Differences between Western Ancient Sculptures and China Ancient Sculptures

Chinese and western sculptures present completely different aesthetic styles in the process of development. This paper attempts to explore the inherent laws of Chinese and western sculpture art from the aspects of geographical environment, way of thinking, cultural origin and philosophical quality.

Key words: geographical environment, mode of thinking, logo, similar spirit and similar form.

There are strict boundaries between various western arts and specific methods of expression, while various arts in China are interrelated. This is due to the different cultural psychology between China and the West. Taking sculpture as an example, the sculpture art in the West has its specific rules and creative methods, while the sculpture in China shows a close combination with painting art, such as the so-called "plastic capacity and image quality". Why do Chinese and Western sculpture present different artistic forms? Mainly in the geographical environment, cultural origin, philosophical literacy and other aspects of the impact on sculpture art.

First, the influence of geographical environment.

Geographical environment and geographical conditions have a direct impact on the emergence and formation of sculpture art, which is an indisputable objective fact. As we all know, China's traditional culture has a long history. Apart from inheriting the development trend, there are almost no traces of fracture, while western culture is constantly being denied and reconstructed. Many scholars believe that this is closely related to their respective geographical and environmental conditions, but what is the relationship?

Geographically speaking, China culture and western culture are a pair of contradictory categories. Analyzing China culture from the climatic conditions in geographical conditions, we can find that China culture has undergone corresponding changes due to the influence of climatic conditions in the historical development process, which is an adaptation of culture to the environment. In the history of China, the temperature changed greatly during the period of turmoil and recession, but in the development process, the climate was mild in some prosperous periods and peacetime, which was not only a coupling phenomenon, but also adapted to climate change.

China is located in the east of Asia, bordering the Pacific Ocean in the west, with a closed geographical environment and its own cultural characteristics. The closed geographical environment ensures the objective conditions to avoid the impact of foreign culture. Geographically, the ladder-like shape of high in the west and low in the east has also made a clear geographical division for animal husbandry, agriculture and animal husbandry, laid an objective condition for the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River to become the cradle of ancient civilization, and provided important support for the reproduction of the Chinese nation and the continuation of Chinese culture. China has a vast territory and rich resources, which determines that China's sculptures present diversified characteristics, including not only figures, animals, fictional animals (dragons, phoenixes, unicorns, etc. ), the combination of human and animals (Nvwa 、 Fuxi's snake head), including mountains and rivers, forests, clouds, myths and legends, historical stories, life scenes, and the modeling of a large number of animal utensils. Especially in the early sculpture art, there is no obvious distinction between primary and secondary, and there is no distinction between primary and secondary. However, its intimacy is also prominent, occupying an increasingly important position. In China's later sculptures, especially after the rise of religious sculptures, portraits can be fully developed. The themes of scenery, animals and plants reflect the totem culture and naturalistic spirit of ancient China culture to some extent. But god and man in religious sculpture are one, and god can descend to earth and man can ascend to heaven. Imperial heroes are its representatives, so since Shang and Zhou Dynasties, patriarchal clan system has become an important link in social organizations. This feudal patriarchal clan system and ritual culture formed the closed characteristics of sculpture function. Sculptures are either buried underground as funerary objects or placed in front of the emperor's tomb as guards. Sculpture became an accessory of patriarchal clan system and lost its independent aesthetic character.

The appearance of western sculpture first appeared as the decoration of architectural art, but it gained an independent position in a relatively short time. Europe is located in the temperate zone, and the regional differences are relatively small. The alpine mountains in the Alps, the mountains in Spain and the vast glaciers in Iceland have also cultivated different national personalities and different cultures of Europeans in regional differences, objectively forming cultural diversity. The gods in ancient Greece, like human beings, were "gods" from top to bottom. In addition, geographical environment and other factors have also formed an alliance between the polis and democracy under slavery within the polis. Therefore, the human body and portraits are the themes of his sculptures. Since ancient Greece founded and laid the sculpture form with human as the theme, until the rise of modern sculpture in 2500, portrait has always occupied the dominant position of sculpture theme, and many excellent portrait sculptures have emerged. There are single people and combinations, and the gestures are colorful, which is culturally related to the ancient Greek concept that "man is the measure of everything". Different from China's mausoleum sculptures and religious sculptures, a large number of portrait sculptures in the West are placed in squares and streets, thus showing the public characteristics of the artistic functions of sculpture.

This closeness and publicity is not only the biggest difference in theme and culture between Chinese and Western sculptures for more than 2,000 years, but also reveals that the sculpture of ancient tombs in China is the art of serving the dead, while most people in the West like sculpture are the art of appreciating the living, showing differences in purpose and function. Different geographical environments in China and the West determine different lifestyles, and different lifestyles determine different social organizational structures. It can be said that the closure of the geographical environment formed the great unity of China culture, which in turn promoted the continuous feudalization of China for more than two thousand years; The opening of Europeans, the formation of European immigrants and businesses have also promoted political democracy and ethnic differentiation.

Second, the difference of thinking mode.

Comparing the thinking modes of Chinese and western cultures, we can find that the thinking mode of China's traditional art pursues unity and regards the universe as a unified whole, which is a comprehensive monism; However, the western traditional artistic thinking mode takes analysis as a means, regards the world as different parts and pursues dichotomy, which is an analytical dualism. In the process of the development of Chinese and western thinking modes, western culture has formed a thinking mode that attaches importance to logical reasoning, which combines the scientism and idealism of ancient Greece, laying an important foundation for the model of sculpture art, while China culture has formed a thinking mode that emphasizes intuition and intention. It directly experiences, perceives and grasps the object through intuition. This way of thinking transcends logic and concepts and is good at understanding. This so-called "breakthrough" and "turning stone into gold" have also formed cultural characteristics different from the western thinking mode that focuses on analysis and tends to be abstract.

This cultural characteristic is manifested in plastic arts, which forms the concept that China's sculpture pays attention to the blending of intentions and the expression after conveying intentions, thus forming the concept that China's art pays attention to creating intentions. This mode of thinking, which is biased towards symbol, expression, freehand brushwork and pursuing beauty, goodness and unity, is also the biggest difference between Chinese and western traditional sculptures, which pay attention to reproduction, imitation and realism and pursue beauty and truth. "Beauty" is the common pursuit of Chinese and Western sculptures, but "goodness" embodies China's "virtue" and ethics, and "truth" embodies the scientificity and knowledge of Western sculptures. Based on ethical requirements, nude human sculptures rarely appear in China's sculpture art. Based on the requirements of portrait and science, western portrait sculpture art has been dominated by human bodies since ancient Greece. Western sculptures pay attention to the proportion, structure, expression and turning point of form, while ancient sculptures in China emphasize charm. The so-called "vivid portrayal is being blocked." Starting from this point, it has contributed to the realism of western sculptures, while China's sculptures have different freehand brushwork characteristics. The ancient plastic arts in China attached great importance to the expression of intention from the decorative patterns of painted pottery and bronze wares, which contained a profound understanding of cultural connotation and modeling. When shaping figures or animal images, ancient sculptures in China did not deliberately pursue strict proportion and anatomy, nor did they pursue the accuracy and coolness of external images, but paid attention to emotional feelings and experiences. The focus of this concern is not on objects and entities, but on the aesthetic consciousness of function, relationship and rhythm, paying more attention to the spirit and meaning of people and animals, and deliberately highlighting, exaggerating or deforming them to make the image more vivid. Western art integrates the concept of shape into the typology of geometric shapes. Supported by the dual spirits of philosophy and science, it imitates objects and images, and achieves a nearly perfect state in proportional anatomy, which provides a way to summarize the morphological changes and movements for traditional human sculptures and modern abstract sculptures. China, on the other hand, turned from the concept of "form" to the revelation of "God", advocated "vivid portrayal" and "writing God with form", and attached importance to the spirit and personality of characters. Therefore, the ancient sculptures in China pay attention to the characteristics of the inner temperament of the object, while the traditional sculptures in the West pay attention to the detailed study of the external body, forming two different ways: intentional modeling and simulated modeling.

Third, there are great differences in philosophical quality.

Western culture values wisdom, while eastern culture values emotion. The former is easy to know, while the latter is hard to detect.

All western theories originated from philosophy. In ancient Greece, philosophy was defined as knowledge that loved wisdom. What did the ancient Greeks think the world was made of, water, fire and gas? Western philosophy began. Aristotle's logic and Euclid's geometry are the products of wisdom. Archimedes' scientific experiment is the expression of western wisdom and the origin of modern western science.

What about China's philosophy? Confucius stresses benevolence, and "the benevolent loves others". Sincerity is benevolence, and "goodness is goodness". This blood relationship has been continuously cut and cut, and it has become the cornerstone of China culture on the basis of patriarchal society. From the virtue of Yin and Zhou Dynasties to the benevolence of Confucius, from the benevolence of Confucius to the nature of Mencius, there is a deep blood relationship. The core of China's knowledge is Tao, and the core of Greek knowledge is logos.

The "Tao" in China's philosophy and the "Reason" in Western philosophy reflect the differences between Chinese and Western arts. Logos originated from Greek, which originally meant "gathering" and later evolved into "speaking". Collection activities need to classify and distinguish items, and at the same time there are corresponding standards and scales in classification and distinction, so Logos originally means "separation". Logos has the meaning of speech, that is, what words or inner thoughts express, and also has the meaning of reason, that is, inner thoughts themselves. Heraclitus used it to express "the truth spoken" and believed that the correct truth expressed the real principle. Today, we often use reason and truth to translate logos. Logos narrative has strict rules, so it developed the later logical reasoning form. Tao is unspeakable, so "name" and "reality" are binary separation, and there are "eternity" and "temporary storage". There are two possibilities for silence. First, the Tao can only be preserved by knowing silence, so the knower does not speak, and the speaker does not know. Second, Tao cannot be conveyed by words. At the beginning of the 20th century, Tao could not be Tao, which had two consequences. One is that the true meaning of Tao is difficult to encode and transmit, which affects the evolution of knowledge organization. The other is that misunderstanding is easy to occur, so the activity of eliminating misunderstanding is more important than original exploration.

In sculpture, this is a similar problem in form and spirit. Similar in shape and spirit, one is to treat the object rationally; One is to treat the object emotionally. It is an eternal topic in the field of sculpture. Size problem and dialectical analysis are the only way out of the theoretical maze.

Form, as the name implies, is similar in appearance. But this meaning is different in different environments (Chinese and Western, ancient and modern ...). In the Renaissance of ancient Greece and Western Europe, the status of likeness was related to the success or failure of sculpture. In ancient China, the status of likeness was more subtle. Gu Kaizhi is an advocate of both form and spirit. He: "The vivid portrayal is in front of us." Be quoted by future generations through the ages. Not only in painting, but also in sculpture. The ancient animal and portrait sculptures in China emphasized the spirit likeness, but neglected the shape likeness. Therefore, lions in stone carvings show their majesty and solemnity, and religious sculptures often project their expressions rather than their postures in people's minds. The spirit is very difficult. First of all, we should not only grasp the charm of the object, but also add our own feelings to the works of art, so that the works of art can have their own ideas. The cultural tradition of not paying attention to proportion and materials (such as clay sculpture) and pursuing charm (such as Shi Hu in front of Huo Qubing's tomb) is also obvious in traditional sculptures in China. However, there are a few fine products such as Jinci Patron and Shanxi Jincheng Erxian Temple.