Artistic representation of cultural archetypes of masculinity and femininity in Chinese realistic painting

The study substantiates the universal properties of cultural archetypes of Male and Female, characterizing the connection of individual and collective, unconscious manifestations in the products of human creative activity based on the artistic representation of images in Chinese traditional and modern culture. The subject of the study is Chinese realistic painting as a form of culture and worldview, striving to reproduce the authenticity of the image and its external similarity to reality. The object of the research is the artistic representation of cultural archetypes and symbols of the masculine and feminine principles as universals of collective memory. The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as the archetypal content of the image of "Father" and "Mother" in Chinese fine art, from antiquity to the present in the context of the search for authentic symbols in ancient Chinese traditional painting and painting of the twentieth century. Special attention is paid to examples of the representation of patrimonial archetypal symbols in Chinese painting during the Cultural Revolution and the transformation of masculine images in the "art of scars." Similarly, feminine archetypal symbols are considered, dating back to the ancient beliefs and cults of the "Great Mother", which were embodied not only in ancient Guohua painting, but also in socialist realism painting, as well as in the "art of scars". The methodological basis of the work is a semiotic approach implemented in the concepts of Russian cultural scientists, art historians and Chinese specialists studying gender symbolism in painting. The scientific novelty of the research lies in a meaningful analysis of the archetypal forms of Chinese painting, conducted by the method of comparative description of visual images in the context of traditional visual means, as well as against the background of socio-cultural changes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, which marked the birth of a national state for China. The conclusions about the similarity of gender symbols in different styles and genres of painting are new, regardless of historical time and socio-cultural context, due to their connection with the primordial, archetypal properties of expressing the image of "Father" and "Mother". The research results and conclusions are based on a culturological understanding of the phenomenon of Chinese realistic painting as a phenomenon of social life and a manifesto of a new type of worldview that retains its connection with the deep structures of the collective unconscious.