Chao News client reporter Li Wei.
In the Forbidden City, there are countless dragons. Which dragon is the most unmissable?
The dragon on the throne of Qianlong.
The Qianlong throne is located in the Imperial Palace Hall in Beijing.
Two hundred years ago, a group of Dongyang woodcarving craftsmen entered Beijing and created a majestic dragon chair for Qianlong, which became a glorious page in the history of Dongyang woodcarving.
Two hundred years later, Huang Xiaoming, the national representative inheritor of Dongyang wood carving, copied the dragon chair of the year with a carving knife in his hand, and the Huangji Hall finally ushered in a sense of familiarity that seemed to be an old man.
Since the beginning of the dragon chair, Huang Xiaoming and the dragon have formed a karma, and the relief "Nine Dragons" is extremely magnificent, and it is a peaceful and ruined dragon; A set of "Shenlong Face" is rooted in folk culture and is a friendly and festive dragon; The dragon cabinet plays with surrealism, and it will be frightening ......
Huang Xiaoming. Although these works have very different styles, they are not difficult to understand when placed together with Huang Xiaoming's name. As the youngest master of Chinese arts and crafts in the woodcarving industry, the most pioneering and innovative representative, he is known as the "golden finger" of the industry, and has won nearly 100 awards, and is also the master with the most patents in the Chinese woodcarving industry.
How did he, in a moment of chisel, make the dragon glow with a very powerful aura?
The original Qianlong throne in the Imperial Palace of the Forbidden City is in the Shenyang Forbidden City, which was sent over in the 60s of the last century and has been left there.
In 2005, after Huang Xiaoming won the bid for the replication project of the dragon chair, he went to the Shenyang Forbidden City for many field visits.
The throne is divided into a platform, a dragon chair, and a screen, and a total of nearly 1,000 dragons are carved. The most difficult is the backrest and armrests of the dragon chair, this circle is coiled with 13 dragons, taking off, circling, staggering, there are few support points, and the difficulty of hollowing is high. And this is copying, which requires every detail to match. When drawing and measuring, even the thickness of the pattern, the distance between the dragon's head, etc., each part is carefully measured, and photos are taken from all angles.
In the carving, Huang Xiaoming encountered a new problem, the current Dongyang carving technique is completely different from more than 200 years ago, and the dragon more than 200 years ago is more rough in the carving style. As soon as Huang Xiaoming found that there was a difference in style, he abandoned it all and started over, and there were a large number of discarded products in the warehouse.
In 2007, the engraving was completed, transported to Beijing, and the installation was completed in July. In the past two years, experts from the Palace Museum have traveled countless times, and in the end they are very satisfied with the finished product, which is praised as "achieving the effect of exquisite and intriguing appreciation and appreciation, and it is a landmark masterpiece in the history of Dongyang wood carving." ”
Recalling that year, Huang Xiaoming said that at that time, they checked countless materials and asked countless questions from experts. For example, why is the royal dragon's brain gate so large? The answer is that the royal family combines majesty and wisdom, so the dragon head that symbolizes the royal family should be particularly full.
A dragon sitting in the middle of the back of the dragon chair.
The most conspicuous thing on the dragon chair is the dragon head in the middle of the back of the chair, and this dragon alone is standing tall on the top of the back of the chair, and the appearance of dominating the world is extremely majestic. However, the body of this dragon is coiled with two dragons, one on the left and one on the right, and it is impossible to see how they are intertwined from one angle.
The three dragons were carved out of a single piece of wood. How each dragon coils, where the legs stretch, and where the dragon's claws fall, our carving knives must clearly explain these things. Huang Xiaoming said, don't look at the circumference of the back of the chair + backrest is only more than two meters, and the 13 dragons coiled on it, if they can be shaken off, the length is also more than two meters.
I learned a lot from the copying process of the Qianlong throne, picked up a lot of excellent skills and techniques handed down by our ancestors, and also learned some carving techniques and expressions of the royal dragon. Huang Xiaoming said that he thinks this work is a milestone work for him and Dongyang wood carving.
In April 2010, at the "Cultural Fair" in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province held by the Ministry of Culture, the Dongyang wood carving "Nine Dragons" creatively designed by Song Haolin, a professor of the China Academy of Art, and carved and co-created by Huang Xiaoming, a master of arts and crafts and a senior arts and crafts artist, won the national gold medal.
Relief "Nine Dragons".
The "Nine Dragons" diagram is completely different from the Nine Dragons Wall in our impression, these nine dragons are like nine living gods churning between the sky and the sea, free at will.
Huang Xiaoming said that this is based on Professor Song Haolin's Chinese painting "Nine Dragons" and then processed and carved, using multi-level fine carving, and making full use of the rules of plastic art form: fine, strong and weak, size, virtual and real, high and low (shade) contrast, rich in rhythm and rhythm beauty.
Kowloon Map" partial.
Kowloon Map" partial.
Look closely, some dragon's head shape is a longevity peach, some dragons are like rolled chrysanthemum petals, some dragon scales are like corn and like rice ears, a bumper harvest implication, and some dragons are draped in copper coin-shaped dragon scales, attracting wealth and treasure.
Interestingly, these nine dragons also formed their own CP, three dragons playing in the water, two dragons playing fire, and two dragons climbing cloud mountain ......The five-meter-long picture of Kowloon can make people look at it again and again, and read a lot of artistic conception and interesting details.
In addition to depicting the charm of the dragon, he also put a lot of effort into the "dragon" to reflect the magnificent and majestic momentum of the clouds, flowing gracefully, and the air veins penetrating.
Kowloon Map" partial.
Kowloon Map" partial.
The cooperation between Huang Xiaoming and Professor Song Haolin also has a classic series "Dragon Face".
The dragon painted by Mr. Song is very representative, which is the result of his research on the image creation of dragons for more than 5,000 years. If you look at the dragon face he painted, a pair of dragon eyes are two heads, and the lower part of the dragon face can be decomposed into two dragons, and four dragons can be combined into two dragons. ”
The image of the Song Shenlong mask draws on the origin and artistic characteristics of Chinese Peking Opera, Sichuan Opera, and Shaanxi Shehuo Mask. However, unlike the way the theatrical face mask highlights the character traits of the characters, the idea of the dragon face mask is to change the image of the dragon's head in China for thousands of years.
Huang Xiaoming changed Professor Song's Chinese painting into a line drawing and then created it, emphasizing that the dragon face mask is an abstract art image entity.
People have to wear makeup and dress up, and the dragon's head must also be exaggerated and deformed. Huang Xiaoming feels that people's "intellectual thinking" and "whimsy" are refined and sublimated, and various artistic images are created by exaggerated and deformed artistic means, "The dragon's face can also be very exaggerated, but we feel fresh, cordial and comfortable when we see it." ”
Nine Dragons Playing Pearls Screen Material: Basswood, Pear Specifications: 105x76x17cm
The dragon under Huang Xiaoming's knife is becoming more and more unreasonable.
He felt that although the dragon was a symbol of the Chinese and a totem of the Chinese ancestors, it was originally a combination of various animal images from the invisible to the tangible, and it was a virtual object that did not exist in the biological world.
Therefore, since ancient times, the artistic image of the dragon has not been fixed, but has been created and developed in the void space. He said.
The front of the dragon cabinet. In the exhibition hall of Huang Xiaoming's works, there is a dragon cabinet, just listening to the name, you will think that it is a cabinet, decorated with dragon patterns in the form of reliefs. But when I walked to this cabinet, I felt that this cabinet had a dormant sense of power, and when the double-sided cabinet door opened, the nine dragon statues inside were unsealed, and they were about to penetrate the cabinet, break out of the barrier, and make a big fuss in another world.
The dragon cabinet after opening the cabinet door.
This is a kind of exploration by Huang Xiaoming, who said that unlike his previous works, this dragon cabinet is an installation art, which is to make it traditional and avant-garde.
When asked again where the inspiration came from, he said that the prototype of this cabinet was Shi Jin, the nine-patterned dragon in the One Hundred and Eight Generals of the Water Margin.
I wanted to extract the character of the story, and transfer his mind to another object. Huang Xiaoming said, so these nine dragons carved are completely different from the previous works, very uninhibited, and there is a kind of recklessness.
Everyone has a different dragon in their hearts. Huang Xiaoming said, I want to make my dragons more modern, more contemporary, and more innovative.
Behind the Dragon Cabinet.
*Provided by the interviewee.
For more dragon chatter, click to extract
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