On the virtuality of modern arts

Abstract

Virtuality is fictionization. Virtuality is not only the characteristic of the plots and contents of the works of contemporary arts, but also acts as the expressive method of the plots. This paper will employ the words virtual and virtualize, and depicts the digital methods and media employed in the contemporary arts and the artistic effects brought by the individual expression in the theme and the contents. The coming of the digital times changes people?s life style and thinking modes. The obvious characteristic of digital times is that it leads us into a real virtual world. The spread of mass culture goes along with the spread of mass media. The television, network and computer altogether constructs the virtual space of the times. The times of mass virtual culture is coming. The cognition and emotions of the artists living in the current times changed potentially. The artists eliminate the class gap between serious arts and popular culture through obtaining fashion, consumption, network, animation, and other popular pictures, and change the traditional artistic expressive methods and bring about new characteristics and changes to the works of arts through the borrowing of the inborn sensitivity of the pictures. This article takes the contemporary drawing works as an example to describe how the artists select the inclined theme and contents, and make use of various digital media and the mass popular culture, and form the virtual plots with Chinese contemporarity and rich imagination by the use of game and metaphor. The contemporary drawing works of art used in this paper, unified with the personal experiences of the artists, reflect the virtual plots of the contemporary drawings through the contents of the works, media method and narrative methods. Every history book of arts repeatedly tell us that the formation of any artistic characteristic reflects the situation of politics and economy of that times, and reflects the special states of mind of the artists in that times. This paper will depicts Chinese characteristics of the virtual plots, and the problems we should confront in the current situation.