The development of makeup research in recent years is behind the efforts of film and television dramas to restore the face of ancient life from a large number of "shocking the world" in the past. Chen Shiyu, the service director of Qing Ping Le and other film and television dramas, is a scholar in costume history and arts and crafts. He studied under Mr. Ji Sun in Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, and was also the history and service consultant of CCTV's National Treasure program. Li Ya, a professor in the Department of Stage Art of Shanghai Theatre Academy, has also written works such as History of Ancient Jewelry in China, Flowing Earrings: Earrings of China in Past Dynasties, and Formula of Ancient Makeup in China.
The Beauty of China's Makeup is a book co-authored by Li Ya and Chen Shiyu, which not only presents a complete picture of China's makeup from the Zhou Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, but also outlines the social and ideological features and aesthetic changes behind it. "The powerful power, the bondage of morality, the different tastes of elite culture and market culture have left a deep impression on women's makeup in different times." Zhu Liangzhi, a professor of philosophy at Peking University, pointed out in the preface.
"I have studied makeup for thousands of years and found that human nature remains unchanged in ancient and modern times. Pursuing beauty and fashion trends is the nature of people of all ages, but the forms of expression are different, and sometimes it will be more obvious and more inclusive. " Li Ya said.
What is "fish flattery"?
Li Ya really entered the field of decoration research and found it difficult. First of all, without first-hand cultural relics, makeup must be attached to the human body, and once the human body rots, makeup will be gone. Therefore, compared with other material and cultural studies, makeup lacks first-hand material data and can only be studied through other channels. Auxiliary research approaches include literature scattered in history books, note novels, poems and songs, and image research including ancient figure painting and figure sculpture.
However, whether it is written records or portrait records, it is either "only knowing its name but not its shape" or "only knowing its shape but not its name". In addition, after thousands of years of polishing, many important information has faded, peeled off or lost. As researchers, we need to collect all the information, and then find a reasonable correspondence between "shape" and "name" in order to restore the historical face of makeup to the greatest extent.
Li Ya and Chen Shiyu restored the popular makeup "caviar charm" that appeared in the Song Dynasty. There was only a brief record of this kind of makeup in Song history, but at first they were completely confused about what "bone in the cheeks" meant. Later, when I was studying the female crown in the Song Dynasty, I came across a kind of "pearl crown" which was made of a hard fish stone from the head of a herring. After grinding, polishing and oil immersion, it becomes a translucent gem similar to agate, which is used as a crown decoration. Only then did they understand that the so-called "roe charm" was made by sticking this gem on black paper, thus solving this "small historical mystery".
The Beauty of China's Makeup also shows 29 groups of restored images of real makeup. When ancient makeup appeared on modern people's faces, the historical gap was broken. In recent two or three years, Li Ya has devoted a lot of energy to the restoration of ancient makeup through research. She said that this was an exercise after she completed the correspondence between "shape" and "name". "This is an uncontrollable desire. I really want to know what these ancient portraits and sculptures look like after being restored by real people."
The transformation of abstract words into concrete images requires secondary creation, which inevitably has subjective elements. Every scholar will do something according to his own research, which is also a great test for his textual research ability and aesthetic grasp ability. "We must ensure that the restored costumes conform to the temperament of that era at first sight."
Women's position behind makeup
For ancient makeup, a sentence in the Warring States Policy is very classic, "A scholar dies for a confidant, and a woman is pleasing to herself." In fact, Li Ya found that ancient women's makeup was not as simple as women pleasing people.
Han Dynasty is the formation period of ancient cosmetic aesthetic standards, and has since laid an elegant feature. At the same time, Confucianism also established the absolute dependence of women on men, and put forward the theories of "three cardinal guides and five permanents" and "respecting yang over yin" In particular, the Women's Commandments written by Ban Zhao in the Eastern Han Dynasty emphasized women's obedience, inferiority and obedience, and "standardized" women in China for more than two thousand years. The ideas of these times have influenced women's makeup. Since the Han Dynasty, the makeup style has gradually become humble and feminine, and even some morbid makeup has begun to appear.
Sun Shou was the wife of Liang Ji, Minister of the Eastern Han Dynasty. The Book of the Later Han Dynasty recorded that she was "beautiful in color" and liked to "frown and make up". The so-called "frown" is similar to a figure-of-eight eyebrow, hanging downward, and "crow makeup" means that there seem to be two tears hanging under the eyes. When Sun Shou walks with a hunchback, he bows his back and looks ill. When he smiles, he has a "decayed tooth smile" and his cheeks are bulging like toothache. History books say this kind of makeup is "charming", but it once became the most popular fashion makeup in Beijing. "Women are weak and beautiful" is the most important point in Women's Commandment, which emphasizes that women should be weak, not only because they are soft and docile inside, but also because they are weak and weak in appearance, which is why morbid makeup is popular. " Li Ya explained.
However, when the status of women in the whole society begins to rise, the traditional aesthetics will also be broken. The makeup in the Tang Dynasty is the most complicated and gorgeous in history, and the makeup carrier is also very rich. Especially during the reign of Wu Zetian, gorgeous makeup reached its peak. A number of painted figurines of Tang Dynasty in Wu Zetian period were unearthed in Astana, Xinjiang. The face of the buried female figurines was swept away by thick eyebrows, and the blushing area of rouge extended from under the eyebrows to the side of the face. In addition to the simple fan shape, the flower shape of the forehead is also smudged with complex patterns such as flowers, rolling grass and rolling clouds. The oblique blush on both sides of cheeks is not a simple blush, but a complex pattern. Ordinary maids in remote areas are like this, which shows how charming the makeup of upper-class women in Luoyang, Chang 'an was at that time.
After Wu Zetian abdicated, Princess Taiping and Queen Wei were still active in the power center, and the gorgeous makeup style of Wu Zhou continued until the early years of Emperor Xuanzong's succession. After the appearance of Yang Guifei, the popular fashion in the Tang Dynasty turned into plump beauty, loose clothes and big red makeup, and finally became an impressive symbol of "prosperous Tang Dynasty". "So the development of makeup is inseparable from the strength and self-confidence of women."
Make-up and troubled times
Some changes in social thought can also be seen from makeup. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the great plague, coupled with years of war, caused a large number of deaths. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the idea of "samsara and karma" spread with Buddhism, and Buddhism was also designated as the state religion in the Northern Wei and Southern Liang Dynasties. In addition to literature, music, sculpture and other fields, Buddhism also influenced the makeup at that time, and yellow eyebrow ink makeup began to appear. When Princess Shouyang, Emperor Wu of the Southern Song Dynasty, got married, she painted a "figure-eight palace eyebrow with a yellow forehead", that is, her eyebrows were shaped like a figure-eight, and her forehead was painted with yellow makeup powder, which was called "yellow forehead". This is because the Buddha is the face of the golden Buddha. With the spread of Buddhism to the east, all kinds of forehead yellow, flower yellow and Buddha makeup became popular, all of which were painted yellow on women's faces.
After the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang Dynasty declined. In the middle Tang Dynasty, there was a trend of pursuing weird makeup, and Bai Juyi also wrote a poem "Contemporary Makeup". According to the poem, at that time, it was popular for women to draw eight-character eyebrows, with black lips and no lipstick, and with ochre powder on their faces and no cinnabar rouge. The makeup with ochre powder on the face is a kind of makeup from Tibet, which came with the two invasions of Chang 'an by Tibetan troops after the Anshi Rebellion. The ultraviolet radiation on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is very severe, and the local people's faces are easily infected with plateau red, so a brown whey is extracted from yak milk and applied to the face as a mask, forming the effect of ochre makeup, which has been popular in Chang 'an so far. Bai Juyi believes that this kind of "black face" makeup does not conform to the traditional makeup aesthetics of the Han nationality, and it looks "like crying" and "a phase in troubled times".
"The world trend, the peak will decline, the full moon will be lost. All history can't escape this trend, and the history of makeup is no exception. After the explosive development in Wei and Jin Dynasties, and then to the peak of the Tang Dynasty, and finally to the late Tang Dynasty, it was already a colorful and extravagant state. In the Song Dynasty, makeup came to a 180 degree turning point, from colorful to simple and simple. Moreover, after the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, it has not changed much. " Chen Shiyu wrote in China's Beauty of Makeup.