I watched it intermittently for two months, especially in the middle part, but my attention was almost exhausted. After reading it (and it's really thick), I entered more than 30 chapters in the review book. Personally, I think the preface and introduction and the last 24-28 chapters are the most wonderful and the best.
In this book, there is no scary academic vocabulary, no condescending writing attitude as an expert and scholar, but plain, humorous and humble language.
Just like a "teacher Gong" who takes you into the museum, he slowly points to the "engagement style of Arnold Fini" on the wall and tells you how the author changed the egg liquid into oil in this painting, which not only makes the colors transform each other, but also gets a soft transition effect.
Moreover, the brush stained with pigment can highlight the shining light on the picture, which greatly enriches the details of the picture.
Gombrich revised this book many times with the idea of popularizing science for "art". In the book, he also answered many questions that most people will bring when they come into contact with art or walk into art galleries today.
What did we see at the art museum?
On the Taste of "Beauty"
People always have a habit that nature should always be the same as the picture we are used to. When we are faced with familiar subjects, the painter's "painting in an unexpected way" ... is often criticized. Today, before we stepped into the art museum, we believe that everyone has a set of ideas about "beauty", and our ideas about "beauty" have been shaped by our cultural context.
When there is no theoretical text to tell us the use and significance of some primitive works of art, we will feel that an Inuit dance mask will be a little funny, children may feel funny, and adults may experience the surprise and freshness brought by this cross-cultural viewing. But when we know that what it expresses is a hideous and cannibal Shan Gui, we may find this work of art with some kind of "mysterious smile" really creepy. But in the eyes of Inuit people at that time, it had some sacred and serious significance, representing their connection with gods and nature. Therefore, when we don't know a work of art, it is difficult to define whether it brings us aesthetic pleasure or fear of sacredness, or some kind of consumption carnival. The "preconceived" aesthetic taste has created a gap between us and them.
Today, our concept of "beauty" may have been traditional and grand in the past, and it was described at the national or ethnic level. Today, as Eco said in The History of Beauty, it is provided by the "commercial consumption world" and is "imitated", broken and personalized. It is difficult for me to describe its specific form completely here, but there is an interesting personal example. A college student studying interior design recently showed me his latest hot works. In a series of home improvement design renderings, many elements about people's home improvement design today are summarized. Their key words are: imitation marble, goblet, baroque style and minimalism. Perhaps all this, I think as early as Bourdieu's book, has already explained that people's interests come from their own class.
There has never been art, only artists.
On the one hand, today we see many famous painters. Most of history has served religious beliefs. Most of their paintings are based on the contents of the Bible, such as Da Vinci's The Last Supper, Genesis and Noah's Story depicted by Michelangelo in the ceiling painting of the Sistine Chapel.
On the other hand, they also serve the "leisure price class". After mastering a large amount of wealth capital, these lords and nobles living in castles and great maritime traders showed their glory and social status by acquiring artistic and cultural capital.
At this time, painters are more craftsmen than artists. After the emergence of private property, "people who can only paint" have money and are no longer attached to the princes and nobles at that time.
Since Impressionism started modern art and Duchamp moved out of the famous urinal, the occupation of artists in people's minds began to become mysterious. Art seems to be beginning to become irrelevant to society and the public, and "art for art's sake". In this regard, Yang Xiaoyan pointed out in "The fundamental value of artists lies in refusing to be co-conspirators" that "artists, as a social image, are always associated with contemporary consumption symbols such as elegance, otherness, nobility, enjoyment and pioneer". Art consumption has thus become a special fashion and has been encouraged. You know, while the public is consuming art, art is also consuming the reputation it creates. As a result, artistic creation has become a closed competition field, and everyone is striving for a "uniqueness" that can be linked to price and reputation. Actually, it's true. Once art becomes a circle movement, once art can be profitable, why should artists care about society so unrealistically? What does it have to do with society? "
What is art?
"Although I understand that any attempt to discuss art can't pass the logical test, I insist that the fundamental mistake of regarding artists as craftsmen and art as tools is to recognize the independence and self-sufficiency of art and deny that art can become an emotional state and way of thinking of people."
Yang Xiaoyan
Speaking of art, today it has been linked with all symbolic consumption of "taste" and "elegance" and has become a part of the "cultural capital" that people yearn for.
I used to think that "art" refers to the classical oil paintings of the Louvre and the famous "masters" in history. It is a history about western painting. Judging from all kinds of theories and viewpoints about the writing of art history books today, there is even a prejudice to overlook the world art history with "the west" as the mainstay. But in the book, Gombrich at least answered my first question about "there has never been art, only artists".
Max Weber, an American sociologist, said that man is an animal hanging on his own meaning network. And everything still returns to ourselves as human beings. Since prehistoric humans left that "handprint" in Chevy Cave in the south of France, art originated from spiritual belief, which was the spiritual sustenance established by early "us" humans in the face of cruel nature. As Hurali said, it has become a part of the imaginary community we have built and continues to today's modern society. From the agricultural revolution
From "surplus grain" supporting art to the liberation of productive forces in the industrial revolution, "art" has become a different form of "culture" and a tool for rulers, elites and their people to establish an imaginary order. ..
Similarly, it can't be completely interpreted from the perspective of "artistic instrumentalism". From the human level, art, as one of the "languages" we express, of course has its own "independence", which is a rope left by us to escape from the closed moment of darkness when we hold certain beliefs and express the pain in the dark.
To annotate ...
(1) Gombrich, translated by Fan Jingzhong, The Story of Art, Guangxi Fine Arts Publishing House, 2008,240 pages.
(2) Gombrich, translated by Fan Jingzhong, The Story of Art, Guangxi Fine Arts Publishing House, 2008, 50 pages.
(3) umberto-Eco, translated by Peng Huaidong, The History of Beauty, Central Compilation and Publishing House, 2007.
④ Yachang column, "Yang Xiaoyan: The fundamental value of an artist lies in his refusal to be an accomplice", 2018165438+10/3, website:/2018/kloc-0.
⑤ Yachang column, "Yang Xiaoyan: The fundamental value of an artist lies in his refusal to be an accomplice", 2018165438+10/3, website:/2018/kloc-0.
⑥ yuval-Herali, translated by Junhong Lin, A Brief History of Mankind-From Animals to God, CITIC Publishing House, 20 14 1, 8 1.