Visual metaphor serves as a crucial medium for conveying profound meanings in painting art. It realizes the transformation from concrete visual forms to abstract ideological connotations through the recombination of image symbols and the construction of context. Starting from the essential nature of visual expression in painting art, this paper explores the dimensions of constitutive elements, generative mechanisms and expression paths of visual metaphor. It focuses on the internal logic of visual symbols carrying metaphorical meanings in paintings, and further explains how visual metaphor enhances the ideological depth and artistic appeal of paintings. This study aims to clarify the expression rules of visual metaphor in painting, provide theoretical reference for the meaning construction and artistic interpretation of painting creation, and enrich the academic dimension of visual art metaphor research.
Duan et al. (2025) studied this question.