Evolution of Seal Cutting Symbol Elements

DOI

10.2991/icadce-16.2016.79How to use a DOI?

Keywords

seal cutting; element; symbol; semantics

Abstract

Seal cutting is a traditional art and it is the predecessor of one of the four inventions-printing which closely combined with the calligraphy, so far it has 3000 years of history. Also it is the prototype of Chinese logo design so its cultural status can not be ignored. Its origin, development, prosperity is inseparable from its time, and it is closely related to the political, economic and cultural environment of that time. With the continuous improvement of aesthetic requirements, changes of seal cutting symbols are also related with other art-related content, such as epigraphy, philology, literature, painting and so on. The printed text mostly is seal script so it is called seal cutting. Because seal symbol has obvious characteristics, mostly use pictographic elements, its form mostly is elliptic, its font has great symmetry, smooth and neat, so seal cutting use seal script until now. Due to the impact of calligraphy elements, the appreciation of seal cutting is mainly from "shape", "meaning" and "lingering charm" three aspects. We need to watch their shape, understand its meaning, pass on its lingering charm. Seal cutting emerged in Qin Dynasty and began to develop since then; Wei and Jin Dynasties is the degradation of decay; Sui ,Tang and Song Dynasties is the fission and incubation period; Yuan and the mid-Ming Dynasty is the turning and awaken period; the late Ming to the Qing Dynasty is the prosperous, peak period. In different periods, the aesthetic elements constant evolution, however, the functionality is not change so much, it always be the symbol of personal identity. But with the deduction of aesthetic symbol, seal cutting art as a traditional symbolic elements, through purposeful refining, applied to various fields, such as the name seal with simplify font, or description seal used to proof things, or title seal based on different content in paintings ; also extracted its traditional symbol style and applied to the design of modern logo field and so on. Therefore, this article will analyze the communicate procedure of symbolic elements from its process of evolution.

Copyright

© 2016, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Bo Peng
PY  - 2016/05
DA  - 2016/05
TI  - Evolution of Seal Cutting Symbol Elements
BT  - Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Arts, Design and Contemporary Education
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 359
EP  - 361
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icadce-16.2016.79
DO  - 10.2991/icadce-16.2016.79
ID  - Peng2016/05
ER  -