Taiwan Today

Since days of yore, paper cutting has been a popular art dear to the common folk of northern China. Mostly illiterate and unable to wield the subtle brush, the ancient Chinese used a pair of scissors to cut-out all sorts of flowers, domestic animals, and other things they came across in their everyday life, to give expression to what they felt. Particu­larly during the Chinese new year, paper cut­-outs played an indispensable part in the family decoration. As the din of gongs and cymbals greeted the new year, the people in the Yellow River plain would paste the paper cut-outs on their windows to enliven their traditional celebration of a bountiful year.

How and when this custom of decorating Chinese homes with paper cut-outs came into vogue is not known. There seem to be no record about the origin of this art of the common people. It must have sprung up not so long after the Han Dynasty, when paper was first invented in China. There is evidence that later, in the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese people began posting "spring scrolls," strips of red paper bearing verses of good omen, on their doors during the Chinese new year season. It is quite possible that paper cutting, as a lunar new year decoration, be­came popular at about the same time. Throughout the centuries, it has remained part of the colorful pageantry that goes with the Chinese new year.

Because the paper cut-outs adorn the Chinese windows, they have earned the name of "window flowers." Houses in Peiping and other parts of northern China used to have large windows, not of glass, but of thin paper made half transparent by a coating of tung oil. The red paper cut-outs, posted on the windows the year round, give the otherwise bleak rooms a sparkling touch of gaiety. Tea sets and table sets used for entertaining visi­tors in the new year season are usually covered by small pieces of red paper cut-outs to add to the festive mood.

In North China, the chore of brightening up a home with paper cut-outs at the new year almost invariably falls on the housewife. More often than not, she is illiterate. But through the necessity of cutting clothes rather than through the love of art, she has become dexterous in the use of the scissors. With hardly a rudimentary course in art, she nat­urally produces only crude paper cut-outs, simple, yet symbolic.

Daily life and the folklore of northern China provide the main spring of inspiration for the housewife-artist. With a piece of red paper and a pair of scissors, she can cut out camels, oxen, horses—all common draft animals of that part of the country. Familiar scenes in legends and plays furnish almost inexhaustible material for the housewives of higher artistic accomplishments. With a stretch of the imagination, the mistress of the family can produce scores of different pieces running the gamut of life in her familiar surroundings.

Through wars and changes of dynasties, this popular art which originated from North China gradually moved southward along with the waves of migrants. South of the Yangtze River, however, the paper cutting takes on a different shade. The picturesque scenery of South China, the twittering birds in spring time, often provide the main theme of paper cut-outs in the rich Nanking-Shanghai area. The works appear to be more lively, reflect­ing the easy life in the old days.

Further down south in Fukien and Kwangtung, the paper cuttings are mingled with a tinge of modernistic western color, though still retaining the original Chinese motif.

Like other things of ancient vintage, paper cutting has almost sunken into oblivion in recent years, relinquishing its place in the Chinese family to bright color prints. Even in northern China, the cradle of this popular art, paper cuttings have been seen less and less in the last decade or two. Here on Taiwan, a group of young artists have recently started a movement to revive this ancient art of China, and paper cutting begins to flourish again among the free Chinese.

To clip out simple shapes of flowers and animals calls for no particular skill. But a fine, accomplished hand can bring into life a creative piece of art by just a few clips of the scissors. Every article, no matter how complicated, has to be an unbroken, continu­ous piece. To cut out a young country girl, for instance, the artist first clips out her eyes, nose, mouth, all linked up by connecting lines hardly discernible, then he cuts out ruffling lines on her clothes, and finally shapes up the girl by paring off the rest of the sheet. There, he has a Chinese damsel with a look of charm­ing shyness.

As art, a piece of Chinese paper cutting has a unique feature that comes from the scissors' edge. It is inimitable by ordinary drawings. It has the air of simplicity and raw beauty with which Chinese art is tradi­tionally imbued. It reminds one of the simple, and even primitive life of the wide, rolling plains of North China in the olden days.

In several other countries—Japan, Ger­many and Italy—paper cutting is also an art claiming recognition. Paper cutting in Italy is largely devoted to scenery, reflecting the natural beauties in black shades like a film negative. German artists cut their paper pieces in the same fashion as their Italian counterpart, following the realistic rather than symbolic and impressionistic lines. Their works are painstaking, but otherwise not much different from silhouette drawings. Folklore, although it finds no place in German and Italian paper cut-outs, permeates the works of Japanese artists just as in China. But Japanese paper cutting, like German and Italian pieces, presents the silhouette in realistic shapes. Only the Chinese artists follow the style of cutting out full portraits of human beings and animals, instead of just the silhouettes.

One interesting development in modern art is the use of paper cutting by such cele­brated masters as Matisse and Picasso in their works. Some works of these two artists are combinations of paper cut-outs and painting. They would clip out a piece of paper, in a weird shape, paste it on a canvas, and, daubing paint here and there, produce a work of art.

Quite possibly, these world renowned mas­ters might have sometimes found themselves at the end of a dead lane when using con­ventional paint and oil alone. And paper cutting, which first originated in China hun­dreds of years ago, might have served as a convenient outlet of their emotions.