How to appreciate Chinese painting?

Art appreciation is also a kind of creativity. There is a cloud in China's ancient classic literary theory "Wen Xin Diao Long": "A husband who knows the Olympiad is happy and guilty; Such as the crowds in Chuntai, the bait stops passing by. " It means that people who can deeply feel and understand the beauty of literary and artistic works will certainly get inner joy and spiritual enjoyment when they appreciate famous works, just like going on stage in spring makes people feel comfortable and can keep passers-by like moving music and delicious food. Indeed, the love of literature and art can sometimes reach a state of obsession. Confucius listened to little music in Qi, didn't he "know the taste of meat in March"? If you often go to the art exhibition, you will see a steady stream of enthusiastic audience in the hall of the art exhibition. Some stood motionless in front of the painting for a long time; Although some people pass by in a hurry, they can feel a sense of excitement and satisfaction every time they see a work worthy of appreciation, and sometimes they can't help but smile. Some take out sketches to copy the general idea and remember the details; Some turn around and look again, really lingering step by step. Marx also said that the aesthetic spiritual feeling is different from the feeling dominated by the needs of rough practice. He added, "If the music is good and the listener understands it, then the consumption of music will be more noble than champagne." . It can be seen that literary appreciation is a noble spiritual activity of human beings. If literary creation is spiritual production, then literary appreciation belongs to spiritual consumption. Only the combination of these two aspects can be regarded as the whole of literary and artistic activities. Authors and appreciators communicate, communicate, convey, accept, expand and feedback through the medium of works, and play a social role in mutual promotion and improve development. Just as there is a lot of knowledge in material consumption, there is also a question of whether art consumption is good at enjoying it. This involves the issue of subjective aesthetic feeling. For example, when going to a symphony concert, some people can understand the wonderful melody, rhythm, multi-level structure and so on, as well as the artistic conception, style and colorful connotation of the work. While accepting the artistic beauty and ideological content of the work, it also spreads its wings of imagination, gains new inspiration and enjoys great aesthetic enjoyment. The other person, listening to the same music, tries his best to force himself to understand, which is still puzzling. Maybe some people feel bored and have to get out. Works of art are visible, intuitive and vivid, which seems to be more popular and popular than literature and music, but there is also a question of whether they can be understood. We may feel a sense of emptiness after reading the works praised by everyone. From one exhibition to another, experts may argue about styles, schools, new ideas, formal beauty, tendencies and so on, but a layman can't see the difference between them. I once heard that the leader of an enterprise asked for "gaudiness" when giving instructions to the propaganda department for holiday decoration. This shows that as a part of cultural literacy, there is a gap between people. When you are exposed to works of art, you can't appreciate them. Art appreciation needs some cultivation. Or Marx put it well: "The most beautiful music is meaningless to an ear that can't distinguish melody, and music is not an object to it, … because the meaning of any object to me (it is only meaningful to the feeling that suits it) is limited to the range that my feeling can perceive". In other words, people with high artistic accomplishment can perceive more things in the appreciation of excellent works, thus gaining higher artistic enjoyment. Otherwise, even the most beautiful works of art are meaningless to him, just like nothing. At the beginning of the article "bosom friend", Liu Xie issued "bosom friend is difficult!" Sighing makes sense. There is a story that Yan, a great painter in the Tang Dynasty, felt "unworthy of the name" when he first saw the paintings of Zhang Sengyou, a famous painter in the Southern Dynasties. However, when he looked at them again, he found himself a "modern master". It was not until he looked at them carefully for the third time that he realized the true beauty of Zhang Monk's painting art. So "I can't walk for ten days" and "sit down and watch" to ponder. This shows that knowing a painting is the same as knowing a horse, and the advantages and disadvantages are not clear at a glance (of course, another situation of love at first sight is not ruled out). Then, how should we appreciate art, or how should we cultivate interest and intelligence in appreciating works of art? Any knowledge (aesthetics, which should also be included in the broad sense of human understanding) is acquired through repeated times. The improvement of artistic appreciation depends on long-term accumulation and more exposure to artistic works. Comrade Mao Zedong once said: If you want to know the taste of pears, you have to change them and eat them yourself. This is quite right, so some people advocate taking part in artistic creation practice in person, which is very helpful for understanding ignorance. Might as well have a try. For art, don't look too simple, wood can be daunting. In fact, there are also people who regard literature and art as "a road to poetry and fu, and force a husband not to do it"; There may be more people who know the truth that "articles are eternal". We don't want to be self-taught lunatics, and we don't believe that only a genius can care about the superstition of art. The ancients said, "You can know your weapon by practicing a thousand songs." They are well-informed, and naturally they have changed from amateurs to experts, and they can deeply understand the true meaning. To be well informed, we must be well informed. People who are interested in Chinese painting should have several levels of reading. First of all, you should appreciate Chinese painting. Naturally, you should pay more attention to Chinese paintings. Even if you only like freehand brushwork landscape painting, you might as well look at people, flowers and meticulous brushwork. Secondly, don't be limited to this kind of painting, but also look at oil paintings, prints, sculptures, folk toys and so on. This is a lot of inspiration. Secondly, you need to trace back to history, that is to say, you should not only look at contemporary works, but also pay attention to new works in southern painting circles, artistic information in northern China, brotherly national art and folk art; You can't ignore going to the Forbidden City to witness the original paintings of past dynasties. Moreover, if you have the opportunity, you can also browse foreign picture books and visit the exhibition of foreign works of art in China, so as to grasp the law of art from comparison. Besides, you'd better have a wide interest in other arts and pay more attention to movies, TV, drama, music, literature, acrobatics, sports, martial arts and so on. In this way, you have a wide range of knowledge and more aesthetic experience, just like absorbing the nutrition of multiple vitamins. The aesthetic function of art must be relatively developed, acute and profound. You can appreciate art through multiple channels, multiple sides and multiple levels, not only having an epiphany, but also carrying out this and that, comparing comments and even associations from the outside to the inside, generating new ideas and soaring in the vast art world. Here has been exposed to the dynamic role of art, that is to say, appreciation is not only passive and static acceptance, but also a kind of creation, just like an artist should think with images when creating. The work is just a conductor who arouses the audience's artistic imagination. Because of this, art appreciation is often a matter of different opinions. This is not only because of the difference of starting point and love point, but also because of the difference of people's literacy, experience, mood and aesthetic taste, which leads to interesting and uninterested problems. Similarly, from the works of art thousands of years ago, there will be more new discoveries than before, which also shows that appreciation is a creative spiritual activity of human beings. As we all know, although literary and artistic works have educational significance, they should first give people joy and beauty. Therefore, the basic feature of art appreciation is intuitive feeling. If you sit still, try to pursue philosophy bit by bit, have a good image and study the good guys and bad guys in poverty, then you won't really enjoy it. Art appreciation should be based on positive passion and interest, keep a relaxed and carefree attitude, meet the works, and naturally feel and observe. Of course, it's not that you don't understand when you appreciate it. The problem is that if you start to analyze coldly, there will be no emotional communication, no temptation and no beauty. Art appreciation is an emotional activity with rational infiltration. On the basis of feeling, there is bound to be evaluation, and the pros and cons will be known through evaluation. Therefore, the appreciator should not only appreciate the artistic beauty and ideological connotation of the work modestly, but also identify it from the height of volley. Goethe, a German writer, once said that "appreciation can only be cultivated by watching the best works, not the middle ones". There is also an old saying in China: "It is better to take the law". We should improve our artistic appreciation and aesthetic ability by observing and studying excellent works and concentrating on experience. Art appreciation is one of the research topics of aesthetics and art theory and an integral part of Marxist aesthetics. There are still many academic issues to be discussed. Here is just a general ramble about some trivial views. The spirit, emotion, meaning and interest of Chinese painting, when people look at the painting, they often pay attention to whether it is like it or not, and are obsessed with those gorgeous and delicate color photos, just like it is true. So it is difficult to understand and appreciate Chinese painting. This is probably similar to getting used to watching movies and getting in touch with drama, especially Peking Opera. However, the formation of people's aesthetics is bred by many factors. As a part of national culture, aesthetic consciousness is always accumulated in the spiritual world of every Chinese descendant consciously or unconsciously to varying degrees. What often happens is that with the growth of age and experience, the love for national art awakens and returns. This phenomenon can also be seen in some artists. Rejecting naturalistic Chinese painting realism is not only its shortcoming, but also its artistic charm and uniqueness in the world art world. On the issue of appreciating and evaluating the quality of painting, Su Shi in Song Dynasty hit the nail on the head: "On the similarity of painting, children's neighbors can be seen". In other words, it is not enough to talk about painting only by focusing on the similarity of appearance, and the purpose of painting should be to pursue the similarity of spirit. The spirit likeness theory is a fine tradition of China's painting art and the essence of national aesthetics. Of course, theory comes from practice. China's painting art is boldly summarized and refined with line modeling; Paying attention to the combination of reality and reality has formed a series of unique artistic techniques, such as abandoning background, leaving blank space, single-line sketch, ink painting and freehand brushwork. All these make art more pure and beautiful. As early as the book Huai Nan Zi, Xing Jun's theory was put forward: "Painting a beauty's face is beautiful and unpleasant. Meng Ben's eyes are big but not afraid, and the monarch is dead. " In other words, beauty is beautiful, but it is not liked; Meng Ben, a brave painter, has big eyes, but there is no formidable momentum because there is no air. Gu Kaizhi, a great painter in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, clearly put forward the idea of vivid expression. After the theory of "six methods" and "vivid charm" summarized by Sheikh, landscape painting was introduced into Song and Yuan Dynasties and further developed. Even the modern theories of "image", "likeness" and "likeness" continued to develop the artistic thought of "image". It is also under the influence of this kind of thought that "painting from the cloak", "seeing the time is insufficient" and "thinking about the week is not comprehensive", that is, freehand brushwork or intentional painting reached its peak. Take the winning works of the 6th National Art Exhibition as an example: Children in Hometown by Wang Shenglie vividly depicts seven rural children and their unique modes, movements and costumes. People can infer their personality, family background and life, which was an innocent and happy childhood in the rural reform in the 1980s. It is both vivid and rich, and it is intriguing in art. For example, Xu Qixiong's Before the Final Battle uses a very simple and pure picture to convey how much space is left for the viewer's artistic imagination. Zhao Jiancheng's paving stone, not to mention its moral setting, only says that the artistic expression of such a labor scene in Chinese painting is very different from other paintings. It never pursues true reproduction, but rhymes like a poet's words, highly refined, boldly abandoned, and vividly expressed with precious pen and ink. On the relationship between emotion and expression, Chinese painting advocates the theory of subjective emotion. The artist is sentimental, and he faces nature with the passion of "climbing mountains with emotion and looking at the sea with meaning", so "looking at the autumn and flying clouds, approaching the spring breeze and thinking mighty" is full of affection and enthusiasm. Fierce feelings, through free pen and ink, fall on paper and silk, materialized into works of art, so all good works of art are always full of poetry and painting, full of rich feelings. Taking landscape painting as an example, the object depicted is nature, but the landscape in the painting is not only a true portrayal of the natural landscape. Foreign landscape paintings stress sketching, while Chinese paintings also stress sketching, but they are not satisfied with what they see intuitively, but "collect all the strange peaks and sketch them", and then create the second nature through the cultivation and sublimation of the mind. Therefore, we don't stick to the perspective of focus and are not disturbed by the shadows of light and dark. Like the forbidden generals, we can dispatch mountains, rivers, trees and stones at will and regroup. You can overlook the mountains in the air, and you can also taste poetry and express your feelings from the grass and leaves. After visiting the ancient masterpieces of the Palace Museum, a retired veteran cadre said: There is no trace of wind and rain, but there is a feeling of dripping water and moistening things. He did talk about the beauty of Chinese painting, which is a good opinion. It is precisely because painting is not a mechanical thing, but something to express feelings and feelings, so we do not advocate detailed painting, and there is a theory of "sloppy inappropriateness". Even meticulous painting is based on freehand brushwork, rather than drawing everything in detail. Fine may be applauded by some audiences, but it can only be a stunt, not an art, and meticulous painting also follows the law of generalization and selection in conception and production, but it seems to be good at fine. What needs to be highlighted can be finer and richer than what the eyes can see, and when it needs to be concise, it can be left aside, or diluted by means of composition "quotient" and color tone sandhi. In short, a good meticulous painting is not a matter of fine description and miscellaneous things; It also pays attention to the artistry of relaxation, virtual reality, twists and turns, and bright future. Chinese painting is very imposing. According to the object depicted, expressing feelings and causing different meanings, the works written by the same painter will have different styles. For example, Jia Youfu's Monument to Taihang Mountain has a strong contrast and strong ink color, creating a heroic feeling, and the pen and ink are also very rigorous. And his other work, Dream of a Scared Dream, is a simple work, describing the feeling of dawn after snow in rural areas. In ancient China, due to the differences in region, artistic pursuit and learning from others, a number of painting schools were formed, each with its own merits, which added luster to the art gallery of Chinese painting. Contemporary China painting circles have also formed a similar colorful situation, which is worthy of serious appreciation and study. "Where love goes, the stone goes", which is exactly the case. The painter fell in love with this, and the moving artistry naturally flowed out, and the scene blended and the interest was full. For example, Xu Beihong's "Running Horse" is heroic. Qi Baishi's shrimp is full of vitality. And Pan Tianshou's "Mountain Flower" is as simple and beautiful as a mountain aunt. With the eyes of artists, social life and nature will find many beautiful things, and they will beautify their lives and people's hearts with their rich artistic beauty. Du Fu, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, described Cao Ba's painting of horses in An Introduction to Dan Qing, saying, "You concentrate everything on a piece of silk". Explain that thinking is the key to painting. Paying attention to artistic conception is a fine tradition of China's painting art thought. The so-called artistic conception is to form a realm in painting through rigorous and ingenious conception and unique artistic expression, achieve endless artistic effects and sublimate to the realm of poetry. In the theory of painting, it is said that "the realm is mature, the heart and hands are complete, and the vertical and horizontal can be moderate, and both sides can meet the source." "On Poetry" also said that "if you think about it in your heart, you will get its truth." This is true, with both true scenery and true feelings. Only when the scene blends and the subjective and objective are combined can the music be wonderful. It was in the face of Ma Yu Hua Qian, a bodybuilder, that Cao Ba drew his masterpiece "Later, when your dragon horse was born from heaven, ten thousand generations banished the common horse" after a series of efforts in image thinking such as "dismal management" and brewing conceptual design. In other words, it is impossible for an artist to make an artistic expression "as true as it is" without "meaning". Just like the winding path of a garden, "although the landscape is small, it is big", poetry pays attention to implicit truth, and painting is also the most taboo, without chewing the head and lacking charm. In China's ancient literary theory, there has long been a saying of "hidden show". Implication is the pursuit of "emphasis outside the text", that is, in addition to the superficial meaning, there are rich and tortuous repetitive meanings for fun. Show, on the other hand, contains hidden meanings in a beautiful warning language, which makes the players memorable and the tasters tireless. For example, when writing a farewell speech, you don't say your bitterness, but say "don't give up your donation and try to add meals", which is a euphemistic emotion. In the Tang Dynasty, Liu Changqing said that "the Taoist priests in Changshan Mountain in Nanxi lived in seclusion, and the flowers in Xixi were self-released, and the enlightenment was inaction". A painting is not only a simple description of the external image of things, but also conveys the beauty and appeal felt by the author to the audience through artistic images, so that the audience can appreciate and understand. Artistic conception gives people more and deeper things than intuition. The ancients said that "there is a picture in poetry and a poem in painting". Poetry can arouse people's association and have endless aftertaste. The more you look at it, the more interesting it becomes. For example, Qi Baishi's "Ten-mile Frog" only depicts a few lively tadpoles, but it is reminiscent of Shilixi and lively frogs. Appreciating the artistic beauty of this painting can arouse endless interest. A painter vividly drew a plan of leaves, whose color changed from red to yellow, floating on a blank background paper. This is really a beautiful poem "Ode to Autumn Sound", which is concise and implicit. "Silence is better than sound", which is blank and implicit, has produced a stronger and richer artistic effect. This is the characteristic of Chinese painting art, and because of the intention, the scene presented on the screen is absolutely different from the real scene. Zheng Banqiao wrote an inscription that "the bamboo in the chest is not the bamboo in the eye" and "the bamboo in the hand is not the bamboo in the chest". This is why the truth of art is different from the truth of life. Li Keran wrote in the title of the painting "Li Jiang Shenglan": "I visited the Lijiang River three times, but I thought it was not easy to win my composition, so I wrote it in the traditional way. People can't see this scene by the Lijiang River. " Draw the charm of Lijiang River, but you can't follow the picture. It shows that the artist's artistic imagination, comprehensive choice and artistic processing are all infiltrated in it. Facing the natural scenery, China painters attach great importance to the problem of "painting". It is selection, screening, reproduction and so on. Therefore, China painters neither reject sketching in the face of real scenes, but pay more attention to mature memories, and inspiration naturally flows from the bottom of the pen. The acquisition and source of artistic conception is of course life, but it is not only life, but also life in the painter's feelings. Only when a painter learns the secrets of life can he have rich feelings and profound experiences, and can he gain new vitality in art. "Learning from nature" is also the golden rule for people who are interested in artistic innovation today. In the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Yanyuan said in Notes on Famous Paintings of Past Dynasties: "The image of the husband must be molded, and the molded image must be full of backbone. The shape of the spine depends on the pen, so the painter is good at writing. " It reveals that the aesthetic interest in the artistic expression of Chinese painting is pen and ink, and the pen and ink of Chinese painting and calligraphy are in the same strain. Chinese painting is shaped by lines. Pen and ink skills can not only accurately describe even the completed object, but also express emotions, which has artistic beauty. Because of the combination with calligraphy art, it also forms a formal beauty with independent aesthetic feeling. For example, the description of clothing lines, you Simiao, meticulous; Wire drawing, dignified and calm; Liu Yemiao's water shield painting is round and powerful. There are also fighting pens, bending pens, splashing ink, etc., which have different artistic effects and are composed of factors such as the description object, the artist's personality, hobbies and the effect to be expressed. Various painting methods in landscape painting are roughly the same. In calligraphy, lines belonging to Fang Bi are like "broken threads", which gives people a sense of beauty. The round pen shape similar to "leak mark" gives people a rich and beautiful feeling. Secondly, such as momentum, flesh and blood, rigidity, relaxation, ingenuity, rhythm and so on. , all related to pen and ink. Therefore, in the evaluation of Chinese painting works, whether the pen and ink skills are proficient is a very rich concept. Literati painting in Ming and Qing dynasties paid special attention to the pursuit of emotion and pen and ink interest. In particular, the freehand brushwork of flowers and birds, in the dripping and unrestrained,' expresses the escape in the chest', while the pen and ink skills are concise and implicit. . Take the ivy as an example. His inscription "Plum Blossom" said: "I have never seen a plum blossom spectrum. If you have hands, you have your own god. If you don't believe me, try to see thousands of trees. When the east wind blows, it becomes spring. " He is an innovative painter, but he has a deep foundation, so he can do whatever he wants without crossing the line. The Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou in Qing Dynasty were all good at flowers, and they inherited and carried forward the tradition of literati painting, just as some people said that Zheng Banqiao's paintings were "bold and vigorous" and related to the superb taste of pen and ink. Contemporary Chinese painting also inherits and develops the creation of artistic beauty of pen and ink. A solid foundation of western painting will certainly help to cultivate the painter's observation and modeling ability, but painting on Xuan paper with western methods can not perfectly reflect the charm of Chinese painting. Especially flower-and-bird painting, requires a lot of modelling technique and pen and ink. A sketch, in the limited pen and ink, a little hesitation and failure, lost its charm! There are both scene blending and superb pen and ink skills between stippling, which means stippling cannot be easily decorated, but presents the beauty of connotation, skill and form; Can tolerate "picking your nose horizontally and picking your eyes vertically". This is called a boutique. Chinese painting also pays attention to the pursuit of natural taste, that is, nature without affectation. Yan Zhenqing, a great calligrapher in the Tang Dynasty, once asked Huai Su for calligraphy. "In the past, I often used it for reference. Its happiness is like a bird in the forest and a snake in the grass; Naturally, I met the road to breaking the wall again. "Zhen Qingri:' Why does it seem to be missing?' Su Qi shook hands with the public: "I got it!" Both of them saw God out of genuine interest in nature. A real beauty can see its natural beauty without being too gorgeous and smart, while excessive dress-up becomes enchanting and unattractive. I remember Lu said in "On Landscape Painting" that he never drew a manuscript, and I think many painters do the same. It is intended to have accidental fun, improvise and achieve unexpected fun in one go. Of course, this sense of presence is not isolated occasionally. It is inseparable from diligent study and hard practice, from contact with society and nature, and from face-to-face conception. So the accident was based on necessity. Knowing this truth, when we appreciate art, we can gradually enter the room and become bosom friends who can understand mountains and rivers. For example, the ink panda and goldfish in "Wu Zuoren" use the artistic technique of cherishing ink as gold, and the connection and frustration between pens is the charm of calligraphy, so they have a strong interest in simplicity. But some people are close to the truth of nature after imitation, and what is presented on the screen is tedious and sweet. They think they have made new development and creation. Isn't this putting the cart before the horse? Therefore, appreciation, that is to say, improving the ability of artistic appreciation, is really an indispensable task. You know, only high eyes can change the situation of low hands. Isn't it a popular saying now: the renewal of ideas drives the renewal of careers?