Art has a broad mass base. This foundation actually includes two aspects: creators and appreciators. In recent years, with the renewal of the concept of calligraphy creation, the level of calligraphy creation has been greatly improved. It is mainly manifested in the shift from the study of calligraphy techniques in the past to the grasp of the calligraphy consciousness of the subject of works creation, which has achieved an important leap in artistic thought. Therefore, the connotation of the work is richer and the artistic conception is deeper. Therefore, calligraphy appreciation has become a demanding artistic activity, which puts forward higher requirements: how to grasp and understand works and communicate feelings between creators (subjects) and appreciators (objects). In other words, how to improve the level of calligraphy creation and calligraphy appreciation simultaneously. To achieve this, calligraphy teaching is undoubtedly an important and indispensable effective measure. First, think about the differences in calligraphy appreciation.
The ancients said, "Books are paintings of the heart". The birth of a calligraphy work is undoubtedly the expression of the author's feelings, interests and wishes more or less, either explicitly or implicitly. The reason why any excellent calligraphy works have strong artistic appeal is that it reflects the author's unique spirit and rich inner world with the help of the dancing of lines. Russian philosopher plekhanov once said: "Art not only expresses people's feelings, but also expresses their thoughts, but it is not abstract, but vivid." . As far as calligraphy is concerned, black and white works are static, but they show vivid life images. However, all this seems to be static and needs the appreciator to feel and appreciate.
Different people have different tastes, hobbies and aesthetic standards, which leads to differences in calligraphy appreciation. This difference is not small, sometimes even great. For some people, a careless and naive running script work may be sloppy and messy, while for him, a rigid and rigid regular script work is dignified and pretty. If it is a cursive work that is divorced from practical function and really appreciated as art, ordinary appreciators can't see more advantages and disadvantages except its messy lines. Some people say that if a thousand people look at a dream of red mansions, there will be a thousand images of Lin Daiyu. This is absolutely correct. Where did this 1000 image of Lin Daiyu come from? 1000 readers' imagination and feelings, and their differences in self-cultivation and aesthetics produced 1000 image of Lin Daiyu. In fact, other art categories also have aesthetic differences, but this difference is even greater in calligraphy appreciation. As far as calligraphy art itself is concerned, it is a highly abstract plastic art, and all information is contained in abstract lines, which are felt by the appreciator. Balzac once said: "The works of art are the smallest areas, but they are surprisingly enriched with the most ideas." As far as the appreciation of calligraphy is concerned, the difference between people engaged in calligraphy creation is much smaller, because their creative practice has accumulated this knowledge, and he knows where the "beauty" of calligraphy works is and many conditions and factors that constitute the beauty of calligraphy. The most important thing is that the author has mastered the method of calligraphy appreciation. But as far as calligraphy appreciation groups are concerned, calligraphy creators are only a small part of them, which is a secondary part. The really important audience is the people who are not engaged in calligraphy creation. They are the objects of calligraphy appreciation.
Art is for the people, whether it's "Chun Xue" or "The Lower Liba People", it's for people to see. All works of art that are loved and resonated by the masses have the most lasting vitality and can shine the brilliance of their artistic value, and calligraphy works are no exception. It is certainly one thing to let calligraphy creation enter a higher level and let this ancient art glow with new brilliance, but it is more important to improve the appreciation level of the whole people. Calligraphy art needs to go to the society and serve the society, which is entirely based on the improvement of the level of calligraphy appreciation of the whole people. The creation level and appreciation level of calligraphy must go hand in hand, otherwise, only paying attention to the improvement of the creation level and ignoring the improvement of the appreciation level of calligraphy for the whole people will gradually lose its due audience, which will actually narrow the world in which it can be used. At present, this situation has sounded the alarm for us. At present, the only people who really appreciate calligraphy are professional calligraphers and calligraphy lovers who are engaged in calligraphy creation. Not many people can appreciate it if they are not engaged in calligraphy creation. A large audience is just watching. There is a saying that "amateurs watch the excitement and experts watch the doorway." If you want to see the doorway, you must know how to get in and master this knowledge. However, a large number of people who are not engaged in calligraphy obviously lack this knowledge, and their appreciation of calligraphy only stays at the level of "good" and "poor" feelings, which is very general and vague, and it is even more difficult to understand calligraphy art from an aesthetic point of view. It seems that in today's increasingly high calligraphy creation, improving people's appreciation level has reached the primary position and should be highly valued by the whole society.
Second, calligraphy teaching is the key to improve the level of calligraphy appreciation.
As far as the calligraphers themselves are concerned, their appreciation level has also been improved with the continuous creative practice and the study of calligraphy theory. Generally speaking, it is relatively synchronous, just like a philosophical saying: "Without the sun in your heart, you can't see the sun." Their creative practice and theoretical study are a process of being educated by calligraphy, and the only way for the masses to improve their appreciation level is through calligraphy education.
The question is what kind of teaching methods can arouse their interest. It is not only easy to be understood and accepted by them, but also plays a role in improving the level of appreciation, which is difficult for non-calligraphers. China's calligraphy is extensive and profound, covering a wide range. Of course, calligraphy teaching can't cover everything, but it must be focused. It must be mentioned that the focus of calligraphy teaching should be to help people "appreciate". We should avoid that calligraphy teaching is a way to teach people to learn calligraphy, but through calligraphy education, let the masses gradually master the methods and contents of appreciation and truly appreciate its elegance. Just as we can't take pictures ourselves, we can appreciate a photographic work, or we can't dance ballet, but we can still appreciate its elegance and beauty and understand the story. But there must be a premise that you must know this or related knowledge, otherwise it is impossible.
Of course, calligraphy appreciation may have more difficult factors than other art appreciation. Because it is abstract, unlike photography, painting and other arts, it has a concrete image that can be directly felt, which is more likely to arouse the interest and association of viewers. Compared with calligraphy appreciation, there are differences in this respect, which puts forward requirements for calligraphy teaching. The author thinks the following points are very important.
1, what is calligraphy, the difference between calligraphy art and general writing; 2. The essence of calligraphy beauty; 3. The characteristics of calligraphy beauty; 4. The expression of calligraphy beauty; 5. Creation of the beauty of calligraphy; 6. Calligraphy aesthetics.
As far as calligraphy teaching is concerned, it is most important for the appreciator to understand calligraphy first. Because everything starts with understanding, of course, the appreciators have different aesthetic standards, especially the differences in cultural level and artistic accomplishment, and it is impossible to get the same appreciation level with the same calligraphy education. This can never be done, nor is it necessary, but these differences can be made smaller and smaller through calligraphy education. It is not enough to improve people's appreciation of calligraphy only by relying on calligraphy education. In other words, only by calligraphy education, its appreciation level cannot enter a very high level. Because calligraphy appreciation involves not only the accumulation of calligraphy knowledge, but also the cooperation of other cultural qualities, it is necessary to supplement the accumulation of other artistic qualities in addition to calligraphy teaching to improve the level of appreciators. Of course, calligraphy teaching comes first.
Just as the improvement of the level of calligraphy creation needs a process from shallow to deep, calligraphy education must also have a gradual process. After all, calligraphy teaching is facing the masses, and a large part of them really know little about calligraphy, only staying in the general concept that calligraphy is writing. In this way, the education of popularizing calligraphy knowledge has to be put in the first place. If you know how to appreciate, or even appreciate what level, you should gradually enter. This kind of calligraphy teaching is of great significance to improve the level of calligraphy appreciation, otherwise, blindly implementing "one size fits all" in calligraphy education will still impress the vast number of appreciators, arouse their strong interest in calligraphy art and appreciate nothing. Just like a beginner in calligraphy, he should first start from the basics, first pursue the proficiency of basic skills, then innovate and establish his own style. Calligraphy teaching must also pay attention to popularization and popular education.
For creators, the significance of calligraphy teaching is to make every calligrapher and calligraphy lover understand that the content and form of calligraphy art should be roughly consistent with the current appreciation level, hobbies and pursuits of the public in culture and art, and abandon the difficult image and turn to more knowledgeable group feelings. The fundamental purpose of art in an era is to meet the requirements of a generation, not to be artistic for the sake of art, but to serve this era and pay attention to the popularization and popularization of calligraphy art creation and appreciation. Calligraphy artistic creation can not be divorced from the times, nor from the people. In this way, ordinary people, as the subject of appreciation, can understand and appreciate the works from their own cultural starting point, otherwise they will lose most of the recipients, which is equivalent to pushing the calligraphy art to the desperate situation of narcissism. What is the value of such artistic creation?
We should believe that through calligraphy teaching, the appreciation level of the masses can be improved, which also puts forward higher requirements for calligraphy creation. The improvement of creative level, in turn, requires a new improvement of appreciation level. Constant circulation requires that calligraphy teaching should have new contents at each stage to adapt to the development of appreciation level to a higher level.
Calligraphy teaching is a heavy and complicated work with far-reaching basic significance. Especially today, when there is a big gap between the level of calligraphy creation and the level of calligraphy appreciation, calligraphy teaching shows its importance and urgency. Putting calligraphy teaching in an important position, making calligraphy art glow with new brilliance and truly carrying forward national culture requires the joint efforts of the whole society. As we all know, aesthetic education is an indispensable part of students' all-round development education. Rockwell Kent once said: "The highest purpose of art is to make people understand life more deeply, and then love life more.
Marx once quoted a vivid metaphor conceived by Hegel to illustrate the essential power of human beings to realize their pleasure in creative activities: a little boy threw a stone into the water, and he saw that the ripples of the water were getting bigger and bigger. He appreciates his creation and gets great pleasure from it. In junior high school, aesthetic education has shown its role in quality education. At this time, students have changed from happiness, freedom and innocence to silence, shyness and seriousness. They want to find a new way to express their self-awareness At this critical moment, if we instill in them an ideological education that plays a telepathic role-aesthetic education, we can let students receive education in the enjoyment of beauty, and unconsciously become noble and healthy. The special effect of this kind of education is difficult to achieve by general moral preaching. In senior high school, students are getting hot both physically and psychologically, so it's time to prepare for an independent life. Their self-confidence and self-esteem are increasing, and they have their own independent thinking ability and a wider range of contacts. They are eager to learn, and the knowledge taught by school teachers can no longer meet their needs. They are eager to accept new ideas and new knowledge from various channels. At this time, aesthetic education can play its unique role, and its vivid image and strong emotion are the greatest role for teenagers with sincere and unrestrained feelings and strong image thinking.
But at the same time, we should realize that the contemporary world is at a huge historical turning point, and students are experiencing unprecedented conceptual and cultural shocks. Just as computers and abacus coexist, washing machines and washboards coexist, test-tube babies and dinosaur eggs coexist, the spirit of living in the same era is not the same generation.
Under the influence of this concept, art also seems strange. For example, modernist art is an inverted art. A psychologist once humorously summed up the fundamental difference between modern art and traditional art with vivid language. He said: "What's the difference between today's younger generation and ours? They are becoming more and more sensible, running away from home and having children. Only the order is reversed. " Indeed, in modernist and post-modernist artists, the meaning of art is broader, including both beauty and ugliness: both good and evil; It includes both material things and spiritual things: both pure physical things and pure mathematical things.
For example, in the 1960s, Lucas samaras mainly discussed people's pro-Nepalese behavior and violent rape. His works are full of passion, sexual desire and pornography. It seems that all works are haunted by nightmares, decorated with desires, and people who are eager are ecstatic.
Although some modernist art has been affirmed by people in different aspects, the form and content of some works are really not suitable for a middle school student. Sensitive students are often at a loss when faced with ever-changing and diverse ideas, and they can't tell beauty from ugliness. In addition, in the past days, China's aesthetic education was also influenced by extreme "left" thinking, which confused beauty with capitalism. After ten years of civil strife, aesthetic education is even more devastated. Truth is not divided, and good and evil are reversed, which seriously distorts the minds of teenagers and brings ignorant, rude and vulgar consequences.
At the same time, with the rapid development of China's commodity economy, there are inevitably many negative factors in the society, such as the surge of Shang Chao, the collapse of culture, the prevalence of fake and shoddy products, real money and silver, and the flying dust. Today, we seem to have reached such a confusing and puzzling era.
Philosophers no longer respect Descartes and Hegel; Writers no longer admire Shakespeare and Lu Xun; Artists no longer appreciate Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Beethoven. A national symphony performance, the audience is very few, and a "singer" holding a guitar, screaming like a singer, has attracted tens of thousands of fans. Similarly, in the art market, some profit-making painting shops and dealers are generous, investing in batches, forging paintings and famous calligraphy and painting. At the same time, in today's art halls, it seems increasingly difficult to see all kinds of beautiful myths, sacred legends, beautiful music and charming paintings created by ancient humans. But more evil, more absurd, more hateful and uglier.
Shakespeare once wrote in History as a Mirror: Qixin people admire new toys, whether they are made of old things or not, and would rather praise the inferior products with gold plating than appreciate the covered golden pool.
Therefore, as art teachers, our task is not only to appreciate a painting and a handicraft in class, but more importantly, to drive students to understand beauty independently and accept new ideas selectively. In my high school art appreciation class, I made the following attempts:
First of all, choose excellent painters and excellent works. In class, students should first have a full understanding of the painter's thoughts and personality spirit, and then combine the painter's thoughts and behaviors when analyzing his works. Students should also receive ideological education while appreciating beauty. We should know that a great work of art can stand not only because of its beautiful appearance, but also because of its influence on society.
For example,/kloc-Rodin, the greatest sculptor in the 9th century. In his view, art is the so-called contemplation, going deep into nature and infiltrating nature. The joy of soul assimilated with it is the joy of wisdom, the joy of seeing the world clearly and reappearing the world under the illumination of conscience.
Students get aesthetic pleasure from it, which corresponds to the artistic representation of the world, that is, the fresh spiritual embodiment of familiarity, kindness and strangeness. As for Rodin's marble sculpture Meditation, we will have a double sense of reality at the same time: first, we will reproduce the image through white and moist marble, modeling language and other materials and media; The other is the association of external objective reality caused by this reproduced image. These two kinds of reality are both produced in hallucinations, and they go back and forth from reappearing images to objective reality many times, which constitutes the leaping reappearance of spiritual images. Capturing such a greatly expanded and changed image will arouse ripples in psychology, wisdom, imagination, affection and even life experience. The "power" mode of this spiritual activity itself reflects the contradiction between dream and reality, spiritual world and material world. Gesell, Rodin's assistant, wrote down the aesthetic experience given to him by the meditation statue-"This is a very young and relaxed god, with extreme aesthetic pleasure, showing spiritual creation, freedom and transcendence. In his performance, he paid special attention to emphasis and contrast, pushed his eyes from eyebrow arch to forehead, highlighted the most important field of spiritual life, and approached the audience with the spiritual power of voice. The neck and shoulders are almost "trapped" in the stone pedestal. The "show" of "convex" and "trapped" is a beautiful female head, with her head down. The atmosphere of dreams lingers around her, showing the edge of her hat in her immaterial mind, like the wings of her dream, but her neck and even her chin are on a thick stone.
But in reality, Rodin's obsession with art made him think he was a "believer". In his will, he taught young people to be patient! Don't rely on inspiration, it doesn't exist. The excellent qualities of artists are nothing more than wisdom, concentration, sincerity and will. Finish your work like an honest worker!
We should guide students to feel the power of this beauty in appreciation. A hazy girl has her own dream, which is so close to the middle school students' dreamy personality. This kind of spiritual communication and stimulation, such as current flowing all over the body, spiritual freedom and transcendence, suddenly seems to be reborn. Students consciously accept Rodin's noble artistic character in the enjoyment of beauty. Although perhaps not all students feel this way, the profoundness of this education can never be extinguished.
Another example is van Gogh. Although he lived only 37 years old, he was withdrawn, autistic and schizophrenic. To really understand him, his life and his personality, I think the students will be full of respect for Van Gogh.
Van Gogh, who was eccentric, was a loner since he was a child. He is not only ugly, sometimes he feels ashamed, and sometimes he is impulsive and rude. He rejects society, and society rejects him; But he gave his heart to the society, and the society still rejected him. When working in Gupier painting shop, he directly criticized customers' hobbies and even publicly declared that the business was actually an organized thief group, so he was fired; He works as a French teacher in a boarding school. He saw the living conditions of poor students and didn't charge them tuition, so he was fired again. He worked as a self-reliant missionary in the coal mine and distributed his property to the poor. The church thought he preached improperly, so it expelled him again. He is full of enthusiasm and deep affection for sincere love, but he is not fooled, deviated or deviated. He was crazy and devoted himself to painting, but because he was not understood by the world and it was difficult to find a bosom friend, he was fired again.
However, like Rodin, Van Gogh treated art like a devout believer. He doesn't care much whether people understand and accept his works. He just regards painting as the best way to vent his feelings and has the same pursuit as Renoir. "I paint not to be annoying, but to make people happy." He wrote in the letter. This is really surprising, and it also gives a glimpse of Van Gogh's heart: he is like an innocent child, even though life is so unfair to him. He still loves and longs for life.
As a still life painting, Sunflower, his masterpiece, shows the painter's unique emotional experience of nature, life and life from its color tone, layout, concrete composition and composition of vase flowers, application of brush strokes and treatment of oil painting techniques, and conveys a warm and sad, turbulent and lonely psychological mood. Only when students fully understand Van Gogh can they truly understand the inner meaning of this sunflower struggling between pitch and relaxation, and a new life full of tension is born in the withered and painful old life species. When students appreciate it, they will naturally imagine Van Gogh's life, silence, a depressed life that they want to shout but can't. More importantly, Van Gogh's love and yearning for life will always remain in the hearts of students.
Secondly, in appreciation education, we should let students know about China's art and improve their sense of national honor. For a long time, due to the influence of Eurocentrism and the illusion that scientific development equals aesthetic development, China's art has followed the path of western science, ignoring the aesthetic advantages of the Chinese nation to some extent.
In fact, China's scientific backwardness in the past century does not mean that its art is backward. As a unique art, Chinese painting has long been juxtaposed with western painting, becoming the two most important painting systems in the world.
First, China's painting has a long history and unique style. According to records, as early as the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, in the political building of Tang Ming, the capital of the Zhou Dynasty, there were murals depicting "the capacity of Yao and Shun, the image of unruly people", and the scene that the Duke of Zhou accepted the worship of princes with his young king. Unfortunately, these murals no longer exist in the world because of the destruction of buildings, but the line-drawn figures in two silk paintings of the Warring States period unearthed in 1949 are slightly colored.
After the Warring States Period, with the development of China society, the ancient paintings in China were constantly improved and enriched in terms of artistic forms, expressive techniques, artistic styles and various painting schools, and painters applied the structure of calligraphy to their paintings. In order to strengthen the expressive force and artistic interest of painting, it has formed a strong national style and distinctive characteristics of the times. It is not only the basis of the development of modern painting art in China, but also has an important influence on some countries around China. Nakamura, an old Japanese painter, pointed out in the book History of China Painting: "China painting is the mother of Japanese painting, so it is unreasonable to learn Japanese painting without knowing China painting. I think it is most appropriate to compare China's paintings to a constant stream. "
In terms of time, European painting should admit that the earliest works of art in the Paleolithic Age were discovered in southwest and central Europe. Although archaeology is a developing science, so far there is no new evidence that can't shake the above viewpoint.
After the Middle Ages, because Christianity became the spiritual pillar of ruling the country, this era was called "dark Middle Ages" in the history of painting. Until the Renaissance, the emerging bourgeoisie needed convincing ideological weapons to clear the way for the future. They finally found the ancient Greek and Roman ideology and culture full of realism and scientific rationality from the treasure house of ancient weapons, thus playing the banner of Renaissance. As Engels said, "The manuscripts rescued during the demise of Byzantium and the ancient statues excavated from the ruins of Rome showed a new world in front of surprised westerners." Therefore, European painting is sometimes vast and sometimes dry, which is different from China's long history of painting.
Second, western culture is a culture centered on "God". They attributed the development of mankind to the creation of God. In their view, "God" and "man" are separated. So they are used to fighting against man and nature, man and society, subject and object. Explore the vertical logical relations of various fields, distinguish their levels on the basis of species and outline, and strive to conform to the objective order of these relations.
They belong to philosophical aesthetics, narrative poetics and object painting respectively.
The focus of their realistic painting is perspective, just like a cyclops looking at the world through a keyhole, he can only honestly draw what is visible and block what is invisible. Their angel can only fly with a pair of wings, and his love message can only be conveyed with the help of tangible bows and arrows.
China's culture is people-oriented. It regards the "clue" of pen and ink as the fundamental requirement for shaping the conscious image, and integrates poetry into the painting, so that the artistic conception, layout, pen and ink and color of the painting are completely poetic and become "silent poems". He is not only an important foundation for the development of modern painting art in China, but also has an important influence on painting in some countries around China. Therefore, China's paintings belong to artistic aesthetics, lyric poetry and freehand brushwork.
China's paintings are multi-perspective. Seeing the world through swimming can not only draw what the naked eye sees, but also draw what the mind sees. Before and after the mountains, inside and outside the house, the Wan Li of the Yangtze River, and the four seasons of flowers can all be brought into the picture at the same time.
Our sky is about to fly, and we can "take advantage of the righteousness of heaven and earth and swim endlessly against the six qi" without heavy wings. Although its love message is "although my body does not have bright phoenix wings", it can "but I feel the harmonious heartbeat of the sacred unicorn".
One is "flying without wings" and the other is "flying with wings", which is higher?
No wonder Picasso asked, "When it comes to art in this world, first of all, you China people have art; Secondly, the Japanese have art, of course, Japanese art comes from your China; The third is that Africans have art, but apart from these two, whites have no art at all. What puzzles me most is why so many people from China and the East come to Paris to study art. ".
In addition, some experts believe that Chinese painting is a hotbed of postmodernism. In the 1990s, with the development of consumption, the upsurge of modernism rapidly cooled down in China, and a postmodernism that broke the tradition and the new trend, art and non-art, elegance and vulgarity quietly rose in a game posture, making it more compatible. Here, the excluded classical art has its own position again, and it is treated with a game attitude: Venus puts on jeans; Mona Lisa was put on a pair of glasses; Maitreya carries billboards, and so on. Here, these arts not only maintain their own "elegance", but also become more popular.
Modernism attaches importance to the visible form, while postmodernism attaches importance to the unclear state. He absorbed the information of eastern mystics and advocated "the unity of man and nature". China has long said that "the mystery is mysterious, and the secret cannot be revealed". These ancient cultures in China, regarded by some scholars as backward or even superstitious, cannot be quantified accurately, and may contain fields that scientism cannot understand and information that cannot be interpreted.
Just as slavery in ancient Greece was too perfect and its feudal society was underdeveloped. China's perfect feudal society decided that he could not have perfect capitalism, but it was possible to achieve full development and prosperity in the post-industrial society. China rejected modernist art to some extent, but he had a natural affinity for postmodernism.
Students will certainly have a new understanding of art through various understandings. While appreciating beauty, they will consciously accept ideological education and new ideas.
These are my superficial views on art appreciation in senior high school. It should be said that this is a long process, and the effect is still unknown.