Feasibility Study of Interpreting Tea-House Paintings based on Expressive Theory of Art

The expressive theories in art perceive the meaning of artworks as a form of showing emotions. As the overview of the Tea-House paintings indicates, there are some charac-teristics in these works through which the painters attempt to express emotions by using specific arrangements and conventions. In this regard, the central question in this study was that how can we interpret Tea-House paintings using the expressive theory of art. The purpose of the study was to elucidate expressive aspects in Tea-House paintings. Tea- House painting is kind of a narrative painting holding religious heroic and festivity remarks. Such works were raised at the time of constitutional movement by non-edu-cated artists. In Tea-House paintings works, the beliefs which existed in the minds of street people of middle layers of urban Society, were illustrated. Tea-House painters had limitary oil color technics practically with the help of their great faith and enthusiasm. Tea-house painters are concerned with conveying their emotions and influencing their audiences. The importance of studying the works through the theoretical approaches of art such as expressive theories is that they can reveal the workings of these paintings and determine through which arrangements the artists have expressed their emotions. This was a descriptive-analytical study and the data was collected through library re-search method. Moreover, this study attempted to present pictorial instances according to the available examples for better understanding of the concepts. The analysis of the Tea-House paintings showed that expressing emotions is crucial in these works and is in a way one of the most important purposes of the painters. The methods and solution used by Tea-House painter include, how to use the form, show the characters’ moods, and use color. It could be concluded that according to the evidence these works exhibit a shared experience among the audience and painters.