Xunzi, a philosopher in the pre-Qin period, was the first person in China to write a systematic aesthetic paper "On Music". He said a very good sentence. He said, "Imperfection is not good enough." This statement is applied to the beauty of art, that is, art should not only fully express life and nature, but also concentrate on the essence, improve and concentrate, and more typically and universally express life and nature.
Because of "essence", because of removing the rough and retaining the essence, there is "emptiness" in artistic expression, "washing away the dust and leaving me alone" (Yunnan dialect). Because of "perfection", Mencius said that "perfection is called beauty, and perfection is called greatness" can be realized. The dialectical unity of "emptiness" and "reality" can complete artistic expression and form artistic beauty.
But "all" and "essence" are contradictory. If you remove the coarse and keep the fine, it will be incomplete, and it seems that the whole should not be "prominent". The content is substantial and pithy. Isn't this a spear?
However, we only talk about "all" and ignore "essence", which is what we now call naturalism; Talking only about "essence" does not reflect "integrity" and is easy to embark on the road of abstract formalism; Only with the essence and integrity can we truly achieve "typicality" in artistic expression, and only with dialectical unity can we call it beauty, as Xunzi correctly pointed out two thousand years ago.
Zhao Zhixin, a beginner in the Qing Dynasty, has a passage in the preface of Talking about Art, which vividly shows that the dialectical unity of the whole and the essence and the virtual and the real is the highest achievement of art. He said: "The author of the Palace of Eternal Life, Hong Sheng, was in Qiantang and grew up in Xincheng Gate (Wang Yuyang, an advocate of poetic rhyme). Yu yuyou. One day, when I was talking about poetry in Skou (fishing in the ocean), it occurred to me that there were no chapters in customs. I said,' poetry is like a dragon, and the scales at the beginning and end are Xi Xi. If there is nothing, it is not a dragon. Scott said,' Poetry is like a dragon, the tail is not seen at the beginning, or a claw and a scale are just exposed in the clouds, so it is foolproof? It's a sculpture drawing ears! Yu Yue said:' The dragon, which bends and stretches, has no fixed position. Those who see it in a trance first refer to its scales and claws, while the dragon is complete and solid from beginning to end. If you stay in what you see and think the dragon is there, the sculptor will have to resign! " "
Hong Yunsi paid attention to "wholeness" and neglected "essence", while Wang Yuyang paid attention to "wholeness" according to his verve theory. Zhao Zhixin pointed out that the expressions of scales and claws should be able to show the "complete existence" of dragons. The performance of art lies in the symbolic power of a scale and a paw, which makes the whole exist without weakening the whole content and summarizes them in a scale and a paw. Improve your concentration and see a world in a grain of sand. This is a realistic creative method in China's artistic tradition, which is neither natural nor formal.
However, both Wang Yuyang and Zhao Zhixin talked contemptuously about sculpture and painting, as if they were only naturalistic descriptions of reality. This is a big misunderstanding. The dragon painted by China's great painter showed a scale and a claw in the cloud just like Zhao Zhixin's request, but made all dragons visible.
China's traditional painting art has long mastered this technique of combining reality with reality. For example, in recent years, scholars have painted figures in the late Zhou Dynasty on silk books, carved figures in the Han Dynasty, a map of women's history by Gu Kaizhi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, a map by Yan in the Tang Dynasty, a map by Gong Li in the Song Dynasty, a map by Zhong Kui in the Yuan Dynasty, and a poem by Xu Wei in the Ming Dynasty, all of which are good examples. We saw the movements and postures of the characters on the empty background, omitting the description of the background, just like China's performance on the stage. There are many dances and dramatic performances in Han paintings.
China's painting deals with the problem of spatial expression. In his Sasakawa (the masterpiece of China's painting aesthetics), Da Zhongguang, a painter in the early Qing Dynasty, said it very well. This passage about the picture space is also related to the way of spatial treatment on the stage in China. He said:
"Empty this difficult figure, real clear now empty scene. God can't draw, reason is forced, and God is born. The position is hostile, and the paintings are mostly warts. Virtual reality and reality are born, and no painting is a wonderful place. "
This passage simply describes the method of Chinese painting to deal with space, and also reminds people of the performance methods and scenery in China's stage art. China's stage performance is original, and we see its superiority more and more. This artistic expression is related to China's unique painting art, and even to the artistic conception in China's poems. (1949, I wrote an article "Space Consciousness in China's Poetry and Painting". Look at this book. There are generally no realistic sets on the domestic stage (only some props and tables and chairs are used). The old artist put it well: "The set of the opera is on the actors." Actors combined with the development of the plot, flexible use of performance procedures and skills, to achieve "virtual reality, elusive." When the actors concentrate on "realistically" expressing the inner feelings and actions of the characters by programming and dancing, people will forget the requirements for the environmental scenery in the play, and there is no need for environmental scenery to hinder the concentration and flexibility of the performance. "Empty the real scene", leaving the empty space for the characters to fully express the plot, and the people in the play communicate spiritually with the audience and go deep into the deepest interest of artistic creation. This is "forced by reality and born by spirit". This "realistic compulsion" is realistic, not the so-called realism in naturalism. This is the truth revealed by art, this is the embodiment of the spirit of "no painting", and this is beauty. "Truth", "God" and "Beauty" are integrated here.
If this is done, the "presentation" of the "open field" on the stage, that is, the composition of space, does not need to rely on the arrangement of physical objects to express space. What I am afraid of is that "the position conflicts and there are many warts in the painting", which eliminates the complicated scenery and can make "all places without scenery become wonderful places". For example, the virtual action in the scene of Sichuan Opera "Hanging the Window" not only highlights the authenticity of the performance, but also shows the beauty of the posture, and achieves "virtual" or "real". In Qiu Jiang, the boatman's paddle and Chen Miaochang's swaying dance can make the audience "wander" on the river. Badashan people drew a lifelike fish on paper, and nothing else made people feel that the picture was full of water. Recently, I saw a painting of Qi Baishi in the Forbidden City, with a dead branch hanging outside and a bird standing on it. But the magic of the pen makes people feel that the bird is an infinite space and is in harmony with the stars in the sky. It's really a "magical realm".
China traditional art has long broken through the one-sidedness of naturalism and formalism, created a unique national expression of realism, and achieved a high degree of unity of truth and beauty, content and form. The aesthetic thought reflecting the development of this art also has a unique and precious heritage, which is worthy of our in-depth understanding and absorption in combination with artistic practice, and provides reference and nutritional information for us to create new art forms from our new life.
China's painting, drama and China's other special art, calligraphy, have a common feature, that is, they all run through the spirit of dance (that is, the spirit of music), and express the empty space through dance movements. Zhang Xu, a great calligrapher in Tang Dynasty, knew calligraphy by watching Gong Sundaniang's sword dance. Wu Daozi painted a wall, and asked General Pei to dance the sword to help strengthen his spirit. Dance is also the foundation of China's drama art. In the development of 2000, China's stage movements formed a basic style with a high sense of rhythm and dance. This style is beautiful and can show the truth of life. Actors can use one or two extremely refined and typical gestures to express time, place and specific scenes. For example, the action of "riding a horse" can make people see a horse running, and at the same time, it can also make people feel that people are riding on a horse and under what circumstances. If an actor "doesn't have a horse in mind" when riding a horse and just shows off his martial arts and skills there, then his movements are stylized. -Our stage movements can really show the truth of life through a high degree of artistic truth. It also proves that this is an excellent national expression accumulated by the broad masses of people from generation to generation through thousands of years of wisdom. If we want to cancel this action at once and replace it with a purely realistic or even naturalistic work, it is to cancel the national tradition and the opera. (See Jiao Juyin: Three Main Problems of Performing Arts, Drama Newspaper 1954 1 1 month).
China used the artistic skills of dance form to dialectically combine the virtual with the real, and this unique creative technique also runs through all kinds of arts. As for architecture, as for seals, they are all treated with the aesthetic principle of combining reality with reality, showing the vivid charm of flying. In the poem "Four Cadres" in the Book of Songs, when praising Zhou Xuanwang's palace, it is to describe this building with dancing posture, saying that it is "like wings, like thorns, like birds, like flies".
The imaginative space displayed by dance movements is the common feature of the sense of space and spatial expression in China's paintings, calligraphy, drama and architecture, thus forming the unique style of China's art in the world. It is different from the sense of space geometry that the west has endured since Egypt. Studying the special contribution of our classical heritage is helpful to the progress of human aesthetic discussion and artistic understanding.