The Origin and Development of Relief Commemorative Medals

Art has been an indispensable part of human life since the existence of human society. Because primitive ancestors could not correctly explain natural phenomena, primitive religions came into being, and they expressed their worship of nature and gods in various ways. With the development of primitive religion, primitive sculpture art has also developed into a manifestation or expression of sacrificial beliefs and worship concepts. Primitive rock paintings and sculptures in caves initially revealed the original features of relief as an art form. The material life of human beings often affects spiritual expression. In ancient times, primitive humans used colors and lines to represent natural objects in contact with hunting and gathering life, and described them as plane paintings to express people's concern about these things. When people invented line engraving and intended to fix and preserve these images with hard materials such as rocks, the first relief was produced. With the accumulation of practical experience, people have discovered the expression method of shadow, and gradually moved from drawing plane shape to paying attention to image volume. This concern and the modeling practice of using various materials to express the volume have promoted the initial development of round carving.

Rock paintings and line carvings in primitive times, whether realistic images simulating nature or decorative patterns, are similar in description methods and modeling modes. In the Nile valley and the eastern Mediterranean, the method of line carving found in caves is to outline the external outline first, then describe it and then carve it into lines. With the development of production tools, stone carvings with bas-relief properties have been popularized accordingly. Primitive nomads in northern China have left a large number of stone carvings (or rock paintings) that record their life history in the yinshan mountains, which stretches for thousands of miles. The rock paintings in this area are characterized by strong realism, with cattle, horses, goats, deer, tigers, leopards and other wild animals and livestock as the theme; Primitive artists painted figures on dense and smooth black stones, and then carved figures with specially polished sharp and hard stones, which became the early expression form of stone relief art.

In the Neolithic Age, man invented pottery. The modeling technology and decoration technology related to pottery further promoted the development of sculpture forms. In addition to drawing lines, the continuous improvement of pottery decoration has also developed a sculptural decoration form, including three-dimensional printing, marking, carving and stacking, and even relatively independent ceramic round carving, relief or through carving. Archaeological data show that pottery sculptures, including clay sculptures, together with stone carvings, have developed to varying degrees in the Nile Valley, the Two Rivers Valley, the Mediterranean, Central and Western Europe, China and other vast civilized areas.

After the disintegration of primitive society, relief art gradually flourished. In many ancient civilizations, tombs built to pray for eternal life after death, temples built to worship ancestors' gods and monuments built to celebrate emperors' achievements are magnificent. Relief, a form of expression that combines the entity of sculpture and the narrative of painting, has largely adapted to the ancient social life and spiritual orientation. It provides a powerful way and a vast world for expressing people's imaginary sacred world or paradise ideal like Eden and recording important events in real life.

In the 25th century BC, Egypt had become a powerful centralized slave country, and a large number of reliefs were used to decorate tombs, temples and monuments. Egyptians creatively used three typical postures (① all positive; ② Absolute side; (3) Looking down at the top, create relief figures and strive to create a quiet, mysterious and dignified atmosphere. The relief style of "Namir Slate" marks the formation of Egyptian art projects with lasting influence. Its concise curve modeling and geometric factors have been perfected in the ancient kingdom of Egypt. Powerful linear modeling makes the relief have the same meaning as the inscription and inscription description. Here, the hard and straight intaglio lines emphasize the "dynamic potential" with spiritual symbolic significance, and are no longer limited to reproducing a realistic image and scene.

The two river basins in West Asia gave birth to the ancient Mesopotamian civilization. Relief art presents different styles in various kingdoms in the two river basins, and the relief of Assyria kingdom has undoubtedly reached its peak. Assyrian reliefs follow the narrative principle, with grand composition and delicate description, bearing in mind the great achievements of kings and the rise and fall of kingdoms. The realistic style of Nalamm Xinji Gongbei is simple and solemn, the composition is ingenious, the characters are arranged properly, and the king, attendants and enemies are described well. The emphasis on the sense of mass and the exaggerated expression of muscles give the relief a powerful and implicit tension. The wounded lion is also a masterpiece of Assyrian relief. With vivid and accurate lines, it skillfully grasps the touching instantaneous dynamics, which fully shows the superb ability of Assyrian artists to portray images and render the atmosphere. Glazed pottery relief in the new Babylonian period has also made great artistic achievements. Different from the plane treatment of Assyrian kingdom, it shapes the image in the form of high relief, and then carries out glaze decoration to make the modeling theme more vivid and realistic. The glazed pottery relief of New Babylon enriched and developed the artistic tradition of Assyria to a great extent.

Greek classical sculpture is a model of western sculpture art. Ancient Greece was a pantheistic country. Large-scale temples were built out of worship of gods, and these temples became the main carriers of relief. In the 5th century BC, ancient Greece, which entered its heyday, began to use a large number of reliefs to decorate cities and buildings. The relief art on the Parthenon, including the sculpture of triangular lintel wall, relief partition and ribbon relief, is undoubtedly the greatest work among the remains of Greek classical sculpture. The high relief carved on the lintel wall is close to a circular sculpture; The rectangular space of lace is occupied by a large number of relief partitions, depicting the battle scenes of Lepidoptera and Cantor, God and Giant, Greeks and Amazonians. These relief partitions, which are obviously created by artists of different schools, have different carving styles and techniques, but they can skillfully and appropriately arrange diverse and rich contents in a specific plane space, and there is no suspicion of thankless work. Ribbon relief, like partition relief, extends in all directions along the building and has a large scale. The riders in the parade have a more perfect understanding of perspective shortening, and their expression techniques have reached a new depth, such as appropriately narrowing the farthest part of the image while maintaining the height consistency of the prominent parts; Images interweave, snuggle and overlap with each other, constantly conveying the depth of relief, thus causing people's illusion. This mature technique of expressing the depth of illusion reached its acme in the altar embossed ribbon of Zeus and Athena in Pegamon, "Gods Against Giants". The high relief technique similar to the round carving and the staggered size of the retreating characters suggest the depth of space to the maximum extent, and the whole composition form gives the viewer a strong sense of movement and impact. The Greek relief art is based on excellent realism, and the figure modeling structure is rigorous and the anatomy is accurate, which shows the superb skills of the Greeks in realistic modeling. The Greeks have a tradition of paying attention to "logic" and "seeking truth", and their artists have gradually found a way to describe nature by observing it. In early Greek sculpture, clothes were usually represented by concave lines. With the development of seeking truth, these garment lines have become convex modeling lines, and the traditional two-dimensional space has been replaced by three-dimensional space. Ancient Greek reliefs created a beautiful model for western art and reached an unattainable height in the history of western art.

After China society entered the slave society, the relief art made outstanding achievements in ritual vessels in the form of decoration. It is particularly worth mentioning that the relief decorative patterns on the bronzes of Shang and Zhou Dynasties "reflect an infinite, primitive and primitive religious feelings, concepts and ideals with grotesque heroic lines and deep casting, which cannot be expressed in conceptual language." (Li Zehou) The "gluttonous" pattern is the most distinctive relief decoration style on ancient bronzes in China. As a plane animal face pattern, it spreads to both sides with the nose as the center, and the image has a sense of pattern. The application of sculpture technology makes it present a powerful and dignified three-dimensional effect on the plane. The prosperity of China's ancient relief art is mainly reflected in the stone reliefs and brick reliefs in Han Dynasty, as well as Buddhist statues and mausoleum buildings after Wei and Jin Dynasties. A large number of Han Dynasty portrait bricks are China's unique relief art style. It unifies narrative and expressive, and vividly depicts social customs, production and life scenes and fairy tales at that time with vivid plots and vivid shapes. Modelling technique is realistic, but the composition and space processing adopt the scattered perspective method of Chinese painting, so it shows a high degree of freedom in grasping the object. The most commonly used technique and expression form in portrait brick is "plane bas-relief". Its general practice is to carve a negative line on the impressive convex and delicate plane picture, outline the details of the portrait, and insert faces and lines to make the modeling image rich and vivid. For China's relief art, the extensive use of "line" as a modeling language is characterized by rich aesthetic expression and national temperament. In addition to the portrait bricks of the Han Dynasty, the stone carving art of the Western Han Dynasty, such as the stone carving of Huoqubing Tomb in Shaanxi Province, also presents an important feature of linear expression. Here, lines are more flexible and smooth than solid blocks. Through the use of engraved lines, relief and round carving are integrated, giving people a great sense of strength, movement and expansion. The stone carving art in the tombs of the Eastern Han Dynasty highlights the basic characteristics of China relief art in this period. Although its content has not changed obviously, there are many changes in its carving techniques or techniques, such as cutting the ground flat to engrave the yin, or cutting the ground to emboss the yang line, which pays great attention to the concave and convex treatment of the lines, reflecting the unique aesthetics and intelligence of China people.

In ancient India, sculpture was the most important and influential art form. Relief form has become the main decorative means of temple carving. As an early Buddhist art in India, Balhuzadubo's fence relief is an important work in this period. The line-engraving-based bas-relief, with pictures interspersed in the rich images, presents a unique fullness and unique composition processing. Dense and compact filling composition, continuous composition of one picture and several scenes, to some extent, broke through the time and space restrictions in reality and gained the freedom of artistic expression. As a sacred symbol, the ideal human body shape was recognized by India and ancient Greeks. The difference is that Indians emphasize the sensuality of the human body and frankly accept and praise the existence of the human body. York's western image, with its graceful S-shaped curve, embodies the beauty of women's body that conforms to Indian aesthetic norms and artistic procedure standards. Like all gods representing Hindu or Buddhist beliefs, the works also show the characteristics of attracting attention and purpose. These constitute and endow Indian relief with unique artistic charm.

Generally speaking, Cambodian relief art emphasizes abstraction more than its Indian prototype. Preference for symmetry rather than organic lines, and the main feature of modeling is almost geometric opposition, which seems to imply the mystery and mystery of ideology and belief different from other religious systems. Cambodia's relief art lacks Indian physical reality and seems to pay more attention to the sacred power beyond the secular. In Southeast Asia, Angkor's relief shows superb skills and artistic tendency, which can be said to be unique.

The Mayan culture, centered in Mexico and spread all over Central America, has long been famous, and the reliefs there are decorated with huge temple buildings in its unique form. Maya decorative reliefs show complex scenes of political changes, religious events and daily life on wallboard, stairs, lintels and square columns. Different from the classical art in other parts of the world, these relief works of Mayan culture have a sense of square massiness and solemnity, and the shape treated by cutting technology makes Mayan art very unique.

The introduction of Buddhist art has injected fresh blood into the relief art in China, and the rise of grotto statues has provided a broad stage for the development of relief art in China. The appearance and evolution of the image of Tian Fei shows China artists' creative acceptance of foreign cultures. Its elegant momentum and rhythmic streamers reflect the line-based style of China relief. The unique sense of volume and weight in three-dimensional space shows the advantages of relief in this period to enhance the depth of expression and create a dignified atmosphere. The form of flying sculpture in Wei and Jin Dynasties initially showed the exploration of depth. The most important breakthrough of relief art in Wei and Jin Dynasties is to develop the almost plane line carving form into a full relief that highlights the main body. The interest in "quantity" revealed here shows the majesty of the ruler and the solemnity of the Buddha, which greatly complicates the statues of Tianwang and Lux.

Glory up. The fiery red style, which is mostly placed on the outer walls of grottoes, is always in the change of light and shadow, so the shallow relief is obviously not more suitable than the nearly round high relief decoration.

In Europe, the powerful Roman Empire echoed the Qin and Han Dynasties in China. With their political and military talents, the Romans built a huge empire. As the inheritors and disseminators of Greek civilization, they are practical, take what they like from Greek civilization and then use it at will. Roman relief art continues the classical rules of the East and Greece. They built the Arc de Triomphe and monuments to celebrate the victory, and scattered them on embossed ribbons. For the Romans, the most Roman relief works, such as Augustus' Peace Altar and Trajan Memorial Column, undoubtedly fully satisfied their interest and enthusiasm in telling the story of the empire. The statue of Trajan, built to commemorate the achievements of Emperor Trajan, is 27 meters high and 1 meter wide, surrounded by 23 embossed ribbons, and tells the story of Trajan's conquest of Darcy. Sculptors used the skills and achievements of Greek art for hundreds of years in these works recording meritorious deeds, but the Romans emphasized clear narration and accurate expression of all details in order to leave their achievements to future generations. The essence of art has changed, and its main goal is no longer harmony, beauty and drama. The peace altar, which is as famous as the memorial column, has made a slight breakthrough in the technique of relief. Roman artists have made progress in dealing with space and depth than Greek classical artists, such as altar reliefs. They deal with the softness of the flat background of the characters and are more technically in place. They almost disappeared all the characters behind in the background, making the relief level of the characters in front higher.

From the 4th century to14th century, the prevalence of Christianity made European medieval art have a strong religious color. In France, Gothic sculptures with architectural decoration as the main feature have made considerable achievements. With the change of religious concept from "sanctification" to "humanization", architectural sculpture also developed from shallow relief to high relief, and gradually became independent from the wall, which contributed to the formation of a new sculpture style. This style has been highlighted in the relief of the main entrance of the church in chartres. Its portrait proportion meets the modeling requirements of building columns, and the modeling is extremely elongated, forming a slender and exquisite style. The column is wrapped with head relief, and the head extends out of the column, which is round and true. They are no longer bas-reliefs, but high reliefs almost unrelated to the stigma. This attempt to get rid of the shackles of the architectural framework has made the French sculpture in the next two or three hundred years move towards real space and real life.

The same happened in the Sui and Tang Dynasties in China where Buddhism was prevalent. The creation and layout of grotto statues provided an important opportunity for the development of relief art, making this period an unprecedented prosperity of relief art after Shang and Zhou Dynasties, Qin and Han Dynasties. Its biggest breakthrough is to change the previous shallow line carving form into a three-dimensional and full high relief.

The relief art in tropical Africa in the Middle Ages can be compared with the contemporary relief art in other countries. They usually appear in the form of carved doors and windows, bas-reliefs and copper decorative plates. They maintain a certain independence in religious life and are not the product or annotation of worship concept. Although they have no architectural features, they are related to architecture or palaces and temples. In the Panel, the image of a woman in the center is carved into a nearly circular shape, and the sexual characteristics are highlighted. The geometric patterns carved on the back plate may represent some symbolic meaning: triangles represent the trinity and prisms represent female characteristics. Here, although the meaning is concrete, its symbolic form is abstract. The bronze plaque "General and Soldier" in Benin is composed in strict accordance with the principle of symmetry, and its changing factor lies in the different decorative patterns. The main part of the sculpture adopts a technique close to high relief, highlighting the central figure to be emphasized. The detailed decoration on the decorative board combining dots, lines and surfaces gives full play to the exquisiteness of bronze casting, and its exquisiteness is amazing.

During the Renaissance, under the guidance of the new spirit of the times-humanism, a new artistic trend of thought emerged, which was different from the expressionist art in the Middle Ages. Artists began to reflect life and social life in their works, and tried to combine science and art. Sculptors understood the world with the wisdom of Neo-Confucianism, and on the basis of affirming realistic sculptures in Greece and Rome, they paid attention to scientific and artistic research such as perspective and anatomy, which promoted the growing development and prosperity of relief art. The Gate of Heaven by bronze doors ghiberti of Florence Baptist Church skillfully combines the perspective of painting with the main space effect of sculpture by using the principle of scientific perspective, in which the background buildings are almost all composed of the perspective of the painter. The figures in the lower part of the relief are in the form of high relief, and the heads of some figures are even regarded as round carvings. This expression from high relief to shallow relief is used naturally, appropriately and pleasing to the eye by artists. During this period, the discovery of relief linear perspective technique made the western relief realistic technique enter a new development stage. Donatello made an eye-catching experiment on the background of Herod's Banquet in relief, that is, on the plane of two-dimensional space, he replaced the plane decoration effect in medieval painting or relief by creating the illusion of space depth. This background processing method has become a major feature of western art in the Renaissance.

Jean goujon was an outstanding representative of the French relief movement in the16th century. His relief "The Spring of Innocence" is deeply influenced by Italian humanism, which has both classical charm and human touch. The image of youthful vitality in the works is a shock to medieval asceticism and a praise to man and nature.

Artists who have been baptized by the Renaissance, faced with the great achievements created by their predecessors, have to try to surpass them with formal innovation. /kloc-In the mid-8th century, the expansion of industrial revolution in europe and the development of capital economy promoted the further prosperity of western urban civilization, and promoted the continuous development of relief art in buildings, gardens, squares and streets.

1792' s departure is a high relief created by sculptor Luther for the Arc de Triomphe in Paris Star Square. Compared with the other three theme reliefs on the Arc de Triomphe, it is more solemn and majestic. Sculptors skillfully use the technique of association and care. Through the actions of the Statue of Liberty and the sideburns man, people naturally feel the people following them. They are advancing and calling. Because the crowd is divided into upper and lower floors through nursing, people feel that their forward movements are rapid, powerful and real, and even the statues seem to be going out of the wall. Departure is a model of French romantic sculpture in this period, and other works with similar techniques include Dance by Luther's student Kalpa. They have a common feature, that is, they are not only good at dealing with the dynamic rhythm and ups and downs of sculpture, but also adapt well to the whole building wall. All these have broken through the stable and rigid format of classical reliefs, making reliefs have infinite vitality and vitality in a limited space.

From the end of 19, the whole western world has undergone profound changes under the influence of industrial civilization. Different cultural thoughts are surging, and traditional aesthetic values and concepts are challenged. Under the ever-changing situation, the reliefs of various themes are separated from the main body of decoration, tend to develop independently, and their styles and forms are increasingly diversified.

French sculptor Rodin started the engine of sculpture reform with his outstanding innovative consciousness and practice, making him a milestone in the transformation of western sculpture art from classical to modern. Rodin's masterpiece in the field of relief is The Gate of Hell, which has devoted his life's efforts. He almost subconsciously reflected his own self-experience and insight into characters and society in his works, which made it have profound humanity and great charm. The gate of hell is different from the previous architectural decorative relief. In the past, similar reliefs were mostly composed according to stories, and the division and layout seemed orderly, which conformed to the logic of plot development. Although this work only shows one theme, its composition is irregular. Of course, it contains careful conception and layout, but on the whole, everything seems to be overwhelming, and people who have been burned to hell are engraved in every crack of the door. Due to the ups and downs of high relief and shallow relief on the plane, complex and elusive shadows are formed. The whole gate looks gloomy and full of movement, as if the noise of hell sounded. When the work was first erected in Paris Square with an independent gypsum substitute, it was attacked by students of Paris Academy of Fine Arts and even smashed into hundreds of pieces. Today, when people sincerely appreciate Rodin's works, it is hard to imagine what kind of cold reception and criticism the author received in those years. But history finally chose Rodin, which is really ironic.

In the field of reliefs, Boodell, a student of Rodin, showed a more challenging form of exploration and practice than Mr. He. He absorbed the decorative features of Egyptian, Indian and especially medieval Gothic sculptures, emphasized the pursuit of architectural sense in reliefs and paid attention to the application of architectural elements in reliefs. In his relief works, the background is always geometric figures, and his concise, general and straightforward modelling technique and style form the uniqueness of Boodell's sculpture language.

In the whole century of the 20th century, relief has been developed unprecedentedly. With the revolutionary change of round carving becoming more and more independent, relief also began to show its unique artistic charm in an independent manner, conveying more independent spiritual connotation. Like painting and round carving, the relief art in this period was influenced by many schools, such as symbolism, cubism, futurism, constructivism, surrealism, Dadaism and pop art. These are all manifested in the field of relief. Generally speaking, there are two major trends in relief art in the past hundred years. One who continues to follow Rodin's route generally belongs to the category of realism. Among them, a group of effective and influential sculptors are active, such as Boodell, Mayol, Kohler Huizhi, Meniere, giacomo Man Group, augustus Dinkic and later George Jean Close. In different historical periods and social atmosphere, they always adhere to the tradition of sculpture in the form of volume and concreteness, and at the same time explore modern style forms with their own characteristics according to their own feelings and new ideas. The other is to find another way and run counter to it. This is a huge team from modernism to post-modernism, which brings together many schools or main lines. They explore in various forms that tend to be diversified and extreme, and make great strides on the road of anti-tradition. Sculptors such as Gauguin, Matisse and Alp introduced innovative experiments in painting into the field of sculpture in the early 20th century, and took the first step for modern relief to break through the traditional concept of volume.

Looking back at the evolution of the world relief art, we can say that the relief art is constantly developing through inheritance, reference and change. Artists from all civilized regions, nationalities and historical periods have made unforgettable contributions to the construction and exploration of relief art. Undoubtedly, all the historical achievements and practical experience of mankind have laid a solid foundation for the future development of relief art. ..

In the 1980s, the modern sculpture movement entered a pluralistic era, which is commonly known as postmodernism. In this period, it is difficult to distinguish the relationship between styles as before. The artistic norms that support people to make accurate judgments, whether traditional or innovative, no longer exist or have appeared. In fact, diversification itself has become an anti-norm "norm"-anything, no matter how extreme it lacks an identity, is art as long as it is regarded as "art" by anyone. In this case, art is only the form of the word "art", which is not enough to define its substantive connotation. The concept-integrated relief has always been in a difficult position to standardize and define, and gradually moves towards the complete disintegration of the relief itself and even the art itself in the trend of post-modernism.