The suicide of actor robin williams and translator Sun Zhongxu brought the depressed patients back to this world. There are 90 million people suffering from depression in China, and more than 200,000 people choose to give up their lives every year.
Depression goes hand in hand with death. On the other hand, depression is closely related to creativity. According to a survey published in the American magazine Health three years ago, artists have become one of the top ten occupations most prone to depression because of their irregular working hours and income and their solo creation, with an incidence rate of about 9%.
In the symptom self-assessment of psychological problems, if the score is above 160, there will be psychological problems, while if the score is below 180, people think it is unnecessary to draw. It can be seen that artists in the eyes of the world must be sentimental and changeable. And real examples in history also confirm this point. Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Monk, etc. They are all very melancholy, and the tragic color appears and disappears in their works.
Melancholy adds mysterious charm to artists. How do they express their melancholy?
Diu Lei equated melancholy with genius.
Depression was discovered as a disease in the 2nd century AD, when Prix Galien, the founder of Greek medicine and pharmacy, found that some patients always died before others, and their common characteristics were depression and world-weariness.
In the Middle Ages, depression was evil because it meant doubting God's creation. People think that only misers and idlers will be depressed. German painter Albrecht Dürer changed all this. He completely reversed the image of a melancholy person, made him evolve into a person who thinks with his chin and equated him with a genius.
In the print "Melen Corea I" created by Diu Lei in May 15 14, an angel leans his chin as if he had a kilogram of black bile in his chest during meditation. She is holding a compass in her hand, surrounded by scientific tools such as scales and hourglasses, and a fourth-order Rubik's cube is written on the painting. The patron saint beside the angel is as unhappy as she is. A bat held up a banner that read: Melancholy.
The gesture of holding one's head with a fist in heaven first appeared in ancient Egyptian murals, indicating meditation, fatigue or sadness. At first, the clenched hand represented the effort to seize the treasure, and Diu Lei transformed it into the spirit of grasping an unsolvable problem. Philosopher agnes heller even thinks that the book on her lap is the reason for the angel's melancholy.
Erwin Panofsky, an art historian, once expounded the relationship between One of Melancholy and Aristotle's and Plato's theories, holding that painting is an artist's spiritual self-portrait. Diu Lei combined geometry with melancholy, echoing Aristotle's view: "All truly outstanding people, outstanding people in philosophy, statecraft, poetics or various skills, are melancholy people-what's more, some of them suffer from diseases caused by black bile."
Before Diu Lei, depression was a disease, a patent for misers and lazy people; After Diu Lei, melancholy became the privilege of genius.
"Learn how to turn blue", just like people learn tennis and bridge today.
During the Renaissance, Aristotle's view finally became the mainstream opinion, and people realized that outstanding people must be melancholy, and even "melancholy means genius". If a person is not sentimental, he is ashamed to call himself an artist. The melancholy "madman" is proud of his creativity and suffers from mental pain.
Diu Lei wrote in the preface of "Food for Young Painters": "I need to constantly understand and feel, which will consume a lot of energy and make our hearts in a melancholy state." Michelangelo lived an ascetic life. He said, "Melancholy is my happiness". Raphael is also considered "as melancholy as all outstanding people".
Panofsky wrote: "Being ambitious, wanting to live on others, as Stephen, a British playwright, said, is keen on' learning how to be depressed', just like people are learning tennis and bridge today. This reached its climax in Shakespeare's Jacques: Jacques used a fashionable and snobbish melancholy mask to cover up the fact that he was a real melancholy. "
There have always been two opposing views in the scientific community. One thinks that melancholy is the passport of genius, and the other thinks that positive and optimistic people are creative. At present, the most accepted view combines the opinions of both sides. Scholars such as Carsten K. W. De Dreu of the University of Amsterdam put forward a "two-channel model": positive emotions improve the speed of brain information processing and stimulate creativity; Negative emotions hinder the flexibility of thinking, thus improving persistence. Ronald S. Friedman of the State University of New York at Albany and others believe that positive emotions can improve the efficiency of entertainment tasks, while negative emotions can help to complete serious tasks.
Friedrich no longer depicts lonely people, but puts loneliness and melancholy in the landscape.
The melancholy image created by Melancholy No.1 has been popular in Europe for three centuries, and has produced many variants and evolutions.
Panofsky specifically wrote: "vasari mythologized it, and Caesar Ripa transformed it into a symbol; Baroque artists such as Quelch, domenico Fitti, Benedicto Geoffrey Castillion and Nikolai Kapson made it full of feelings, and the latter often combined it with the popular perishable fables at that time, trying to satisfy the public's enthusiasm for the ruins; In18th century England, it was made sentimental; Steller and Caspar David Friedrich romanticized it.
Diu Lei himself reinterpreted melancholy in The Four Apostles. He let John, Peter, Paul and Kyle in his works represent four personalities: optimism (sanguine), calmness (clingy), grumpy (yellow bile) and melancholy (black bile).
Wendy Beckett, an art historian, explained: "The melancholy Paul is tall and hidden. He squinted at us suspiciously with a closed gospel in his hand. The wide white robe on his shoulder seems to compensate visually. This highlights his image. It is smooth and strong, and hangs heavily on the ground, with heavy shadows in the folds. Shadow is part of the melancholy theme, but it is extremely noble. "
1803, Caspar David Friedrich, a weak and melancholy young man, drew a self-portrait for himself, in which the man held his head in his right hand, his eyes staring blankly into the distance and his left hand holding a pen. This portrait faithfully imitated Diu Lei's melancholy, but soon, Friedrich, who often travels alone, found his own expression: he stopped depicting lonely people and pinned his loneliness and melancholy on the scenery. One of the most isolated works is the Sea in the Moonlight, which he painted before his death: life is like a boat sailing to unknown depths.
In Cezanne's works, the melancholy posture of holding his head with his hand has appeared several times, such as a smoker, a boy sitting next to his skull and an Italian girl. One of the best boys, wearing a red vest, is like a melancholy Diu Lei.
What color and shape is melancholy?
Melancholy has been running through art history, from Botticelli's Venus to Miles' O 'filia, and the sentimental spirit has never faded. Rembrandt, Vermeer, Turner, Miller, Monet, Renoir, pissarro, Tissot and Zon are all good at beautiful and melancholy works. The wild Picasso had a melancholy period when he moved to Paris in 190 1.
According to vasari's records, when the unusual Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, he "hired some singers and musicians, and always asked clowns to keep her happy and drive away the melancholy that painters usually bring to portraits".
Van Gogh, who failed in life, has been shrouded in melancholy and even hospitalized. He painted more than 150 oil paintings and 100 sketches in the crazy 108 days, full of images like waves and flames, as well as stars and golden wheat fields, which is the most beautiful picture captured by Van Gogh in a gloomy world.
Melancholy and panic are the poison of monk's life and the panacea of art. He even has a work called Melancholy. No one can draw the color and shape of melancholy as accurately as he does, and screaming has almost become the standard image of pain and depression.
Photographer Diane Arbus has been wandering between normal and abnormal all his life. Her photos of the poor, deformed, transgender and mentally retarded are shocking, and her gloomy experience has also led to her depression and suicide.
In the eyes of director Lars von Trier, depression is a huge planet that attacks the earth, and only women with depression can survive in its shadow. In the film Melancholy (20 1 1), he used a lot of works of art: The Hunter in the Snow by old Bruegel, The Death of O 'filia by Myers, David and Portable Goliath by Caravaggio ... The artist is his muse to resist melancholy.
Melancholy genius not only becomes the muse of visual art, but also becomes the muse of poetry and literature. Baudelaire wrote The Melancholy of Paris, and Goethe wrote Young Werther and Faust. In these works, melancholy means a high emotional state.
"If melancholy can leave you, it is not melancholy, but sadness."
Melancholy is an attitude of artists, which is directly related to works. German sinologist Gu Bin said: "Melancholy needs no reason. Melancholy is lifelong. If melancholy can leave you, it is not melancholy, but sadness. "
In China, the art of scars once made melancholy and sentimental mood prevail, and later playful realism broke the lyrical atmosphere with banter.
On the one hand, melancholy, which was originally an artist's characteristic, is reflected in many people today, while material abundance makes people even more unhappy. On the other hand, from Duchamp, melancholy is no longer a badge of pride for artists, but a calm, elegant and playful expression, which has become a new rising treasure. Industrialization and marketization are increasingly entering the field of art, and the crazy and melancholy artist status is no longer popular, but is replaced by a polite and intelligent planner image.
Nevertheless, classical melancholy still exists in contemporary art. He Duoling has the ability to describe the most ordinary woman poetically. Zhang Xiaogang's "Big Family" series also has a strong melancholy atmosphere, with ghostly family photos, implying blood and trauma. Liu Ye regards sadness as the most important thing, because that is the true meaning behind those joys.
However, with the feelings and behaviors of contemporary people becoming more and more personal, the melancholy in art is no longer out of the pursuit of eternal truth of the universe and piety to religion as in Diu Lei's time, but more belongs to the aesthetic category.