Abstract: Materialism holds that existence is the first and consciousness is the second. Consciousness is the reflection of existence. As a social ideology, art is also a reflection of real social life. Without social life, art would not exist. Social life is the only source of art, which is the truth proved by all artistic practices. Wen Qi discusses from three aspects: 1, art is the reflection of social life; 2. Art reflects the initiative of social life; 3. Art reflects the particularity of social life. Full text of the paper: Materialism holds that existence is primary and consciousness is secondary; Consciousness is the reflection of existence. As a social ideology, art is also a reflection of real social life. Social life is the only source of art, which is the truth proved by all artistic practices. 1. Art is a reflection of social life. Excellent works of art are often regarded as mirrors of life, which can truly and profoundly reflect social life and help people understand and know social life. Walking into the art garden, we will find such a phenomenon: whether it is a painting, a song, a play, a movie or a dance, we can not only appreciate art, but also observe the living conditions of a certain era and region. When we opened the Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival by Zhang Zeduan in the Northern Song Dynasty, the scene of the capital city Bianliang (now Kaifeng City, Henan Province) appeared before us. We saw crowded markets and arch bridges on the river, various shops and vendors, laborers carrying loads and pulling carts, dignitaries riding horses and sedan chairs, big wooden boats driving and berthing on the river, and so on. From here, we can learn and understand the city appearance, economic situation, people's feelings and customs, the lives of people from all walks of life and many other aspects. Art came into being in the process of human social practice and appeared as a reflection of social life from the beginning. The primitive murals in the late Paleolithic period dating back to 25,000 years ago are the earliest art discovered so far. With the improvement of social productivity and the development of art, we can see a broader and more vivid picture of social life from more and more works. Such as bronze decorative patterns in the Warring States period, portrait bricks in the Han Dynasty and figure paintings in the Tang Dynasty. It reflects the war, production and various living conditions of the working people and the aristocratic class at that time. These works are not only valuable artistic heritage, but also important materials for studying social history. Lenin said: "It goes without saying that people who are not reflected cannot be reflected." Chernyshevski said: "Reproducing life is the general feature of art and its essential feature." Reflecting life is one of the inherent essential features of art, and there is not a work of art in the world that does not have this essential feature. Art as ideology is also a reflection of social life. Without social life, art would not exist. It is not difficult to understand that if there were no bourgeois revolution in France, there would be no "La Marseillaise" reflecting this revolution; Without the bloody struggle of the proletariat to defend the Paris commune, the Internationale would not have been produced; March of the Volunteers can only be born in the upsurge of China people's resistance to Japan and national salvation. These great songs are the products of great struggles in real life. Any artist's creative material and artistic inspiration are provided by life. Many accomplished artists at all times and all over the world feel that artistic creation cannot be separated from life and artistic practice. First of all, art reflects the initiative of social life. Art comes from and reflects social life. Must be sure. However, the life reflected by art is not equal to real life. Due to people's subjective function, the reflection of art on social life is not a negative mechanical reflection, but a positive dynamic reflection. From life to art, it is not directly transferred intact, but through human mind and processing. Art is the product of social life reflected in people's minds. Art embodies the initiative of social life. First of all, the life reflected by artistic works always permeates the author's feelings and understanding of real life. When an artist is creating, it is impossible and unnecessary to make a purely objective simulation of real life. Instead, we choose, refine, process and transform the raw materials of life according to our own feelings and understanding, and thus show our will and evaluation of life. Art embodies the initiative of life and the transformation of natural forms that conform to certain artistic expression rules in life. China's opera proverb says, "It's too much like art if it's not like a play." Painters in China emphasize that images in painting should be between "likeness" and "difference" to real objects, and "difference" refers to artistic images and "similarity" refers to life phenomena. Emphasize the relationship between artistic truth and life truth. The truth of art comes from the truth of life and is higher than the truth of life. Artists are required to emphasize "likeness" when expressing life, that is, "likeness" higher than life. In short, in artistic creation, the author's subjective initiative needs to be brought into play, both in content and form. But the subjective initiative of artistic creation, in the final analysis, should be reflected in the artistic understanding and expression of life. If we disregard real life, deny the value of the objective world and regard art as a purely subjective expression, we will fall into subjective randomness. Subjective randomness and subjective initiative in artistic creation cannot be confused. Goethe, a German poet, said: "Artists have a dual relationship with nature; He is both the master and the slave of nature. " That is to say, in the art of reflecting life, giving full play to subjective initiative and being faithful to life are unified. Only the unity of subject and object can create real works of art, and it will affect the authenticity and profundity of art reflecting life by separating the connection between subject and object and excluding any party. Second, art reflects the particularity of social life. Like social science, art is a reflection of social life. At the same time, they are not passively reflecting life, but actively reflecting life, all of which require reflecting the essence of life. These are the similarities between art and philosophy and social science. But art is different from philosophy and social science. The first difference is that they reflect social life in different ways. Social science reflects life with abstract concepts, while art reflects life with concrete images. Image is the basic feature that distinguishes art from social science, and image is a special means for art to reflect real life. Any art form is inseparable from the description of the image. Without images, art itself does not exist. As for artistic image, some people once thought that image was the appearance of people and things. In fact, artistic image is not the concrete of people and things, and sometimes there is no concrete of people and things at all. The artistic image is extensive and colorful. There are not only people, but also touching natural scenery, happy or sad thoughts, prosperous life pictures, an atmosphere, a taste and so on. , are all artistic images. For example, the depression, pain, melancholy, hope, struggle, anger, struggle, frustration, unyielding will and final joy shown in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and the musical image formed by the author's experience and repeated experience reflected in all music is also an artistic image, although it appeals to hearing and imagination, which is different from the characters in painting and sculpture. Both artistic creation and scientific creation need to be summarized. The difference between the two is that scientific generalization always ends in abstract conclusions, and the essence points directly to readers; However, artistic generalization is always inseparable from concrete and sensible images, which embody the essential characteristics of universal significance in an individual object and express generalization through individual performance. Scientists study horses from a biological point of view, study their morphology and physiological functions, and summarize the laws of their development, growth and reproduction. The horses painted by Xu Beihong are selected, summarized and created by the painter, and many characteristics of horses in natural form are concentrated in the images of individual horses, so that the images of other horses can fully express the essential characteristics of horses and express the painter's aesthetic evaluation of life. The image created by the painter using the method of artistic generalization still maintains a tangible form, but it is no longer the original image in life. It can be seen that concrete sensibility and generality are indispensable characteristics of artistic image, which are integrated with the image and organically combined. Only concrete and sensible, not concrete and general, the image will become a direct imitation of the prototype of life; Only generality, without concrete sensibility, becomes scientific abstraction, and the image no longer exists. A perfect artistic image should strive to achieve the unity of sensibility and generality. To sum up: social life is the source of art, and it is the only source, which is a truth proved by all artistic practices. Since art is a reflection of social life, the life expressed by works of art can only come from the actual social life.