Research on the Application of Traditional Cultural Elements in Modern Art Design

The civilization of China has a long history of more than 5000 years. Through the ages, it has vicissitudes and accumulations of culture much more than any other countries in the world. The 5000 years of history leaves us not only the old days to be remembered, but also the accumulation of culture and changes and upgrade of tradition. There is no doubt that in the worldly cultural garden, Chinese culture occupies a large land. Some people even say that the most beautiful cultural elements exist in China. However, the splendid elements and cultural deposits have not been explored in the modern time and some part of traditional culture has not been endowed with new concepts that comfort to the new age. Therefore, traditional culture might be ill-adapted to modern people. Culture is objective originally and it has no responsibility. As descendants of Chinese civilization, we should fully uphold the Chinese excellent traditional culture and make a lift of it so as to make it possess new vitality and energy in the new age. In nowadays society, in the area of designing, inspiration is the core essential factor though it comes with certain contingency. Chinese traditional cultural elements are an important origin of inspiration and they have been applied into their designs in recent years. This paper attempts to discuss the successful cases of how Chinese traditional cultural elements are used in modern art design and points out some mistakes and misunderstandings about the integration of traditional culture and modern art design. China is a large country with huge territory and a large number of population and it is a country with diverse nationalities. From the longitudinal aspect, it has a long history of 5000 years, experiencing numerous times of changes and transformations, thus it has accumulated profound cultural deposits; while from the horizontal aspect, it has large territorial areas with many nationalities and different regions and areas represent different cultural customs which all together make up of the Chinese culture we see now. Seen from whatever aspect, Chinese culture possesses a huge market potential that remains to be explored. Traditional cultural element is an abstract concept which includes many things. It is the conclusion and summary of China's 5000 years of culture and the condense of excellent traditions. It includes the objective existing substance and subjective ideology that has injected into the body of Chinese people. To be specific, it refers to the specific substances such as cheongsam, panda, four treasures of the study, the four great inventions, calligraphy, couplet, Chinese painting, shadow play, opera, seal cutting, verses and songs, kites, porcelain, the five elements and eight diagrams, Chinese knot, tai chi, paper-cut art, Dunhuang mural and facial make-up in opera and so on; while in the area of ideology, it has much more flourishing ideas such as "the theory that man is an integral part of nature", harmony is precious, of all virtues piety is most important and the great harmony, etc. What we have mentioned here are a small part of Chinese culture, so it can be figured out that traditional cultural elements are fruitful and they can input bountiful sources of inspiration for modern design art.