As one of the three major forms of drama in ancient times, China Opera is recognized by the world, alongside Greek Sad (Happy) Drama and Indian Brahma Drama. China opera was formed in12nd century. Although it came out later than Greek Sad (Happy) Drama and Indian Brahma Drama, both Greek Drama and Indian Brahma Drama have already disappeared in the evolution of drama culture and withdrawn from the historical stage. Only China Opera keeps pace with the times and shows great vitality. The reason is fundamentally related to the freehand brushwork of traditional Chinese opera, a special form of expression.
The freehand brushwork of traditional Chinese opera is reflected in attaching importance to spirit rather than form, that is to say, the performance of traditional Chinese opera attaches great importance to the transmission of emotional truth and ignores the objective prototype (form) of life. Naturally, the freehand brushwork of China traditional operas is quite different from the realism of general western art, and this contrast is undoubtedly caused by the different humanistic backgrounds of Chinese and western arts.
The culture created by different nationalities in the long history constitutes the cultural concept of that nationality, which determines or influences the cultural and artistic forms of that nationality. In other words, the emergence and development of freehand brushwork in China traditional opera art is related to the long historical and cultural accumulation of the Chinese nation, that is, it is the result of national aesthetic philosophy and thought.
Then, where is the aesthetic philosophy of our nation mainly reflected?
This is related to the speculative view of form and spirit formed by China's understanding of "form" and "spirit" in ancient times. This view can be traced back to the pre-Qin period, and Laozi, a representative figure of Taoism, once said that "Taoism is more important than weapons". Tao refers to the ideological thing, and the device refers to the external thing, as the Book of Changes says: "The metaphysical refers to the Tao, while the metaphysical refers to the device". Later, Zhuangzi put forward more clearly that "the shape is incomplete but the spirit is complete" and emphasized the importance of "the spirit". "God" gradually refers to mysterious things from ancient times and gradually extends to "meaning" to express people's subjective will. Zhuangzi has a vivid description of "Yi" in his book Autumn Water: "Those who are full of fish forget it, those who have hooves forget it, those who have hooves forget it, those who care about it, and those who are proud forget it ...", and "Yi" has evolved from this and has been respected to a very important position, with the so-called "get carried away" (Wang Wei's Ming Dynasty drama Tang Xian In modern times, Qi Baishi also said that "the beauty of art lies in similarity and difference", which emphasized the importance of meaning and the secondary nature of form. This important philosophical thought, which values meaning over form, is that Confucianism and Buddhism can be interlinked. Confucianism values righteousness over profit, while Buddhism values spirit over material things. Therefore, in the integration of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, it is natural to emphasize spirit over form. Therefore, the important concept of valuing "meaning" over form is consistent with all kinds of arts in China. It goes without saying that the concept of form and spirit, which values spirit over form, also directly influences and acts on China traditional opera art, and breeds the formation and development of freehand brushwork drama forms.
However, as a traditional opera art with audio-visual experience, it mainly shows people with "shape". Then, under the domination of attaching importance to spirit over form, how can its freehand brushwork be implemented in traditional Chinese opera? In the long historical development, China opera, through the creative practice of several generations of opera actors, did not abandon the "form", but took the "form" as the central axis, boldly and reasonably abstracted or semi-abstracted it, resulting in a more visually shocking "form" to achieve the best effect of "indomitable spirit".
To sum up, its freehand brushwork drama form has the following aspects:
The first is the freehand brushwork treatment of exaggerated deformation. The freehand brushwork treatment of exaggerated deformation is mainly to abstract or semi-abstract the externalized "shape", so that the newly created image is between "similarity and dissimilarity". There are four kinds of freehand brushwork of exaggerated deformation, namely deformation, sketch, ecstasy and illusion.
Deformation, that is, exaggerating the change of prototype. For example, the beard worn by male horns, according to people's imagination, not only has black, gray, white and red beards, but also has long and many shapes. According to different roles, Geng Shuang also has beards of various shapes, such as three locks, mutual locks, one word and four happiness. There is even a kind of "hanging" worn by clowns. The beard hangs on the chin. These long, large, numerous, strange and colorful beards are completely artificially exaggerated and can hardly be found in the prototype of life. However, the audience is not disgusted, but also
Sketching is to omit some parts of "shape" and keep some parts of freehand brushwork, such as whip without horse and paddle without boat. In the eyes of the audience, this kind of freehand brushwork is not valued, and there are still horses and chariots. In Qiu Jiang, a Sichuan opera, the ferryman only dances with one paddle, as if the boat is in the blue waves, while in Yue Lai Dian, a Beijing opera, thirteen sisters ride like horses.
Get carried away (also detached), that is, give up all the "shapes" in reality and put on new "shapes" for freehand brushwork. This kind of "ecstasy" is based on the feelings of the characters in the play, carefully designing and refining new images to set off the characters, such as Li Huiniang, a Beijing opera, which is based on a beautiful revenge female ghost that does not exist in reality and is very touching. This kind of freehand brushwork has just reached the artistic realm of "keeping the shape as it is".
The so-called illusion refers to an extremely exaggerated and abstract image that does not exist in reality. For example, in Hua Tian Cuo, Liu Yuyan meets the scholar Bian Xian, and at the special moment when their eyes suddenly stare secretly, the girl Chunlan performs a freehand performance of "picking the line of sight" (that is, pulling the eyeliner out of Liu and Bian's eyes), which not only achieves the strengthening effect similar to the close-up in film and television, but also will
The second is the freehand brushwork of time and space. This is mainly manifested in the arbitrariness of time processing and the hypothesis of space processing. As we all know, as a stage play, the biggest limitation of performance is time and space. In terms of time, first, it is impossible to perform for a long time, which will make the audience very tired, but it is more important to handle the length of the time span of the drama plot. If expressed according to real time, many irrelevant diachronic plots will crowd out effective and special diachronic plots. As a narrative drama, we will waste time to make a mediocre narrative. In order to solve this contradiction, the Chinese opera adopts a kind of casual freehand brushwork in dealing with time, so that the limited time can be used indefinitely. For example, when an actor pretends to take a nap on the stage, he looks up, lifts his eyes, stretches his waist to indicate brightness, and even uses drums to indicate three nights or five drums. In "Wu Zixu Crossing Shaoguan", Wu Zixu couldn't pass the customs because of grief, and his performance changed from black beard to white beard, which showed a time span of one day and night and strengthened Wu's anxiety. Imaginary freehand brushwork in space is more common in traditional Chinese opera. "Liang Zhu" has no environment on the stage except Liang Zhu, and the couple only expressed their rap lines through the actions on the stage. The audience felt reluctant to part with it and sent it away for eighteen miles, which really looked beautiful and beautiful. "Wujiapo" Wang Baochuan bent down on the stage, showing the internal and external environment of the broken kiln. In "Spring Grass Rushs to the Hall", four bearers carry spring grass to Beijing, and the bearers completely show different environments such as going up the mountain, going down the mountain, wading and crossing the bridge by dancing. For example, "Xu Ce Running the City" and "Chasing Han Xin" are all performed by the dramatist Xu Ce running back and forth on the stage with his robe on his back, and Xiao He riding desperately.
The third is the stylized and stylized virtual freehand brushwork.
The characters in traditional Chinese opera are classified and refined from the characters in social life, which is very prescriptive. For example, the five occupations in Beijing Opera, namely, young men and ugly women, represent different social roles, namely, young men, young men with special personality and character, and mature men. Ugliness generally represents kindness, humor, antics and villains. In various behaviors, it is divided into many special lines, and different special lines have different stylized performances. These performances are concentrated in imaginary freehand brushwork performances, such as crown adjustment, tie-tying, sleeve smoothing, etc., which shows that Chen Qian is ready for battle. Dan Jiao's "sideburns" show women's strict dressing and gfd. There are also some particularly enjoyable performances, such as "Falling Zombies", which express anger and anger. In "Going to the Roof", Liu Xiu mistakenly killed Yao Qi, a loyal minister, and 28 heroes because of drunkenness, and he was deeply remorseful. He made a stunt with "falling zombies". When the Sichuan Opera "Legend of the White Snake" broke the bridge, Xiaoqing went on the rampage when she saw Xu Xian, which was a sign with "changing face" (several colorful faces appeared). In addition, there are many stylized virtual freehand brushwork performances, such as "consummating the house", "passing the scene" and "grinding" in the time-space transition, questioning when they meet (such as the "grinding" performance of Song Jiang and Yan Xijiao in Wulongyuan), and the "San Xiao" desk is particularly leisurely, with both anxiety and anger and frequent "small turns".
Fourth, the symbolic freehand brushwork in stage art.
The stage art of traditional Chinese opera mainly includes makeup, props, costumes and stage background. The design and installation of all aspects of the stage art of traditional Chinese opera are not expressed by realism, but by symbolic means. For example, in the makeup of character modeling design, although characters have rules of role behavior, the freehand brushwork in these rules is expressed by symbolic means, such as "Facebook and clothing, with different colors to represent people in society such as good and evil, wisdom, courage, dignity, etc." On Facebook, black is resolute, red is kind, white is treacherous, and gold is immortal, such as Bao Gong, Guan Yu and Zhao Gao. In terms of clothing, when the emperor is the emperor, he will wear yellow robes, while the five ministers will wear gold, waist purple, embroidered robes and jade belts to symbolize nobility and wealth, while Shu Ren is mostly blue, blue and black to symbolize its ordinary, poor and low. Props, such as swords, spears and halberds, are not completely life-oriented, but are symbolized by decorative shapes. Others, such as fire flag, water flag, diamond flag, vehicle flag and cloud, symbolize traditional drama, such as fire, water, messenger, Che Zhou and cloud. There is no scenery on the stage, and the interval between the big, second and third scenes is mainly used to express the change of time and space, or butterfly screens are used to symbolize the palace, embroidery room and clouds. This symbolic freehand brushwork allows the audience to know the identity of the characters in the play, the perfunctory plot and other dramatic atmosphere just by intuition.
The fifth is the simple freehand brushwork of traditional Chinese opera.
China's dramatist theory is plot layout, and the setting of characters and props is very simple, that is, the so-called "less wins more", "writing ten" and "less wins more" and so on. The biggest shortcoming of drama is complexity, but China's drama has achieved twice the result with simple freehand brushwork. For example, in the plot, the Peking Opera Heroes shows Battle of Red Cliffs of Cao Cao, Sun Quan and Liu Bei in history. If there is plenty of time and space, several characters are intertwined, but Hero omits many plots and people, and only uses Zhuge Liang's "a gust of wind", Pang Tong's "a plan" and Zhou Yu's "a fire" to complete Battle of Red Cliffs's performance. What makes the audience feel is a sea of people watching the lights. A table and two chairs on the stage of Chinese opera have been moved, promoted to a hall, given a banquet, and displayed as a mountain city, etc., which is extremely convenient and flexible. This kind of freehand brushwork, like Liu Zongyuan's poem "Jiang Xue", only one word "snow" makes people feel "white", which has a multiplier effect.
The freehand brushwork of traditional Chinese opera also includes the freehand brushwork of stream of consciousness and poetic language, which involves almost all aspects of traditional Chinese opera and is very rich. It is precisely because this ancient aesthetic principle of freehand brushwork runs through China's traditional operas that China Opera, an ancient form of national drama, can be independent of the world's art and endure for a long time.