Liu Jude

"The emperor is Shu, the emperor of Beihai is sudden, and the emperor of the central government is chaotic. Shu and Shi meet in the land of chaos, and chaos treats them well. Shu suddenly asked for the favor of chaos, saying,' Everyone has seven senses and ears'. This is unique, try to chisel it. Digging a hole during the day and dying on the seventh day. "

A poetic fable of philosophy was originally kind, hoping that chaos would have seven senses like them for eating and listening, so seven senses were chiseled for him. I didn't expect that when they were in high spirits to celebrate that Chaos had the same seven senses as them, Chaos died. Their kindness led to tragedy. Why? Because Shuhe suddenly transformed chaos with his own will, knowledge and standards. This is a mistake that humans make every day. Zhuangzi tells us through this story that we must improve our understanding of nature, enhance our understanding of human nature, find the laws of all things in nature and return to nature. Never use your own ideas and prejudices to rigidly understand and transform nature and others, because this is a stupidity and mistake that people violate nature.

Zhuangzi's use of "Hun" and "Dun" here is very meaningful. "Ancient Training Collection" says that "muddy" means indistinguishable, chaotic and circular. Yin and yang, turbidity, harmony, harmony but different, are all circulating automatically. Obviously, chaos is the embodiment of Tao, and Tao is "unity" and "inaction"

I feel that the above story has the following four thought-provoking points:

First, chaos cannot be transformed.

According to the traditional culture of China, it is impossible for us to transform the chaotic vitality of heaven and earth into the mother of all things by dividing it into yin and yang. No one should or can replace and reform, and each has its own interests and nature. In order to help others, he should conform to and satisfy their nature and interests. Just as it is impossible and undesirable for art education to require students to use the same standards, it is important to discover their essence and interests. Similarly, one culture cannot be replaced and transformed by another, but can only understand, interact and complement each other in communication.

Chaos symbolizes infinity and eternity. As the saying goes, knowledge is power, but "knowledge" is not necessarily power. Compared with the unknown, it may be a stumbling block or the cause of tragedy. Only by "knowing what he knows to educate what he knows but not knowing" can "knowing" break through its own limitations and become meaningful. Because the more we know, the greater the unknown half-classics, and the stronger the interest and desire to arouse human exploration.

Let us take Michelangelo as an example. It took a Renaissance giant 100 years to become a prodigy of human beings, integrating painting, sculpture, architecture and poetics. When he died at the age of 90, he said, "I just entered the art door." It can be seen how lofty, broad and sacred art is in his heart. The greater the artistic achievement, the more suffering you experience, and the wider the scope of your inner appreciation. He devoted his limited life to infinite art, and his life was lonely and painful, which made him experience beauty deeper. For example, he thinks that the human body is the most beautiful and sacred body created by God. His sculptures and paintings are almost all human bodies, which should be said to be sacred and sad beyond the world; The form of dragon soul is the ringing of God's rhythm. However, in the process of painting the mural "The Last Judgment", it was attacked by Li Guan and others, thinking: "This kind of painting is only painted in the bathhouse, how can it appear in the temple?" Even Pope Paul IV ordered that "all naked people should wear clothes". How sad it is that the Pope tried to transform a giant who created the peak of the Renaissance with his own social values, aesthetic standards and power.

At that time, the romantic painter Delacroix's work "The Massacre of Shia Island" showed the bloody scene of Shia Island when Turkey invaded Greece, and now it is in the Louvre. At close range, this painting is composed of exciting color lines. At a distance, the characters are lifelike. This romantic and expressive brushwork and color style formed a strong confrontation with the works of Anger, the master of neoclassical painting at that time, so Delacroix was accused of being "the devil of the art world" at that time. The reason is that Delacroix surpassed the established aesthetic standards in social reality, and it was not until nearly a century later that he was completely rehabilitated and became a classic in the history of western art.

Let's take a look at the painter's studio by Courbet, the originator of realistic painting. He painted his villagers and his friends in Paris at the same time in the studio. It was a big party in different time and space, and the center was his party with models and children while painting. Courbet's works broke the secular standards of society, and as a result, they were rejected by the society at that time.

The post-impressionist painter Cezanne's works "Apples and Oranges", "Tablecloth" and "Hillbilly" have been exhibited six times and won fame in Sun Shan six times. Later, he was unknown and lived alone in the country to paint still life. He believes that the life of half man and half god is an artistic life, and art is a harmonious body parallel to nature. All intentions must be silent, and all prejudices in his heart must be forgotten. Finally, he shocked the whole Paris with an apple. He drew balance and order invisible to nature with visible objects, and made great contributions in the history of western art, becoming the father of modern painting.

Shi Tao, a painter of the Qing Dynasty in China, said: "The eyebrows of the ancients can't be born on my face; The heart of the ancients could not fit into my stomach, so I spontaneously felt my heart and exposed my eyebrows. "So, his landscape painting is not based on a certain wrinkle, not on a certain pen and ink for a long time, not on a certain skill to entertain people, impossible and independent methods. Qi Baishi also said something similar: "Those who learn from me live like I die". They all talk about the same sentiment, focusing on learning the hearts of the ancients and the hearts of nature.

Let's take a look at the work "Painters and Models" by contemporary British painter Freud. At that time, theorists advised Freud to stop drawing human bodies, which had no future. But Freud did not listen to the advice of theorists and was not influenced by the popular trend at that time. Loyal to his inner interests and feelings, he worked alone and became the most influential body painter in the world.

It can be seen that masters do not imitate and copy others, but go into their own hearts and the deepest part of nature. This is their own nature, because they are naturally longing for the unknown and are good at seeing the world on the shoulders of giants. So they all have original spirit and quality.

Of course, breaking through the existing aesthetic standards does not mean that art is progressive, but that they have entered nature, entered their own hearts, and let nature meet themselves, and their works are naturally different from others. Because the difference of painting is formed by the difference of everyone's mind, even if people who accept the same cultural tradition, live in the same society, observe the same nature and have different minds, their paintings are naturally different. The problem is that we often see the world through other people's eyes, or transform nature with the same style to cover up our innocence, then our hearts are naturally in a state of death. This is the same as the tragedy of chaos, but it is only self-destruction.

Second, chaos is intuitive.

In the chaotic mind, everything perceived by the senses of eyes, ears, nose and tongue still belongs to the phenomenon world and has not entered the understanding of the nature. So Einstein said, "The observable world does not exist. What we observe is not the world. " Laozi said, "Five colors make people blind and five tones make people deaf." . Both Lao Zi and Zhuangzi advocate staying away from the phenomenal world, because the phenomenal world is a complicated and chaotic world, and what the eyes, ears, nose and tongue feel is only a kind of diverse and chaotic phenomenon, which covers up the essence of overall unity. As Cezanne said, among all the phenomena we see, nothing can stay, and our art must give it lofty eternity.

Chaos closes or cancels the window and portal to the phenomenal world, in order to prevent the phenomenal world from interfering with the inner intuition's understanding of nature. Therefore, Shi Tao emphasized the method of "one painting", "knowing after the prophet" and "not receiving after the prophet", trying to avoid the limitations and fetters of extreme rational understanding, colored glasses and preconceptions. All this is to transcend the phenomenal world and recognize the invisible with the visible. What is invisible? What is invisible is Tao, reason and qi, and what is visible is the chaos of the phenomenon world. In fact, Shi Tao's painting method is to listen with a chaotic heart and understand with reason, instead of copying phenomena with the naked eye. This is the inner intuition, the great beauty of the primitive world, and the principle of realizing everything, all inclusive.

For example, I know how to understand cows, and I began to see the whole cow, the real cow in reality. Three years later, the real cow disappeared completely, and the skilled workers crossed the phenomenal world and met reason. Yiping's justice, which went into the knife in vain, swam in the air, met the Tao, solved the cow and became the age of mulberry forest. Finally, through art, it became sensible and advanced from technology. The same is true of painting. Look at the mountains. They are mountains, but they are not mountains. Thousands of strokes, no one is a mountain, no one is a tree. It can be seen that the object in the painter's eyes is not an entity, but an abstract relationship, that is, forgetting the truth and being Wukong, and clinging to the infinite in the finite. This not only points to the relationship between "one" and "many", but also points to the particularity of the unbounded world, and the relationship between nothing and nothing, from which everything is in an intuitive fantasy, so China's landscape paintings are surreal.

Let's look at the "Early Spring Map" by Guo, a landscape painter in the Song Dynasty, which is completely presented by transpiration. Mountains, water and trees are all dissolved in the turbulent steam. Similar to van Gogh's cypress trees and the sunny heat wave in the wheat field. This is their inner light and image, and their charm has no boundaries of things. They attach great importance to verve, breath and imagination, so that things in their hearts have no fixed phase, no fixed view of law, neither things nor me, neither forgetting things nor forgetting me. It is said that before Guo paints, he must wash his hands and burn incense, and the doors and windows should be clean, such as welcoming guests, leaving his body and mind, and then he begins to paint with awe of nature. This is the same as scientists' awe of the nature of the universe. They are not satisfied with superficial phenomena, and strive to explore the unknown and secret behind them. Therefore, they are all shocked by the sublime and incredible beauty of the internal order of nature. It is a state of forgetting things and seeing Wan Li for thousands of years. They also believe that it is more reliable and necessary to know the world with the inner intuition of the mind. In fact, the inner intuition of chaos is human nature, but it has been erased the day after tomorrow. Women are well guarded and often say a lot of flashy words close to the truth without thinking. She only knows you once, and she can judge your character and temperament without touching you. It is said that some important scientific discoveries are also inspired by the inner intuition of sensitive women, and they all have confused understanding. Of course, some men have strong inner intuition, such as the French mathematician Galois, who was 2 1 year old, who discovered the integral theorem in his intuitive imagination and didn't prove it until 25 years after his death. Intuition is the source of human wisdom and leads to the unknown heaven. Einstein thought intuitive imagination was more important than knowledge. He once said: the highest mission of physicists is to get those universal basic laws, which have no logical way. Only through intuition based on sympathetic understanding of experience can we get these laws.

Third, chaos is no different.

Chaos is the unity of one and five, and there is no boundary. This is the vision of Tao. Scientists, artists and philosophers all have this overall view, and it is forbidden to have big breasts.

In a chaotic mind, everything is the same, and there is no distinction between high and low in life. The differences between people are all caused by the values in the real society. In the painter's eyes, there is no difference between a haystack and a palace, and there is no difference between a basket of potatoes and a portrait of a person. The quality of painting does not lie in the size of the subject matter, nor in whether the things painted are expensive or cheap, big or small. Qi Baishi painted a few shrimps, "Summer Dew Map", which is also a great work. Of course, this is not to deny the major theme of painting, but to say that the size of the theme does not depend on the size of painting artistry.

Mo Landi painted only a few bottles and jars in his life, and his works are still a brilliant page in the history of world art. His still life, like Braque's still life, has already surpassed the practical value of the world and entered the metaphysical realm of the universe, so he shows us not the still life of bottles and jars, but the great beauty of tranquility and profundity. Although the still life is small, it is as grand as the universe in your vision and mind. If Cezanne is looking for the internal balance of nature, then Mo Landi is looking for the internal expansion of nature. Things are amorphous, laws have no fixed phase, and everything is in the chaotic space of yin and yang, existence and emptiness.

In fact, China's sages have formed mature abstract metaphysical thinking since the Book of Changes. They regard everything as the result of the interaction of Yin and Yang. The real thing has long since disappeared from the vision of China sages. The binary system of mathematics is produced from the transformation of Yin and Yang, which unifies reason, image, number and divination. This is a very intelligent chaotic system, a unity of art, science and philosophy created by a profound and undifferentiated heart, which moves towards the unknown, infinite and eternal in the positive and negative paradox.

As far as "image" is concerned, the legal image of Avenue is that "image is invisible", changing instead of dwelling in a humble abode, turning instead of distinguishing, and everything is one. Therefore, in the theory of Chinese painting, "vivid charm" is the first standard. High charm

In form, verve is higher than the boundary and structure of things, so is everything. Chaotic qi, moving endlessly and imperceptibly, exists again and harmoniously. In ancient China, the human body did not understand this existence, and regarded it as the mother of all things and the door of all things.

Shi Tao extended this idea to painting, and his "one painting method" is actually a chaotic atmosphere and an undifferentiated heart. Looking at his Lu Lan, we can see that there is no difference between Cao Shijia and Cao Shijia, and there is no difference between paper and snow. The fragrance is ancient and modern, and it is still so modern. Five differences between tradition and modernity.

Let's look at Kandinsky's work In the Blue Sky, which is his typical masterpiece. It is like an abstract piece of music in the sky, and it is like an elf exulting in the blue sky. It has the naive beauty like a baby, and it also has the metaphysical beauty beyond the world. This is a portrayal of his inner mental health after he found that everything is inseparable. According to the records of art history, one day Kandinsky came back from sketching, and at night he suddenly saw a beautiful painting accidentally put upside down in his studio, from which he found the beauty of five independent objects, such as pure voices coming to the front desk. Since then, his paintings have abandoned physical objects and entered the abstract world of music and numbers within everything.

Everything has a number, which is the language of scientists. Scientists' indiscriminate abstract intuition is more instinct. We know that chemists regard everything as a chemical element, including our desks and chairs, lamps, buildings and people. I once read a chemist's analysis report on potassium, sodium, calcium, phosphorus and iron in human body, and thought that brushing a room of 6 square meters could extract calcium, phosphorus, two boxes of matches, two nails and so on. According to the final statistics, after all the elements are extracted and turned into practical and useful things, the price is only two yuan and forty cents. Human life, from the perspective of chemical elements, is so insignificant.

Artists look at the human body, just as Michelangelo said: the human body is God's purest creation and a small universe that transcends the world; Cezanne thinks that the human body is no different from apples and mountains. Apples, human bodies, mountains and forests are all composed of curves with the same meaning to Seshaw, and they are all composed of geometric structures of force movement.

Look at Picasso's works "The Girl of avignon" and "Three Musicians", which are now in the new york Museum of Modern Art. The girl in avignon is influenced by African art. All the rocks, still lives and figures in the paintings are dissolved in geometric fragments like undifferentiated crystals, which was created by 1907. Three Musicians was written in 192 1 year, and the characters in it are relatively hidden and abstract. Picasso said, "It's like building a house by mining rocks. The old ones were destroyed and new buildings were born. " He replaced one relationship with another. Salt and destruction are integrated, destruction and structure are inseparable, and there is no boundary. This is the artist's independent and free character.

For painters, the essence of everything exists in the metaphysical abstract world. Only when the painter understands the indiscriminate commonness and abstract commonness can he grasp the essence of individuality and particularity, enter the independent and free indiscriminate world, and make everything in the mountains and rivers be all-encompassing, arbitrary and arbitrary.

When we look at Guo's Early Spring Map, we can see that mountains, rivers, trees and waterfalls are all imagination, dreamland and wonders created by the painter because of his heart, but they are by no means real reality. This is not to say that Chinese paintings are made subjectively, but that painters highlight their temperament and ideals in eliminating the boundaries between people and things. It shows the painter's true feelings, that is, painting is like a mirror, paying attention to emotions and expressing feelings, not limited by the shape of nature.

Everything is a moving particle, and the moment of time becomes holographic integration and eternity. In the past, it was said that the whole was equal to the sum of the parts, but now it is said that the parts and the whole correspond to each other, are mutually inclusive and closely related, and the parts are different from the whole five. Everything in the heart of chaos has no gap, no opposition, no boundary, no division, and it is an inseparable whole.

Fourth, chaos is the best.

Chaos is the best. He is completely instinctive and unconscious to Shu and Aw Hoe. In the chaotic world, all things are the same, without dignity, competition, confrontation, and centerlessness. Everything is equal, and chaos is as complete as nature. His mysterious and poetic fraternity naturally grows in any corner and abyss of nature. He is silent about the beauty of heaven and earth, and is connected with the truth of the universe. Therefore, beauty is true and good. Only goodness and beauty can produce great wisdom of mankind.

Beauty, truth and goodness are hard to distinguish in a chaotic mind, which is the realm of China's painting. Among them, "truth" refers to the synthesis of "truth, truth and truth". It is not the truth imitated in the phenomenal world, but the truth and beauty of inner intuition in chaos. Painters paint their inner feelings, not what they see with their eyes. Therefore, Chinese painting pays attention to the painter's authenticity, and thinks that painting is not difficult to write in form, but it is difficult to write freehand brushwork, love and heart, and authenticity is the Tao. It is not easy to reveal the truth in painting. The ancients said that we should leave the form to know, be smart, transcend utility, transcend the secular value standard of the real society and the bondage of physical objects to people, so as to return to the true self.

It should be said that China's painting is a "study of mind and nature", which pays attention to the painter's inner quality and double cultivation of mind, the inner refining of noble spirit and the restoration of super-utilitarian mood, and obtains spiritual freedom from it. It is a great pleasure to study for peace of mind, draw for peace of mind, and meet the natural heart in your heart. Therefore, painting needs the artist's free mind of "being alone with the spirit of heaven and earth". Chaos goes with the flow, and it does not transform others or nature. This is the greatest goodness of chaos, and it is also the tolerance and fraternity of chaos. Nothing is noble, people are noble, and naturally there is no size. Shu and tu Li make everything take themselves as the standard and transform chaos with their own images. Although out of good intentions, because they don't understand nature and chaos, their behavior is still a stupid crime.

Chaos goes with the flow, and chaos maintains the nature of nature in inaction, which is also the most precious nature of artists. The same is true of painting. Under one stroke, under ten thousand strokes, go with the flow, go with the flow, everything is born from the heart, born with rhyme, orderly and disorderly, chaotic but not chaotic, neat and untidy, pushing wave after wave, naturally muddy. However, the painter's own subjectivity should not intrude into it. If he acts rudely like Shu and Hu, it will inevitably destroy the harmony and rhythm of verve. This is as Picasso said: "I don't draw, but let me draw." Western modern painting started from post-impressionism and gradually met China's painting thought. This not only shows that there are similarities between eastern and western painting, but also shows that China's traditional painting thought has infinite space and vitality that western modern painting can't surpass, and also shows that beauty is naturally produced in a state of selflessness.