1. Introduction

Undoubtedly, individuals can experience emotions when exposed to artworks. However, it is important to consider that artworks themselves lack the capacity to possess emotions. In expressing emotions in artworks, those with emotions are people from beginning to end. Therefore, in terms of exploring the emotional source of artworks, several viewpoints have emerged: Some people think that emotion in artworks is the emotion of creators, and artwork is a projection of creators, recording the emotion of the creator at a particular moment [1]. Some people think that emotion expressed by artworks is audience's emotion, and everyone gets different emotional experience from artworks, which is private and personalized. Others point out that the emotion expressed by artwork is not credible and challenging to determine whether creator or audience, people feels emotion from color rather than from "person" or through association of some experience. Hence, it is still necessary to return to the artwork and analyze the work.

This paper adopts the theoretical research method and the case analysis of Chinese painting art to explore how painting art expresses emotions from the perspective of the connection between creators, audiences and artworks. However, some conclusions will also apply to other art forms. Finally, this paper will focus on issues. In particular, Chinese painting art will be used as a case, hoping to use the uniqueness of ancient Chinese painting, which is different from Western art, to enrich and improve the relevant research content of artistic expression of emotion.

2. Emotional connection between artist, audience and artwork

2.1. Artist and Artwork

Not all emotions in artworks are the emotions of the creator, even if the creator gives birth to artworks. Some works created in a short period may be a record of creators’ current emotions. For example, Yan Zhenqing, a calligrapher in the Tang Dynasty of China, wrote the “Manuscript of Offering Sacrifices to his Nephew”[2], whose Nephew was killed by the rebels and the whole family sacrificed their lives for the country. Finally, only part of the remains were found. The author's feelings of extreme grief and resentment were vividly reflected in the work, and the content of the work was highly consistent with the emotional direction of the calligraphy lines [3]. Genuine feelings can be fully integrated into the work, making it a rare, great calligraphy work. The alteration is also an indispensable part that is difficult to reproduce, which is very important for emotional bearing.

However, this kind of timely and emotional situation is rare. Most works are made in a very long process, the creator can not be in tears for a whole year, all the time the creation of the same sadness. With time, the emotions needed in creation are no longer naturally revealed, but the emotions need to be recalled or deliberately reproduced at that time. It is, so to speak, "fake emotion". Since emotions can be "performed" and "pretended", they may not even be emotions that the creator has revealed. They can be emotions that do not belong to them. Therefore, it is not accurate and convincing to say that artwork is a projection of the creator's emotion. At most, the emotion of artwork is the emotion that the creator chooses to project. However, it does not mean that the final emotion expressed in art is still chosen by the creator to project, and after it is presented in front of audience or even in front of the audience in different time and space, the creator will lose part of the decision power on emotion of artwork [4].

2.2. Artworks and audience

It is unreliable to assume that an artwork’s emotion depends on the viewer’s emotion. If the audience is unfortunate at the time, then they can experience sadness in any work they look at. To judge the emotion of an artwork entirely based on the subjective emotion of the audience, the meaning of the creator's existence will be challenged to a certain extent.

Additionally, assuming that the ideal audience[5] in artistic emotion refers to the "calm" or "emotionless" audience, in the face of the artworks that want to express sadness, will the sad audience be more able to obtain sad emotions than the calm audience? What sad works need is a sad audience or a calm audience. This is worth rethinking.

2.3. Emotional connection between creator, audience and artwork

Even if the above statement thinks that the emotion expressed by artistic works is the emotion of artists or audiences, it is unreliable. However, artworks need an "audience", and the audience cannot live without the creator.

People do not get emotion from the sound of random playing. Artworks can have temporary emotions because of the resemblance theory and because the creator consciously organizes the elements in the artwork. The emotion sent by the creator is temporarily deposited through the resemblance theory in artworks. However, without the audience's reception of this emotion, the emotion is still not "expressed", and "expression" exists relative to "reception". If there is no so-called "audience", the creator can become an "audience".

Therefore, how artworks express emotions is a question about the relationship between creators, artworks and the audience. Apart from these three, the whole picture of artistic expression of emotions cannot be seen, and the resemblance theory runs through the whole process.

3. Relationship between resemblance theory and emotional expression in artworks

3.1. Resemblance theory

Artworks carry and express emotions through the resemblance theory[6], and the theory of similarity or "convention" is to determine the connection between emotions and something similar to a code. The artwork has properties that resemble or are conventionally correlated with the emotion. For example, people think dark colors are mostly similar to dull weather or a low mood, so the relationship between dark colors and negative emotions is often established.

Daily life experience is also a convention, and the corners of the mouth will unconsciously rise when people are happy, thus establishing the conventional relationship between smile and joy. When people see a wooden countertop with four legs, they know it is a table and they do not think it is a dog, because people agree that such a countertop with four legs is a table. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as "prejudice" or "resonance", which can lead to individuals becoming both "enemies" or "friends".

Therefore, even if the resemblance theory connects the artist, audience and artwork, the artistic expression of emotions can be complete, but the "convention" differs from the formula of iron law. The so-called "objective" consensus is formed by subjective agreement of people's psychology, which will certainly bring many problems. First, "convention" leads to the unity or diversity of the understanding of the work, which leads to the relationship between the text and the painting. Second, there are "conventions" that are limited by cultural context.

3.1.1. Unity or diversity of understanding of works

Conventions may cause people to stereotype a certain color and a certain emotion, which may lead to a narrow feeling of work, but also make the creator mechanized and stylized creation. For example, it is always thought that bright colors can express positive emotions, and slow music can reveal sadness.

This also provides a way of thinking for innovation, and creators can actively use their imagination to constantly establish a new relationship between emotion and media, and new “conventions”. Like Picasso's "The Weeping Woman"[7], the background is a lot of bright yellow and red, but the whole work conveys the emotion of sadness.

At other times, the routine of some elements is unstable and uncertain, such as blue, which has both the convention of melancholy and the convention of vivid sunny. Vincent Van Gogh's “Almond Flower”[8], with its blue background and blooming white flowers, makes most people think it is a painting that expresses vitality and positive emotions. However, twisted tree trunks and flowers that bloom too much and will soon die can also make blue reveal melancholy emotions. In addition, it is easier to produce multiple interpretations for some of the more abstract works. Because an element may establish a conventional relationship with various emotions, the emotion expressed originally by the author through work and the emotion felt by the audience needs to be found, resulting in misunderstanding.

However, this instability and uncertainty is also a charm, which enriches people's understanding of work and makes artwork trigger more discussions and connotations. The audience has also become the creator, and the understanding of work is the secondary creation of artwork. Also, it is a dialogue between the audience and the original author through artwork.

3.1.2. Emotional expression of text and painting art

Modern art exhibitions have taken exhibition labels for granted, especially with the emergence of Western contemporary art, works increasingly require the participation of words so that the audience can feel the connotation [9]. The exhibition label has also become an independent object worthy of study, exploring its content, form and impact.

As early as in ancient Chinese painting art, there was a similar exhibition label, that is, “inscription” [10], which has a rich explanation and auxiliary work expression role but also extended its unique norms and shapes [11], become an independent art form, has its aesthetic value.. Even more avant-garde, these words can be placed directly within the painting and can become part of the work’s composition rather than mainly being located near the work like an exhibition label. Of course, the inscription also has a pattern near the work. Because of the unique mounting method of Chinese painting art, these "exhibition labels" near the work and the work itself can be mounted in a space or even carried around and spread everywhere. This style of exhibition label and unique mounting method make a work an exhibition, and even through continuous re-mounting, so that the "exhibition" has been in a state of open growth without the concept of "complete end".

For example, in Xu Wei's "Picture Scroll of Ink Flower"[12] in the Ming Dynasty, after painting flowers, the text falls near the flower, and on the left there is a new "exhibition label" written by modern Wu Hufan on this painting. The two pieces are mounted in the same scroll, becoming a work. It can be seen that across hundreds of years, the work is still extending.

Assisted emotional expression is part of that. Such as Zheng Sixiao’s "Picture of Ink Chinese cymbidium”[13], the original picture painted a few strokes of Chinese cymbidium has been able to give people a cold and lonely feeling. Secondly, orchids have no painted soil or roots [14], and the roots and soil are connected to the "home", and "rootless and soilless" means wandering and no home, which further conveys the feeling of loneliness and melancholy.“I have been prayerfully praying for guidance and inspiration from the ancestors of the Yellow Emperor ,who are you to this town; Before the painting opened the nostrils, the sky is floating ancient fragrance." "Seeking is not, not seeking can get, the old eyes are wide, the breeze is everlasting" [15] is to miss the hometown, that is, the motherland, to maintain their purity, not to accept the meaning of the new dynasty, so that the audience can more clearly feel the author's strong nostalgia, grief and firm emotions.

Figure 1: Picture of Ink Chinese cymbidium [13]

Exhibition labels are widely used in modern exhibitions, and the inscription is also prevalent in late Chinese ancient paintings. However, widespread use of words to assist expression of works does not mean that the expression of words is better than the expression of painting art itself, nor does it mean that words can replace the expression of painting art. Words are the interpretation of the picture and the picture cannot convey the emotion by relying on the interpretation of words. Instead, they can express the part that the other cannot convey. Each has its blind spots and makes up for each other, which is a complementary relationship and jointly completes the expression of the entire artistic emotion [16].

The correspondence between words and artworks may also lead to the emergence of new "conventions". Through the interpretation of words, people can better understand the relationship between a certain emotion and a certain element. When they see similar expressions next time, they can remember this relationship, which has become a new "convention".

3.2. "Conventions" limited by cultural background

As mentioned above in Zheng Sixiao’s "Picture of Ink Chinese cymbidium”[13], orchids themselves have a customary relationship with "noble" and "gentlemen" in Chinese culture. Most of the emotions expressed by orchids are similar to preferring death to yield, longing for independence, freedom, and integrity [17]. Some cultural background has limited this aspect of the converntion. Secondly, Zheng Sixiao also established a new emotional convention on this basis, so that the orchid without soil and roots, and the feelings of the adherent, the emotion of nostalgia for the motherland, is a change of dynasties, the loss of the homeland and does not yield to the predators caused by grief, nostalgia, perseverance. This part of the new convention, but also need to be combined with Zheng Sixiao's life experience and the picture of the inscription stamp step by step to crack out. The limitation of this cultural background is not only in space and region, but also in time and history.

Therefore, even if there is a convention to resembling relationships, the expression of emotion in artworks is not having anything to worry about. Convention is the foundation of artistic expression of emotion, not a safety pin.

4. Conclusion

Perhaps there is no final answer that can explain how artworks express emotions and what emotions of artworks are. However, through thinking about the emotional expression of painting art, this paper explore the relationship among creators, audiences and artworks, which should not be separated. This question inspires creators to create works and also gives direction for audiences to appreciate works.

The study found no human endowment, red and black do not distinguish, let alone carry the function of emotion. The mind that distinguishes these emotions provides a breathing space for the artwork to express emotions. So, how art expresses emotions and the discussions that it leads to, and more broadly, about people's mental states and the creation of emotions, raises more complex questions about why we define so many emotions and associate them with things we want to convey to others. This will no longer be limited to the study of "art". However, art can help us to study the human state of mind and the problems of "man to man," that is, "society." The exploration of human beings and society will also promote the development of art. There is no substitute for art.

Whether it is the creator or the audience, perhaps people prove their existence through artwork, providing a new outlet for expressing emotions and constantly reinforcing the concept of "self". "Mind" is the most erratic thing, resulting in "art" that also seems to have no end. Understanding of the "mind" will always be on the road, people have "resonance" at the same time, "prejudice" emerged.