Exhibition of ‘Pictures That Tell Stories’ in Taipei, Taiwan, China

The special exhibition ‘Pictures That Tell Stories’ mainly features’story painting[...]

The special exhibition ‘Pictures That Tell Stories’ mainly features’story paintings’ or ‘narrative paintings’. It hopes to present the potential and characteristics of ‘images’ that can transcend textual descriptions and provide audiences with richer information. How do pictures tell stories? When painters recreate or interpret stories with images, the primary goal is usually to enable the audience to recognize the depicted content. Due to various limitations such as work size and format (scrolls, axes, albums), painters need to select representative plots, arrange appropriate scenes, design characters and their shapes and actions in order to complete the task of telling stories. Why paint these stories? Which stories can get the opportunity to be visualized? For which audiences are they painted? By judging and classifying the themes of paintings, try to infer from the paintings and take a peek at the ideas and mentalities when the paintings were created. Perhaps one can also feel the cultural identity that has endured for several generations. This is also another wonderful viewing experience. How to understand story paintings? The richer the audience’s knowledge of literature and history related to them, the higher the probability of corresponding to the correct text through the elements in the paintings. If living in the same era as the painter, it is easier to perceive the choices and expressions of the pictures due to similar thoughts and sights. However, how much can contemporary audiences recognize? If the story depicted in a work is difficult to recognize, will the opportunity for empathetic appreciation be lost? Through this exhibition, in addition to enjoying how painters create charming stories with images, you can also test your own image recognition ability and see if you can travel through time and space and receive the rich messages that creators hope to convey.

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