How to make colorful batik work?

China is the country where the earliest excavated batik works were found. The Warring States period to the Western Han Dynasty (475 BC - 8 BC) is the earliest record of batik that can be seen now. The most representative physical corroboration is the cotton batik from the Eastern Han Dynasty in the Xinjiang Museum.

Batik is a kind of traditional printing and dyeing craft - blue dyeing in China. Its principle is to seal the fabric fibers with wax to form patterns without allowing the dyeing liquid to soak in. During the process of dyeing, the wax cracks naturally, forming a natural "ice pattern". When it comes to batik, you can't help but talk about the Hmong.

As early as the Qin and Han Dynasties, the Miao people have mastered the batik technique, which reached its peak in the Song Dynasty. Miao girls have been learning batik since they were young, and they color and imagine the world in their own eyes to create a wonderful, dreamy and mythical world. Batik, the language of the Miao girls, is also their writing.

Around this time of the year, around November, between the frost and the beginning of winter, the Miao girls go to the mountains to collect bluegrass. After 3-4 days of soaking in the dyeing vat, the original clear water turns blue-green and the magic of the bluegrass takes effect. Wise Miao girls add lime to the indigo water and adjust the color by controlling the proportion of lime.

It's hard to guess how the meeting of lime and indigo came about by chance. But through countless accidents, the world we live in has become what it is now. The world has been dressed up by batik, and there is a touch of sky and an ocean.

Batik is also the medium through which the artist connects with the world. This medium makes its own tinkling sound, and people who hear it give it a new note, which then travels far and wide.

Batik, in today's world of mechanized production, still preserves its original power, and with a new attitude, it has been integrated into the contemporary era, becoming an art with great vitality.

The Zhou Dynasty's monograph "The Records of the Examining Worker" once said, "Heaven has a time, earth has a gas, material has a beauty, and work has a skill, and the combination of these four, then it can be good." A batik fabric needs to be dipped more than 10 times and go through hundreds of procedures before it finally becomes a good product comparable to nature.

In 2020, "Arigatou" made its way onto the international stage.

In the 2020 Fall/Winter London Fashion Week, the Miao batik clothing design series from Danzhai, Guizhou Province: embroidered dress, big dress, small dress, modern style, cheongsam **** counted five design series on the stage, bringing the whole audience in awe.

Like the blue and white in blue and white porcelain, the Miao batik costume gives the stage a sense of silence and warmth. Through its flowing skirt, it seems to have touched its details and meticulousness, its history and lifeblood. High-quality ethnic craftsmanship is like a heavy dictionary, which stands in the long river of history, whether we turn it over or not, it is there in the dark brilliant.

This is not the first time that batik has appeared on the world stage, as early as in the 1990s, the world has formed a "batik fever". Borrowing the plasticity and ductility of wax, it combines with various materials and elements, and gradually, in the development and exchange, it becomes a fabric with local characteristics of various countries.

Batik, too, has made Singapore Airlines flight attendants one of the most recognizable images in the aviation industry. The sarong dress, single-handedly designed by the great French fashion designer Pierre-Balmain, is made of exquisite batik fabric with patterns embroidered with gold-colored silk threads.

The background color of this aviation uniform has been changed several times, but the batik element is used until now. The beauty of batik has a kind of permanence outside of time, and without much ink, it is already in the depths of our memories.

Batik is also playing its own flavor in the field of fashion. International brands such as DIOR, LV, MK, Roberto Cavalli, etc., their designers have found that batik has a very different expressive power and tension on fabrics of different textures. Batik technique gives fashion more freedom and breathing. The door to the hidden world is slowly opening, waiting for more expression of batik.

Batik technique not only has a new width of life in the field of clothing, but also has its thickness of life in the field of art. The combination of batik and art gives art a more diversified way of presentation and expression.

"In many international exhibitions, on the one hand, batik has been regarded as an important part of modern art and fiber art, on the other hand, batik technique has been regarded as a form of expression of modern painting, and as a medium to show the artist's special language of art, and even in the conception of a part of batik artists, 'batik' has been transformed into a form of modern art. ' has been transformed into 'wax-proof painting' with modern significance."

Batik has had its own ups and downs in China.

In the late 1970s, with China's reform and opening up, traditional batik weaving was eliminated by the tide of commercialization. As the traditional Chinese batik art has the defects of serious decoloration and monotonous color, the traditional batik woven fabrics began to be replaced by knitted fabrics. This in turn affected the creation of batik art in China, and Chinese batik art once fell into a difficult situation.

Faced with this situation, an artist took the lead to improve the road. He is Liu Zilong, who is known as the "Father of Chinese Batik".

In terms of medium, Mr. Liu Zilong applied the traditional batik technique to different media such as cotton and linen, ceramics, leather, etc.; in terms of language of artistic expression, he integrated the western painting language such as abstractionism and Fauvism into Chinese batik. Zilong Batik" with multi-color and modern artistic expression was born. In the "Liu Zilong Batik Art Exhibition" held by the National Art Museum of China in 1984, the colorful batik dyed attracted wide attention both at home and abroad.

Artistic creation is the crystallization of the collision of spiritual civilization and thoughts and emotions, and it is also a matter of cultivation of cultural heritage and a manifestation of one's life character. In his works, batik is given more space for imagination, and in the up and down search about color and form again and again, batik has a second breeding.

Gong Jianpei, a professor at the School of Design of the Nanjing Arts Institute, uses batik to give his artistic language more expressive power. He changed the carrier of batik from traditional silk and cotton cloth to paper-based handmade rice paper, creating a number of new works that are unique in color and sense of form. In "Poetic Rhythm - Gong Jianpei's Batik Artworks Exhibition", which was shown in May 2017 at the Chinese Cultural Center in Berlin, Germany, his works amazed the world. Art originates from a chance, and even more so from the constant search for truth in the chance.

The floral shapes and batiks of the Mustard Seed Garden glowed with a marvelous halo under his enchantment, rendered in layers and ever-changing, and it was as if the creatures of nature were re-lighted in his works. Elegant, silent and speechless, time flows and the years are silent. The world is bigger than that, but it's in the painting in front of you.

In the international arena, there are countless artists who combine batik with their works.

For example, Blank Joachim, a contemporary German batik artist, abandons the original realistic painting and uses the texture of wood, stone and bark structure in nature to show another kind of topography combined with painting techniques. In addition to the texture of the contours of the batik art paintings, he also applies the modeling techniques of light and dark, with smooth and graceful lines to highlight the shape to express the meaning of his abstract paintings.

In his paintings, it seems as if the light of the deep sea is surging. That light, through the shadows of batik comes out from the painting, lighting up you and me.

Batik, re-lighted by the world, is about artists and designers following and promoting beauty, and even more about the mysterious life force of batik, which is enough to connect the world.

There is a tradition among the Miao people that when Miao batik women know that their batik clothes are going to be bought, they will gently tear off a piece of cloth from the inner hem of the garment and put it into their arms. For them, batik is not only a craft passed down from generation to generation, but also a gift for a lifetime. For them, batik is not only a craft passed down from generation to generation, but also a lifelong gift, because this gift, which combines time, space and temperature, enables them to have a better insight into the world, to understand the world in a pure way, and to meet the world with innocent and gentle gazes.

Batik, perhaps, is their third eye which is not seen by ordinary people.

Batik has opened a door to the world in the process of "from utility to art, and from art back to utility".

Nowadays, the light of batik not only illuminates the world of the Miao girls, but also the night sky of the earth. This piece of cloth full of time and love is gradually coming into our living space in a new way.