The Beauty of Color in Three Gorges Folk Art

Ruminations on the teaching of folk art in the Three Gorges

The new Art Curriculum Standards for Full-time Compulsory Education issued by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China explicitly states that our art education should "guide students to participate in the inheritance and exchange of cultures," and requires that "the preparation of teaching materials should be open and flexible, and encourage teachers to actively and boldly develop local curricular resources. actively and boldly develop local curriculum resources." "Feel and love the beauty in the environment, life and art." It is also emphasized that the rich local resources should be fully utilized to enable students to form a perceptual understanding of their hometowns, the environment and life, and to "observe, appreciate and feel the beauty of life from different perspectives. Students are instructed to make use of objects or waste materials around them to make toys and handicrafts to beautify their lives. The environment in which children grow up plays an indispensable role in their artistic cognition, expression, and cultural identity. Yet the vast majority of Chinese children in cities, towns, and even rural areas already have no choice but to accept all cultural products in sight and sound, and are occupied by audio-visual stimuli and novelty trends that occupy almost all of their mind space. They know about Picasso and Van Gogh, but hardly know about Wu Daozi and Qi Baishi; they have almost forgotten about the excellent local art products that have been handed down from generation to generation and are rich in traditional culture and profound thoughts. This phenomenon of children's lack of local culture, which is caused by favoring Western art and popular culture and belittling the excellent traditional Chinese culture, should attract our great attention. According to the requirements of the New Curriculum, our school boldly tries to utilize local materials for art education. In the process of practice, we found that using native materials to carry out art modeling activities is not only feasible, but also has its important value.

One, explore the Three Gorges native art

In the brilliant five thousand years of Chinese civilization in the garden, a beautiful, gorgeous Three Gorges folk art flower is blooming. The colorful folk art of the Three Gorges inherits the culture of Ba Shu from above and the culture of Jing Chu from below, full of its own ideological foundation, historical and cultural background and cultural roots, and accompanied by the process of development of the history and culture of the Three Gorges, which is a place of beautiful scenery and outstanding people, it demonstrates to the world the true meaning of the ancient art of the Three Gorges and the continuation of the life of the modern art. The Three Gorges folk art is characterized by its deep and rich, magical and moving modeling and aesthetics, which expresses the charm of the unique Three Gorges folk culture with a long history and gives the Three Gorges culture and art an important aesthetic value and cultural orientation. It is a valuable heritage of the Three Gorges culture, emitting a rich artistic fragrance and showing a very attractive artistic charm in the Three Gorges art gallery. From the point of view of the Three Gorges folk art, has formed a rich variety of categories and colorful art styles, formed a broad geographical area, folk customs strong artistic modeling characteristics, especially in the following aspects of the modeling of unique beauty.

The Three Gorges

The majestic Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, known for its majestic, strange, dangerous, beautiful and secluded, is the most exotic and concentrated landscape painting gallery on the Yangtze River tourism line. Throughout the ages, how many writers and artists have stopped at the Three Gorges, remembered the Three Gorges, and composed poems and paintings for it. People who have traveled through the Three Gorges are often attracted by the natural artistic beauty of the historical and cultural landscapes standing on the riverbanks and marvel at them. With the completion of the Three Gorges Reservoir, the Three Gorges River section and the reservoir on both sides of the deep valleys in some of the new scenery appeared one after another. The ancient and magical Three Gorges is an absolutely beautiful landscape painting. With the Three Gorges Dam impoundment of the water level rises, hanging on to the beauty of this gorge people are worried about, nature's ingenious work of art created by the Three Gorges scenery will be submerged? "The Three Gorges after the storage of water, the peaks of the majestic still, although the storage of water on the Qutang Gorge, Wu Gorge and Xiling Gorge have some impact, but the high gorges and lakes of the gorge scenery will be more charming and colorful." Mountain steep peaks show, the gorge ghost wall cliffs of the natural picture and high gorges and lakes, blue waves of the gorgeous picture, creating a new spectacular scenery of the Three Gorges.

Three Gorges stone

Three Gorges stone art, from nature, searching, selection, conceptualization, processing, shaping, etc. are steeped in the moral meaning of the "spirit" of the modeling concept. Three Gorges folk artists to modeling vivid, agile, lively, interesting objects, after clever conception, to create a body bright, stretch exaggerated, gesture implicit, metaphorical deep with rich ideological connotations of the art image, so as to reveal a symbol of good luck and happiness, such as the smooth, joyful and auspicious, harmonious and fulfilling the Three Gorges folk customs, to achieve the spirit of the art realm of the feeling of the spirit. First of all, the artist should bring creativity and rich image thinking to find, after repeated observation, the degree of judgment, to determine the meaning of the gorges stone, or shaped like characters, animals, plants, or poetic gorges stone, or rich in the form of paintings gorges stone, or strange and strange connotations of the gorges stone ....... Secondly, some of the gorges also need to be depicted by craftsmen, processing, combined into a wonderful shape, profound meaning, fun, higher than the natural beauty of the "spiritual beauty". For example: "Confucius chanting figure" a only 22 cm high dark blue gorge stone, revealing a creamy yellow and the outer contour of the gorge stone is very consistent, a ghostly dark blue statue on display in the middle of what seems to be an elegant and handsome, rigorous and dignified, slightly bending his head to the holy philosophy of Confucius in chanting, preaching. This three gorges stone and the base of the color, stone quality, shape are quite harmonious and perfect combination, like a whole, showing the author of the artistic idea of the spirit of life.

Three Gorges root art

Three Gorges of the Yangtze River is very rich in root art, unique, is the Three Gorges for thousands of years, the river water scouring, immersion, extrusion, corrosion, the special geographic environment formed a thousand strange and wonderful modeling of tree roots. Some are smooth and delicate, some are rough and mottled; some are easy and wonderful, some are very simple; some are as big as a rock, some are as tiny as a micro; some are bright and shiny; the color is white, yellow, purple, or black ......, the Three Gorges artists take these natural roots as a kind of carrier of sentiments, endowed with rich imaginations and creations, magically The beauty of the Three Gorges Root Sculpture is constructed. For example: the root carving "Peacock" is a Three Gorges root artwork, a lifelike peacock, open beautiful wings and tails, one-legged upright, staring down, like an open-screen peacock, like a peacock facing the mirror of the water surface and reflecting, or are foraging for food ....... So that you can experience more artistic spirit from the modeling. This all shows the aesthetic significance of the Three Gorges folk artists using this kind of modeling.

Other Three Gorges folk art: blue prints, picking flowers, embroidery, weaving, leather lampshade, New Year's paintings, bamboo curtain paintings, root carving, stone carving and so on is the use of practical and aesthetic modeling masterpieces, these folk art selection of the beauty of the material, vivid modeling, wonderful performance, a profound meaning, directly for the material life of the people of the Three Gorges and the spiritual life of the people of the Three Gorges service, to become a distinctive interest in the folk art of the Three Gorges.

Two, the use of native art, native materials to carry out art education activities

To carry out art modeling activities, it is necessary to collect a large number of operating materials. Because there are many kinds of native materials, which do not diminish because of the loss of time, we can collect different kinds of native materials throughout the year, such as small stones, yellow mud, oranges, palm leaves, leaves, roots, melons and fruits. Native materials are characterized by their natural beauty. Among the many native materials, most of them are characterized by natural color and artistic beauty, which can inspire students' creativity. First of all, the color is beautiful, such as white color, gray color, ochre color, red, black, white, green, yellow and other colors in stone, can be collage pattern, and can be used for embellishment; and, vegetables, fruits, the natural beauty of the color of the students love. Secondly, the image highlights the characteristics of artistic beauty, such as stone class, some of the surface rough, but there is the charm of the texture, it is oddly shaped, casually pick up a stone, can remind you of another animal or something else. We operate in this way: mobilize all parents to participate in the collection, teachers use holidays to personally collect, organize and classify, parents and students go out to collect, such as taking children to the Three Gorges to pick up, to the hometown of tea - Wufeng to see the tea plantation;, to the hometown of the great poet Qu Yuan - zigui for field trips; to the hometown of Zhaojun - xingshan excursions Take pictures of the Three Gorges at the dam. Collect all kinds of poems and paintings about the Three Gorges, pick up stones from the riverside, collect roots from the nearby countryside, dig up yellow mud, pick oranges from the orangery when they are ripe, visit the fruit and vegetable wholesale market and buy cheap fruits and vegetables for modeling. In the process of organizing the materials, students classified them according to size, shape and type, and learned the knowledge of classification. At the same time, in the process of classifying materials, students learn to observe and initially understand that different materials have different shape characteristics and texture, which prepares their minds for modeling activities. In the process of collecting and organizing the native materials, students learn to divide the work and cooperation, and unknowingly have been the cultivation of beauty.

Native materials from nature and daily life, these materials are highly malleable, allowing students to play the imagination, according to the characteristics of the material can be modeling, you can use the pen to draw, decorative, but also can be cut, torn, pasted, can be one or two materials articulation, but also a variety of materials with the use of a combination, can be a plane, can be three-dimensional modeling, can be a single transformations, can be more than one combination. For example: small stones can be used to spell pendulum, embellishment, modeling; large surface flat stones can be used to paint decorative paintings, yellow clay can be used for simple pottery, tea sets, vases, etc.; leftover orange peel can be made orange peel stickers, do small orange lamp, local materials can be utilized in a comprehensive manner. Dr. Roger Sperry, an American medical physiologist, pointed out that the more complex and advanced the movement of the hands, the fuller and more perfect the development of the brain, and the smarter people become. Students can fully mobilize all the senses in touching the materials and the operation process, hand, eye, brain and mouth, and in the appreciation, spelling, posing, cutting, pasting, painting, printing, carving and other training, stimulate the brain function, so that the students' aesthetic ability, imaginative ability, creativity has been given full play.

Local art and materials originate from their hometowns, in the environment where students live. In the process of carrying out modeling activities with native materials, students enhance their ability to appreciate beauty, express beauty and create beauty. Knowing the excellent art and characteristic resources of their hometown, they perceive the region and customs they live in, and at the same time, they are prompted to develop a love for their hometown and motherland.

The folk art of the Three Gorges has experienced a long history, interpreting many beautiful shapes and mellow and sincere artistic spirit, and the folk art of the Three Gorges revealed here is only a very small part of it, which remains to be explored.