Technological innovation is not a difficult thing. With the progress of science and technology and the continuous improvement of productivity, the technical problems that are very difficult in front of the ancients can be easily solved today, but it is difficult to innovate in culture. Culture is the soul of jade, how to give contemporary jade a new soul? In this award, we have seen many jade carving artists take solid steps in this direction.
We might as well take the creation of jade brand as an example. Jade brand has been widely made and varied in style since it appeared as an ornament with its unique shape in Ming Dynasty. Among them, Zigang brand is the most sought after brand, which leads people to imitate it one after another, and there are also fakes in the same generation. The charm of Zigang brand lies not only in its excellent materials and exquisite and elegant shape, but also in the fact that a generation of jade master Lu Zigang introduced the painting style and calligraphy interest of literati at that time into jade carving, integrating poetry, calligraphy, painting and engraving. Its value lies in artistic innovation. The jade cards marked with Zigang style in later generations are mostly imitated from the style ornamentation, but their cultural implications are not understood and explored. They put their efforts into modeling, but they are out of place in verve. The white jade brand "jade bone Hanxiang" by Shanghai award-winning master Yi Shaoyong was marked as Zigang brand by the author, but it was not Zigang brand. Is it because the author doesn't understand that Zigang brand has universally recognized standards? Obviously not. I didn't have an introduction to this work when I participated in the evaluation. In my evaluation, I made the following statement: "This jade brand inherits the spirit and charm of Zigang brand, does not stick to the paradigm of Zigang brand, sweeps away the popular grandiose atmosphere, and integrates the interest of literati painting and calligraphy initiated by Zigang brand into the creative style of jade carving, pushing it to a new level. With lofty and pure cultural vision, the author creates artistic conception in simplicity, conveys charm in simplicity, rejects extravagance, simplicity and simplicity, and deliberately highlights ethereal and lofty aesthetic fashion. The application of the yinxian craft is exquisite, and the brushwork is purified in the turning depiction, which is quite skillful, shaping a distinctive personality and expanding the expression form of the jade brand. " Perhaps my interpretation is not without bias, but the author's pursuit of jade brand cultural taste and efforts in cultural innovation are undoubtedly conscious and sober. In addition, such as Ni Weibin's White Jade Family, Ma Tiejun's Tianya * * * Jade at this time, Zhai Yiwei's White Jade Brand at Noon and tea time, Dong Li's White Jade Deck Zhuangzi, water bile agate's World Diary, Tian Jianqiao's White Jade Childhood, and Ma Jingui's Gemmed Black Jade and Longevity Pot. Take Ma Jingui's Fu Shou Hu as an example. This is a container filled with silk, inlaid with treasures and carved in stone. However, on the basis of the unique craft of carving jade, the author injected national cultural elements, boldly "China" the shape of the pot handle and the patchwork pattern of silver ornaments, and the combination of Chinese and western pot handles and the carved pot body of the black sunflower pot played a finishing touch. The innovative practice of jade carving artists has brought an open prospect for the theme of jade carving, and also injected new elements of the times and new vitality into the ancient jade carving art in China.
We attach so much importance to the cultural innovation of jade carving art because of a real worry. At present, an unavoidable problem is that the excellent cultural connotation and spiritual connotation of the new era that jade carving art should have expressed are getting weaker and weaker in many works circulating in the market. Chinese jade and Chinese jade culture, originally a main vein of Chinese national culture and spiritual river, bear different historical spiritual symbols and social and cultural information in different historical periods, which is the core reason for the enduring Chinese jade culture for thousands of years. However, a large number of jade works flooding the market now have reduced their cultural bearing function, but their decorative and ornamental functions have expanded and increased, and most ordinary consumers' understanding of jade remains superficial. For example, the most popular and sought after function is the function of blessing and removing special things. This phenomenon not only obscures the soul of jade carving art, but also injects an absurd and vulgar oral orientation into social psychology. A cabbage is a "treasure", a monkey carrying a monkey is a "seal", and a bottle with three halberds is a "three-level promotion", and so on, dissolving the profound Chinese jade culture into vulgar and utilitarian spells. Lack of awareness of cultural innovation should attract enough attention from people of insight in the jade industry.
China's traditional culture has accumulated rich and colorful resources of Chinese studies, and colorful folk culture also constitutes a huge treasure house of China's cultural resources. If jade carving artists can establish a kind of self-awareness, draw nutrition from it, broaden their horizons and get inspiration, then the cultural value tension and cultural vitality of China jade carving art will be greatly strengthened.