A work of art should have a unique artistic taste. All excellent works of art are the harmonious unity of form and content. The innovation of works of art means that artists shape artistic images through visual artistic language and concrete materials, express certain thoughts and feelings, and thus reflect people's mental outlook and social life.
(A) the history of artistic development is the history of artistic innovation. Schiller once said, "Oh, man! Only you have art! " This can be understood as affirming this unique quality of human beings from the perspective of artistic genesis. Goethe said: "It is nonsense to say that people have the essence of' beauty'. Human instinct is' creation'. " Looking at the history of art development, we can easily draw a conclusion that the history of art development is the history of artistic innovation. Once tradition becomes the shackles of innovative spirit, sooner or later, someone will hold high the banner of creation. During the European Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci and other masters dared to resist religious theology, oppose ideological imprisonment and the shackles of the church, affirmed people's social role, advocated science and rationality, boldly innovated in art, created art by scientific methods, and personified "God". Because of their attempts, western painting has entered a new stage. During the French bourgeois revolution, neoclassicism, romanticism and realism were born. At the beginning, they all appeared as innovators, which brought dawn to European painting, but when they no longer met the needs of social development, they were finally replaced by Impressionism. Today, it seems that all outstanding works that occupy a place in the long history of art are branded as "creation and innovation".
(2) The tradition of fine arts is not imitation and obedience, but suspicion, challenge and rebellion. In recent years, because the "tradition" and "anti-tradition" of domestic art circles have their own endings, an unprecedented century debate has been triggered in the theoretical circle. In fact, the original intention of "anti-tradition" is to doubt and inherit traditional ideas, and "tradition" is to "reject" and "absorb anti-tradition". Imagine, how can you create something new without learning tradition? Hong Ren wins with elegance with ethereal pen; Kun can's pen and ink are calm and win with alcohol; Badashan people use simple pens to win with charm; Shi Tao's brushwork is bold and unrestrained, and he wins with boldness. When the painting world tends to be retro, "Everyone has been crazy for a long time" appeared. They stood out, broke the loneliness of the painting world at that time and showed it to the world with a unique painting style, which is extremely unusual in the history of painting. They are not only the positive inheritors of the old tradition, but also the most rebellious challengers of the tradition. Positive inheritance is for rebellion and challenge, and the result of rebellion and challenge is new creation. Art always develops in the process of dialectical unity of artistic creation and inheritance. Constantly innovating and changing art is an eternal theme.
Second, innovation and change are the eternal themes of artistic development.
Art is essentially creation and innovation, and artistic innovation is the source of art's life. This is the first important proposition that we should contact in the essence of art. Artistic creation is the source of life of all works of art, and all artistic observation methods and expression methods come from predecessors' summaries. Creation is to inherit and learn from the excellent culture of predecessors, and at the same time, prepare for digestion and strive to achieve mastery. The conception and shaping of artists can not be separated from creative imagination. Creativity or so-called originality, which artists often emphasize, is actually the driving force for the development of art.
(A) the emergence of new technologies and new materials is an indispensable prerequisite for artistic innovation. Although Chinese painting has accumulated rich traditional experience for thousands of years, it contains many insights that can reflect the laws of subjective and objective world activities or reveal the mysteries of painting. However, if we stick to the tradition and stick to the old form without seeking development, it will be extremely unfavorable to the development of art, just as we stick to the nihilistic attitude towards tradition without inheriting and learning from it. Nowadays, the debate about "pen and ink" between painters, especially between Mr. Zhang Ding and Mr. Wu Guanzhong, has set off a big discussion in the art world. It is precisely because of the academic debate of predecessors that the types of modern art are diversified, thus breaking the insurmountable myth of "masters" and proving that artistic innovation is the inheritance and development of tradition. Mr. Liu, a painter from Taiwan Province Province, boldly innovated materials, initiated the application of new materials in Chinese painting, and opened up new ideas for the innovation of modern painters. The emergence of new technologies and new materials is an indispensable prerequisite for creating more expressive, contemporary and artistic works. The emergence of new technologies and new materials will inevitably conform to and act on contemporary plastic arts concepts and aesthetic tastes. It is precisely because of the interdependence and mutual promotion between new technologies and new materials that the progress and development of various fine arts are constantly promoted.
(2) Foreign teachers' nature and learning from others provide a solid foundation for artists' creation. Before the beauty of reality is transformed into natural beauty, it must be melted and recreated by the subjective feelings of artistic creators. What is important in artistic creation is not only skillful brushwork and modeling skills, but also a thorough understanding of painting theory. What's more important is to keep walking into life and recording life, that is, we often hear "reading thousands of books and taking Wan Li Road" and "Yunshan is my teacher everywhere". As early as 65,438+0,000 years ago, Zhang Yun, a painter in the Tang Dynasty, told us in Notes on Famous Paintings of Past Dynasties that artists must learn from nature, purify their souls and enrich their education. Mr. Huang, a master of modern landscape painting, emphasized the importance of going deep into nature in the process of landscape painting creation: first, climbing mountains and wading-contacting nature and conducting a comprehensive observation experience; Second, if you don't look at it-if you look closely, you will not only be friends with mountains and rivers, but also worship mountains and rivers as teachers, and you can't bear to be separated from them. Pan Tianshou also expounded the development and improvement of painting art in "Listening to Tian Ge's Painting Essays", which is inseparable from the in-depth study of the subjective and objective world. It can be seen that if artistic creation leaves life, it will look pale and powerless, unable to infect the audience and not recognized by society.
(1) Tradition and nature, inheritance and innovation are the eternal foundation of artistic innovation. In the Preface to Huashan in the Ming Dynasty, Wang Lu said: "My heart is the teacher, my heart is the purpose, and my eyes are the purpose." This is what Wang Lu said when answering the conservative accusation that the reformists have nothing to learn from. "I learn from my heart, my heart from my eyes, and my eyes from Huashan" emphasizes taking nature as my teacher and profoundly expounds the relationship between learning from nature and learning from ancient law. In the process of artistic thinking, in order to find an unconventional picture and capture an ideal aesthetic image, we often think hard or search hard but can't get it. At this time, nature is the teacher and ancient law is the teacher. Only by learning from nature and ancient methods can artistic creation realize aesthetic creation. No matter how art is created and innovated, it is inseparable from an eternal foundation-tradition and nature, inheritance and innovation. Without colorful and vivid nature and previous artistic achievements, there can be no artistic creation. Generally speaking, art can be divided into two categories: one is pure art, that is, a purely appreciative art, such as oil painting, Chinese painting, printmaking and so on. ; Another art has a different name. From its basic nature, it is opposite to pure art, so it can be called impure art, which is practical and related to human life.
Existing professional titles include: practical art, applied art, arts and crafts, industrial design, etc. The uncertainty of impure art is related to its historical development, especially its usability different from pure appreciation art. With the improvement of social productivity, new material forms are constantly updated, and the corresponding production methods and lifestyles are also constantly updated. Therefore, impure art will inevitably change with the times. Therefore, we must understand the essence and development law of impure art from its historical development.
From the natural point of view, the change and replacement of the material world has experienced four natural forms, which are completely consistent with the stages and characteristics of the replacement of human production methods and lifestyles. The first natural form: it is embodied in the unity of heaven and man, and human beings think that they are subject to some creature in the outside world, which leads to the emergence of totem; The second natural form: with the established subjective experience, people begin to realize the difference between themselves and the natural animal kingdom, and people begin to break away from nature and have aesthetic behaviors different from animals; The third natural form: it begins to take the object as a reference to improve the subject's understanding, and has the ability to independently use factors conducive to its own development to "calculate", which is of enlightenment significance; The fourth natural form: the understanding of the object is becoming more and more perfect, returning to the problem of itself-and then returning to nature, so that the subject can show the spiritual activity of the pure subject under the action of the object and truly become the subject with knowledge and wisdom. These four natural forms can be summarized as follows: the unity of man and nature; The separation between man and nature; Separation of people and things; Separation of man and subject. Obviously, human culture originated from the junction of the first natural form and the second natural form, that is, the end of the Paleolithic period and the beginning of the Neolithic period in the fishing and hunting society, because during this period, human beings began to have pure spiritual production independent of material production.
Every new form of impure art is a revision and perfection of the previous one. For example, the humanistic characteristics of arts and crafts are formed by correcting the roughness and imperfection of handicrafts; The emphasis on rationality and scientific argumentation in industrial design is also formed by correcting the extreme development of "beautification" of arts and crafts. This change can be considered as quantitative change or qualitative change. The conclusion of quantitative change is based on the perspective of non-pure art category, while the conclusion of qualitative change is based on the essential differences between various forms. In the transformation, the latter form shows its own characteristics by modifying the former form. Without the humanistic pursuit of arts and crafts sensibility, it is impossible to sublimate handicrafts into spiritual and cultural activities; Similarly, without industrial design based on material renewal in systematic humanity, arts and crafts can not abandon the concept of "whitewashing and beautifying" and become a spiritual culture that truly guides creative activities. This interdependent, mutually complementary and mutually sublating development is exactly the mode of constant balance and perfect development of human culture-towards the direction of the superposition of the highest sensibility and the highest rationality.
In the development of non-pure art, after the form at any stage becomes the dominant form, it does not exclude the original form, but takes it as a means to adjust the interesting style of the new form. The characteristics of arts and crafts emphasize humanistic spirit and artistic expression, and still regard handicrafts as a means to achieve this goal; The rational and functional characteristics of industrial design may not make arts and crafts withdraw from the historical stage. In some industrial design links, such as large machine production test, sample making, mold opening and so on. , or through handicrafts. Therefore, at the same level, there will be many modes of production and many benefits: arts and crafts are mainly produced by hand, supplemented by machine production; Industrial design focuses on machine production, supplemented by manual production; Then industrial design is mainly based on information industry, supplemented by machine production.
As far as non-pure art forms are concerned, China is in the stage of industrial design. Arts and crafts will still coexist with industrial design as a new adjustment means. Many people understand industrial design as the modernization of arts and crafts, and the production department often classifies industrial design into the category of arts and crafts. This will probably lead to the establishment of narrow values and national psychology in agricultural society to measure the value of industrial design, nationalize science and culture and form the ideal of small-scale production. The narrow values of arts and crafts in agricultural society are generalized, which mainly comes from the illusion of culture. Since the concept of cultural history originated from the spiritual production of human beings independent of material production, people mistakenly believe that the development and evolution of human beings are entirely driven by the independent development of spiritual ideology that distinguishes human beings from animals. Culture is defined as a part of spiritual philosophy divorced from animal attributes.
The essence of culture is to introduce his external things into his own development. In today's world, cultural development is no longer understood as an individual and unique artistic replacement process, but a comprehensive process involving all fields of life and environment. Therefore, the expansion of culture from narrow sense to broad sense is inevitable. Arts and crafts are the product of an era, and only represent the style form of that era with impure art forms.
From the perspective of cultural anthropology, the constantly updated production mode and lifestyle structure established by human beings at any stage reflects that human beings have a kind of self-adjustment and perfection ability, which enables human beings to always develop in the direction of benefiting the group and choose necessary behaviors to ensure the effectiveness of this adjustment, which is the fundamental motivation for the expansion of cultural universality. From this perspective, the value of culture is different from the value of aesthetics. It does not pursue the absolute beauty of individual ideal, but the beauty of ethical purpose with perfect group system and a kind of "relative beauty". Therefore, the value of beauty is based on the value of culture, or the two should never be separated. This is the law of the development of human culture and the law of the development of impure art history.
The censure of arts and crafts based on China traditional culture is the inevitable development of social history and human cultural laws, and the result of the vertical movement of its internal structure. The new mode of production needs to adapt to the new way of life, and new culture can lead to the establishment of new civilization. Therefore, the conflicts between humanistic culture and scientific culture, between humanity and material way, between sensibility and rationality, between beautification and design, between modernity and post-modernism, between technology and high technology, between individuality and rationality and irrationality, which are manifested in the development of non-pure art history, are all paradoxical conflicts in the development of human culture and an inevitable process of cultural development.
To sum up, the historical development of impure art is influenced by the changes of production mode and lifestyle. Throughout the creative activities since the concept of culture, they all have a common feature, that is, design. Obviously, both arts and crafts and industrial design have to go through a process from conception to production completion, which is the design process. In fact, since human beings began to engage in creative activities, the characteristics of design have been included, but the replacement of production methods has had a great impact on creative means and drowned the characteristics of design. For example, arts and crafts are influenced by traditional handicrafts and pure art, and industrial design is influenced by the production of large industrial machines. From the beginning, design was realized in these constantly updated production methods, so every step of it was branded with production methods. But what is certain is that the more impure art develops to an advanced stage, the less influence the mode of production has on it. Therefore, the post-industrial design era will be a more "perceptual" and "rational" design era.