In the past ten years, the national fine arts have enjoyed unprecedented prosperity and various forms. Such as oil painting, Chinese painting, installation art, new media art and so on. Original mainstream varieties, such as Chinese painting, oil painting, sculpture, etc. There have also been many new developments on the basis of inheriting and carrying forward the original traditions, such as Chinese painting, whose overall pattern is completely different from that of the past hundred years. In 1950s, Li Keran, Huang Zhou and others came out and put sketches and sketches into Chinese paintings. China ancient painters were critical of their works, but now Li Keran has become a representative figure of China traditional painting. In the 1950s, they represented new ideas and were "avant-garde" at that time. Huang Zhou entered Chinese painting by sketching, and Li Keran entered Chinese painting by sketching. Take oil painting as an example, it used to be "Su School", and learning from Russia and realism became the mainstream style. Today, since 1980s, China's oil paintings have developed various styles and styles. At present, it is hard to say which style or "ism" fully represents China's oil paintings.
The so-called contemporary art, such as some installation art, new media art and "contemporary art", has two aspects. On the one hand, it has a time factor in it, that is, it is an art that expresses or pays attention to such an era in which artists live; On the other hand, it is generally believed that contemporary art is different from traditional inclusiveness and "modern art" in concept, form and artistic language. If we want to understand contemporary art objectively and comprehensively, we can't let go of its temporality, which belongs to a special historical stage-the historical stage we are in. Generally speaking, in terms of time, people who make art history classify the art that appeared after the 1960s as contemporary art, but some of the art that appeared after the 1960s still adhere to the traditional style and continue to pay attention to the issues concerned by traditional art, such as religion, mythological themes, realistic portraits, still life and so on. Generally not classified as contemporary art. ..
Take painting as an example. When we talk about contemporary art, we usually refer to installation art, performance art and new media art, but some paintings are also very contemporary, such as Liu Xiaodong's paintings and Xu Weixin's recent paintings. Xu Weixin is realistic in painting skills, but he created various portraits of China in 1970s, and drew portraits of people in different positions in that special era. From ordinary people to leaders, his thoughts have been very advanced. Another example is the painters Zhang Xiaogang and Liu Xiaodong, especially Liu Xiaodong, who is a professor in the college and has been engaged in realistic painting. However, his concerns, such as the current situation of people's livelihood at the bottom of society, including the mental state of the Three Gorges immigrants, including the people at the bottom of society and those in a marginal state, are obviously very contemporary.
At present, the new media art, which has just begun to rise, is generally called new media works created through digital movies and images. Internationally, works that express their artistic thoughts through digital images are more avant-garde and contemporary than installations and traditional performance art, taking performance art as an example. Although it can't be said to be out of date, it appeared abroad at least in the 1960 s and is now very common. Avant-garde art is constantly putting itself on the opposite side of the mainstream culture of society. Once you lose this pertinence, you lose your avant-garde. In this case, contemporary art pays more and more attention to the concept of art, and the so-called contemporariness means that you pay attention to some issues that are most concerned about contemporary times. Such as environmental issues, gender issues, ethnic issues, religious conflicts and so on. , are very acute problems that are difficult for all mankind to rule out at present, that is, what the heart and soul of the work want to express is particularly important.
Second, the contemporary art context of ready-made painting trends
With the progress of human history, every art has a process of occurrence, development, evolution and extinction. In the past, in order to demonstrate this problem and this concept, we always gave such an example. For example, in the Stone Age, humans once had rock paintings, stone knives and axes, and later pottery appeared. But when bronzes appeared, no one engaged in painted pottery art, and when ironware appeared, it was eliminated, then silk and paper ... From this perspective, easel painting seems to be going downhill. In fact, as early as the19th century, when photography appeared, many philosophers, artists and scientists declared the death of painting art-the day when photography appeared was the day when painting died. This equates the changes in stone tools, pottery, bronzes and iron in the past history with art. [Next]
For example, when metal products appeared, people had not cooked and boiled water with pottery. After the appearance of aluminum pots, people seldom use bronze pots ... but the art is different. In China, the art of Wei, Jin, Sui and Tang Dynasties (such as painted pottery and bronze wares in the west) is not pure art, but a kind of articles for production and daily use, which has strong practicability. So when new materials appear, practicality disappears. First of all, completely pure art has emerged. This kind of art does not serve religion and power, but is a relatively independent art. After this kind of art appears, you can easily claim that a certain art will completely die out and decline, which is not in line with historical progress. In fact, it is not dead. We often illustrate how to cut a cake. I often ask, why are painters so important in the history of the East and the West? Because only painters can record their social activities and inherit their figure. Now this responsibility has been divided by people of different occupations, such as our network, TV, and the network even has more audience advantages than TV. Therefore, the role of painting in conveying people's thoughts, information and spirit is getting smaller and smaller, and its share in this cake is even smaller, but it still exists and is still developing.
3. What is the current situation of domestic art criticism?
Art criticism is a controversial and critical field at present. On the Internet or in newspapers and magazines, many people will ask, "Where is China's artistic criticism?" "Is there any artistic criticism in China?" . It is normal for art criticism to be dissatisfied, and it is also normal and necessary to criticize art criticism. [Next]
Art critics should be independent. As people in the art world become more and more familiar with and close to various organizations, friends and relationships, it is quite difficult to be completely independent. The problem now is that under the influence of China people's traditional ethical concepts, such as friends, teachers and students, older generation and younger generation, authority and non-authority, China people's concept of "taboo respect and taboo saints" has influenced China critics.
There is also a structural problem of art criticism, the quality problem of art critics themselves. Now some people divide China's critics like this, saying that there are three kinds of criticisms: one is academic criticism. These people are engaged in academic teaching or artistic research. They criticize from the perspective of pure theory or pure art, but they are often faced with some researchers and theorists, including some students and peers; Second, media criticism, such as some newspapers, magazines, television and internet, pays attention to art from the perspective of media. The media has an advantage. First of all, it has sufficient information resources. Second, it should give consideration to professional artists, critics, audiences and listeners, so its advantages are comprehensive, objective and timely. Its disadvantage is that sometimes it is not professional enough, or it sacrifices academics for timeliness, click-through rate and ratings. Third, amateur criticism, or "grassroots" criticism, is neither professional, out of the circle, out of the system, nor subordinate to the media, but now its influence is growing, because they can express their views through the Internet, and everyone has their own channels. In other words, artistic criticism is also moving towards diversification.
In addition to the general mode, criticism and artistic creation have a common feature, that is, it is a personal thing, which is expressed in a personal way through personal understanding, thinking, impression and feeling. In fact, art criticism is a very personal matter. It is by no means a document like a political resolution or an economic plan. This is very personal. Therefore, artistic criticism has a great relationship with personal accomplishment. There are several kinds of critics now: first, he was originally engaged in artistic creation, for example, he was a painter, sculptor or photographer, and later turned to theoretical criticism; The other is the critics trained by regular classes. When he was in college, he majored in art history, or he originally studied philosophy, which contained aesthetics, and later he turned to art theory. Third, he was originally engaged in other majors. For example, he used to be engaged in architecture, law and history. Even he has nothing to do with humanities. He was engaged in finance, and later he fell in love with art and turned to art criticism. We should see that critics with different experiences and academic qualifications observe, think and criticize in different ways.
Reading the report, you may need your own unique insights. Here are two, which you can refer to.
On Western Concept Art
Abstract: Conceptual art is an important art form in western contemporary art, which emphasizes the importance of artistic concepts. By analyzing the concept of conceptual art and combing the development process, the creative characteristics and significance of conceptual art are summarized.
Conceptual art is an important new art form developed in the United States and western European countries in the 1960s. It emphasizes that the core of artistic creation is the expression of ideas. Specifically, artists take a certain idea as their creative purpose and express their ideas in any available material or intangible form. Therefore, the artist's subjective choice and image splicing have become the most important factors, which have changed the aesthetic view of European classical art since Aristotle and Plato.
First, the origin and development of conceptual art
Conceptual art evolved from the concept and practice of Dadaism. The work Spring by marcel duchamp 19 17 can be regarded as the beginning of conceptual art. However, it was not until 1963 that the concept of "conceptual art" was put forward by American artist Edward Jean Hez and was put forward by Dutch minimalist sculptor Soller. He said in the essay "A Brief Comment on Conceptual Art" published in 1967: "In conceptual art, concept or concept is the most important aspect of a work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all plans and decisions have been completed in advance, and its implementation is only a perfunctory work. The concept has become a machine for creating art. " The most important practitioner of conceptual art, such as joseph Cossus, defined conceptual art as "art after philosophy" in two influential articles published in 1969. In his article, he began to examine the role and position of art and the hidden things behind the meaning people gave to works of art, and discussed the boundary of communication and the internal identity of existing visual language, from which he thought that the essence of works of art was mainly to convey some ideas. Joseph Cossus also created some works to express this idea. He wrote "One and Three Chairs" in 1965, expressing the idea of how to directly transform the visual form of art into ideas. He believes that the object-based image is ultimately to provide people with an idea, and the idea provided by works of art is the essence of art.
Second, the creative characteristics of conceptual art
Concept artists use various media and materials to express their thoughts and ideas, and constantly innovate in form, forming the following characteristics:
(A) the concept of combining images with the art of writing
The combination of images and words is the main means of artistic expression of ideas. It is a great innovation in art to express art with words, which is of great significance in the history of art. The words in conceptual art do not only represent the original meaning of words, but also are the expression tools in conceptual art, and their original meaning is not important. What matters is the way they are used and the ideas that artists use them to express. When conceptual artists choose the combination of graphics and characters, they often use visual symbols with popular culture as graphics. The typical work is Bruce Naumann's Enjoy the Fun/Good Life.
(B) the concept of non-verbal art
Some conceptual artists do not use words at all, but their works also express strong conceptual factors. For example, the work All Aspects of the Chair by the French artist Lu Weimeisi consists of a high-backed chair and twenty mirrors. The size of each mirror is the same as the space separated by the back lining. The chair leans in the middle of a wall, and the mirror is hung on the wall behind the chair, as high as the back of the chair. The mirror and the chair are integrated, and the seemingly widened chair also becomes a part of the chair. This arrangement makes the ordinary lifeless and dull commodity chair suddenly have the function of "feeling". When the audience stared at the chair, it seemed that they were being watched. The mirror is the sensory organ of the chair and the "eye" of the chair. It seems to tell us that those silent things also have the ability to "perceive". In every claustrophobic corner, they silently watched everything about the elf "people" who thought they were the masters of the world. We may never realize that when we look at others, we are also the objects of attention of others, whether living or still life.
(3) the conceptual art of audience participation
Conceptual art places great emphasis on audience participation. Concept artists believe that the concept conveyed in their works is a successful art only when it reaches the hearts of the audience, and the concept formed only after the audience participates is a complete concept. In a sense, the creator is the organizer of the audience's participation. [Next]
Conceptual artists always adhere to the concept of "life is art", and move their works to life and audience, making art more independent and free. 1969, Ma Lirong Sthrid made a device called "Street View" in the streets of new york. This work consists of 30 empty picture frames and is placed on the street. When pedestrians pass by, they become characters in the picture frame and become "instantaneous scenery". When they look through the frame, the street scenes and buildings contained in the frame and the distant sky become "natural paintings" and "street scenes" taken by them. The author uses this work to remind everyone passing by and make them suddenly realize their relationship with their surroundings.
Third, the significance of conceptual art.
To sum up, western conceptual art has nothing to do with form or material, but with concept and meaning. It can't be defined as any media or style, but more about what art is. In particular, conceptual art challenges the traditional position of art as unique, collectible or saleable. Because the work no longer appears in the traditional form, it needs more positive responses from the audience. Conceptual art exists not only in the audience's spiritual participation, but also in various forms: daily necessities, photos, maps, videos, charts, and especially the language itself. These forms are often combined, and conceptual art has played a decisive role in the thoughts of most artists by proposing a thorough criticism, expression and application of art. As an artistic trend of thought and phenomenon, the existence significance of conceptual art mainly lies in that it has opened up new fields, especially in the field of linguistics; It tries to create new means of expression, such as attaching importance to process and record, and showing the trajectory of behavior; It has a strong tendency to oppose the commercialization of art, galleries and monopoly of art by the rich. More importantly, it contains philosophical thinking. It is concerned with how to use the reality of ideas against the reality of senses. Conceptual art is an artistic exploration as well as an exploratory art. The emergence of a new art type is bound to have its inevitability, and the development and growth of conceptual art in the world is worth our study.
refer to
Edward Lucy Smith. 1945 postmodern visual art [Ml. Shanghai: Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House, 1996.
[2] Interview with Duchamp [Ml. Nanning: Guangxi Normal University Press, 200 1.
[3] Robert Hughes The shock of the Art Nouveau movement. Translated by Liu Pingjun and others. Shanghai: Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1989.
[4] Arnason, modern western art history. Translated by Zou Denong [Ml]. Tianjin: Tianjin People's Publishing House, 1994.
[5] Gu Chengfeng, the China way of conceptual art [Ml. Changsha: Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House, 2002.