the surrounding community of painters. He is a representative inheritor of Architectural Painting (Northern Shaanxi Jiangyi Danqing), an intangible cultural heritage item of the third national-level batch.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Li Yunyi 03-1302
- Li Shengbin 03-1303
- Hao Yanming 05-2705
- Chen Jinde
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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