Unveiling the Art and Origins of Beijing Opera Facial Makeup
Chinese Peking Opera face painting is bright and warm in color, which is the treasure of Chinese folk art. The color of Peking Opera face painting is influenced by Chinese traditional culture and other influences, and the use of color represents the national emotion and national culture, and an in-depth study of its color and an analysis of the traditional culture of the nation will enable us to know more about China’s unique folk customs and cultural connotations.
Peking Opera face painting is a special make-up method with Chinese cultural characteristics. Because every historical figure or a certain type of character has a general style, just like singing and playing music according to the musical score, so it is called “face painting”. The art of Peking Opera face painting is a very popular art among opera lovers at home and abroad, and has been recognized as one of the symbols of traditional Chinese culture. There are three main characteristics of face painting: the contradictory unity of beauty and ugliness, the close relationship with the character’s personality, and its pattern is programmed.
Origins
Peking Opera was formed around 150 years ago. In the 55th year of Emperor Qianlong’s reign in the Qing Dynasty (1790), the famous Anhui troupe from Jiangnan, the Sanqing Troupe, came to Beijing to celebrate the 80th birthday of Emperor Qianlong. Huiban refers to the theater troupe that performed Huizhou opera, which was very popular in the south of China in the early Qing Dynasty. Since then, many Huiban have followed, the most famous of which are Sanqing, Sisi, Chuntai, and Hechun, commonly known as the “Four Huiban”. Each of them has its own characteristics in performance, Sanqing is good at performing the whole opera; Sisi is good at Kunqiang repertoire; Chuntai has more youth-oriented child actors and Chunwu opera is outstanding.
Classification
The Cross Gate Face was developed from the Three Tiles Face, characterized by narrowing the three colors into a single color bar that hooks from the Moon Gate to just below the nose, symbolizing the character’s personality with this color bar. The six-point face is characterized by reducing the main color of the brain into a color bar and exaggerating the eyebrow shape, with the white eyebrow shape accounting for four-tenths of the total and the main color accounting for six-tenths of the total.
The “broken flower face” evolved from the “flower three tile face”, retaining the main color, the other parts with secondary colors to add hook pattern, colorful, diverse compositions and fine lines, so it is called “broken flower face”. The crooked face is mainly used to exaggerate the features of the accomplices and fighters are not correct, ugly, characterized by asymmetrical hook, giving a sense of crookedness.
“Monk face” is also known as “monk face”. Characterized by waist eye sockets, flower nose nest, flower mouth fork, the brain hook a sherry bead round light or nine points, said the Buddhist precepts. Eunuch face dedicated to the performance of trespassing power to harm the eunuchs, the color is only red and white two, the brain and both cheeks of the fat lines, showing the pampered, full of fat brain demeanor.
The Yuanbao face has different colors for the brain and face, and its shape is like a Yuanbao, so it is called “Yuanbao face”. The pictorial face is generally used in mythological plays, and the composition and colors are all based on the image characteristics of each elf, god and monster, with no fixed spectrum. The painting method should be like non-like, not too realistic, pay attention to the “intention to pen not”, so that the audience at a glance, a look will know what kind of gods and monsters.
Peking Opera Face Painting Ten Color Symbols
1、Red face symbolizes loyalty, righteousness, uprightness and bloodiness, such as Guan Yu in “Three Kingdoms” and Wu Han in “Chopping the Scripture Hall”.
2、Black face not only shows the serious character, unsmiling, such as “Bao Gong play” in the Bao Zheng; and symbolizes the mighty and powerful, rude and bold, such as “Three Kingdoms play” in the Zhang Fei, “Water Margin play” in the Li Kui. Li Kui in “Water Margin Play”.
3、White face shows treachery and suspicion, such as Cao Cao in “Three Kingdoms Opera” and Yan Song in “Fighting Yan Song”.
4, the blue face to show the character of straight, untamed, such as “on the rooftop” in the Ma Wu, “chain of traps” in the Douerdun.
5, purple face shows solemn, stable, rich sense of justice, such as “two into the palace” in the Xu Yanzhao, “Fish Intestine Sword” in the Zhuanzhu.
6, gold face symbolizes the majesty and solemnity, the performance of a class of roles in the gods and goddesses. For example, Rulai Buddha and Erlang Shen in “Trouble in Heaven”.
7, the green face symbolizes courage, strong, fierce, violent and other characters, reckless heroes. Such as Cheng Bite Jin, green-faced tiger.
8, yellow face symbolizes the martial arts warrior valor, brutality, plagiarism, ferocious, sinister, scheming and other personalities. Such as Deng Wei, Yuwen Chengdu and so on.
9, silver face symbolizes the gods and monsters in the drama of small demons or gods, there is the Jade Emperor, and Huishi walker, that is, Muzha.
10. The pink face symbolizes the aged red-faced characters, such as Su Xian in “The Taking of Luoyang”, Yuan Shao in “The Battle of Panhe”, and Hua Zhenfang in “The Village of Four Masters”.