Chinese Oil Painting Perspectives: Conceptual Analysis and Guideline Development for Artists

Abstract

In contemporary oil painting, moving beyond superficial Sino-Western fusion to construct a spatially and culturally grounded artistic language remains a central challenge for Chinese artists. This study focuses on Chinese oil paintings produced between 1966 and 1976, aiming to analyze how traditional Chinese pictorial perspective concepts were integrated into these works and, based on this analysis, to develop a practical guideline for contemporary artists. Employing an interpretive qualitative design, the research combines literature review, visual analysis of representative "Red Classic" works, and semi-structured interviews with three expert practitioners and educators. The findings reveal that key leader images, revolutionary history paintings, and thematic works on workers, peasants, and soldiers from this period formed a hybrid spatial system. While Western linear perspective structures near space, traditional Chinese devices-such as the Three-Far Method, scattered perspective, viewing big from small, virtual-real interplay, anti-perspective, and temporal perspective-shape narrative depth, emotional tone, and the viewer's "roaming" experience. Based on this historical analysis, the study develops a practical guideline that reframes these traditional concepts as a flexible toolkit for designing eye routes, spatial hierarchy, and mood in contemporary oil painting. This guideline provides artists and educators with a structured path to move beyond camera-dependent, single-point perspective and cultivate an internalized sense of Chinese spatial and temporal logic.