A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE ARTISTIC FEATURES OF CHINESE AND UKRAINIAN CHILDREN'S BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 21 ST CENTURY

Abstract

The article is devoted to a comparative study of the artistic features of Chinese and Ukrainian children's book illustrations of the beginning of the 21 st century. The purpose of the article is an attempt to scientifically understand artistic features and compare them with each other in Chinese and Ukrainian children's book illustrations of the beginning of the 21 st century. The research methodology is based on ideas related to the development of graphic art in general (in Ukraine, these are the scientific works of S. Bilokon, Yu. Biryulov, O. Golubts, D. Gorbachev, O. Lagutenko, and others, in China, the studies by Jia Wei, Zhang Yiqian, Chi Xing and others) and were developed by such graphic illustrators in Ukraine as O. Petrenko-Zanevskyi, V. Yerko, K. Shtanko and others, and in the People's Republic of China – by such graphic artists as Zhou Xiang, Jing Shaozong and others. The methods of scientific
research turned out to be such general scientific methods as: the method of systematic analysis, the method of chronological analysis, and the method of comparative analysis. Art recognition methods have become: the method of stylistic and the method of compositional analysis of graphic works. The author analyzes the publications in which the state of the Chinese and Ukrainian scientific discourse on the specified problem is investigated. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that there are still no comparative studies of children's book illustrations of the beginning of the 21 st century in the art history discourse in Ukraine and China. Stylistic, compositional, and coloristic features of children's book illustrations are studied on the examples of the analysis of illustrations by N. Haida, O. Gavrylova, R. Popsky, Xiong Liang, Jing Shaozun, and Yu Hongcheng. It has been proven that today this part of book graphics in both countries is turning into a fairly independent subspecies of graphic art, and illustrating a children's «picture book» into an independent genre of children's book illustration. The conceptualization of the concept of a children's «picture book» in both countries is similar, because it means a large-format publication with a small amount of visual and textual information, with a simplified arsenal of means of artistic expression, in which synergy between visual and linguistic elements is ensured, intended for preschool children and junior school age. Artists-illustrators of both countries tend to spread national motifs, «poetic» graphic language, use of national characters, symbols, color range characteristic of national colors and compositional solutions corresponding to the age of the target audience. However, a Chinese children's book illustration of the beginning of the 21 st century. in its typical manifestations, it uses traditional graphic techniques inherent in traditional Chinese fine art, continuing the traditions of the Chinese «shadow theater», and
Ukrainian children's book illustration – to the use of computer technologies, orientation to character, interactivity, the search for one's own author's style and experiments with images.