If you ask what best reflects people's taste and cultivation, I am afraid it is art; If you ask what is the most scarce consumption of modern people, I am afraid it is art; If you ask what modern people want to improve the most, but what is the most difficult to get started, I am afraid it is still art.
The root cause of all this lies in the extreme lack of popularization of artistic knowledge in our school education and daily reading. There are at least four of the most common misconceptions about art.
1. ArticalValue is in the sensibility, not in the rationality
In order to convince people to love art, many people give various utilitarian interpretations of the "value of artworks": collection value, expression ability, and improvement of wisdom ......Even useless words are useless empty words. But in fact, this is the biggest misunderstanding of art, and it is also the biggest blasphemy against art.
Our daily life is highly rational and utilitarian, and we fall into the shackles of instrumental rationality every day and cannot escape: in the face of fierce competition, is it involution or lying flat? When faced with high-calorie food, do you take care of your health or indulge yourself? Even when you go out to travel, you have to always struggle between "cost-effective" and "fun".
The true value of art lies in the fact that it creates a new, non-utilitarian sensual world that transcends the mundane.
When we appreciate art, we rely on perceptual intuition, rather than rational speculation. At this time, people can let go of desires, guards, and calculations of interests, and selflessly empathize with a certain thing, and become one with the idea behind that thing. This is something that is rarely experienced in everyday life. So Kant arguedThe most important opportunity for aesthetics is "pleasure without interest".
Whether it's a majestic mountain, a gentle river, or a heart-warming little painting, it can bring people beautiful enjoyment, and you won't want to take it for yourself, and you don't have to worry about any conspiracy behind it.
The book Art: Making People Human agreesOnly art can make us abandon the rational "Sun God Spirit" and grasp the sensual "Dionysian Spirit", so that we can become a complete and infinite person.
2. The charm of artin the form, not in the thought
Another common misconception about art is that great works of art must imply some kind of subtle meaning, insight, or "ideological value".
But actually,A great work of art is always a breakthrough in form, not in thought. Du Fu's poems, Michelangelo's sculptures, Van Gogh's paintings, and Mei Lanfang's Peking Opera have become great arts that have been famous for thousands of years because of breakthroughs in forms of expression, rather than some unfathomable "thoughts".
A good work of art should appeal to people's perceptual thinking, so that it can move people with emotion and scenery, form an artistic illusion, and let readers fall into it and cannot extricate themselves; If we appeal to people's rational thinking and "convince people with reason", no matter how profound the truth is and how meticulous the analysis and argumentation are, at most it can only arouse the reader's thinking, but it will not form an artistic illusion, let alone bring people into it. So Kant saidThe second important opportunity of aesthetics is that it is "universal without concept".
True beauty cannot be defined by concepts, but by generalizationsIt is knowledge that is prescribed by reading. Because the universal perception of beauty is common to human beings, the concept of knowledge may even become an obstacle to aesthetics. The painter Huang Yongyu said that many people are not illiterate, but they are beautifully illiterate. The aesthetics of a rural woman can go beyond that of a university professor.
3. The standard of artIt is objective, not subjective
The third common misconception about art is that art has no standards and is subjective, and that "there are a thousand Hamlets for a thousand readers".
Stills from Hamlet.
This understanding has led to two deformed extremes in the appreciation of literature and art: one is to use mysterious words to comment on art, such as "Tao", "vividness", and "beauty is the transcendental manifestation of morality", and the more the explanation of the result, the more complex it is;
One is to abandon the explanation outright. For example, why a work of art is good, because "I think it is good", or "I understand it, but I can't say it". In order to have something to say, "art criticism" has been reduced to an encyclopedia entry for the background of the times and the lives of people. In fact, like good and evil, right and wrong, there are objective criteria for beauty and ugliness, although it is difficult to grasp. There are a thousand Hamlets for every thousand readers, but not every opinion is worth paying attention to.
As the esthetician Zhu Guangqian said: ".If you don't decideIf you decide what is beautiful, you will have no reason to say that this painting is more beautiful than that painting; If you don't understand the essence of art, you have no reason to say that this work is art and that work is not art. Of course, there are many people in the world who criticize literature and art without studying aesthetics, but this is like a sailor talking about astronomy and medicine, all based on sloppy experience and without a rigorous and systematic academic basis. Gross experience cannot be ignored, but it is not enough, and sometimes it is misguided. ”
In the book "The Joy of Art", the author also repeatedly emphasizes that art must have standards. Even if beauty is subjective, it can be explained theoretically. The value of art criticism is to clearly express "the beauty of good art".
Fourth, there is a lot of artkind, not single
There is also a common misconception about art, that is, "beauty" is used to control all the feelings of all art. In fact, art has never only pursued beauty, but all human subjective emotions and feelings.
For example, in classical Chinese poetry, there are various aesthetic categories. Du Fu is depressed and frustrated, Li Bai is open-minded, Su Shi is fresh and heroic, and Xin Qi is heroic and heroic.
in Western painting. In addition to beauty, there are also artistic pursuits such as sublime, sublime, tragic, comedy, ugly, and absurd.
The themes of art are also diverse. Great works of art tend to cover a variety of topics in human life. Lu Xun said "Dream of Red Mansions" - scholars see "Yi", Taoists see lewdness, geniuses see lingering, revolutionaries see rows, and gossips see palace secrets.
Art: Making People Human is not only about the beauty of artworks, but also about common themes such as human faith, happiness, nature, death, morality, freedom, love, etc. In addition to the diversity of themes, the diversity of art is also reflected in the "infinite possibilities of expression".
For example, with the same theme of "Water Margin", comics, operas, movies and TV series are actually completely different works of art. Each of these works of art has its own standards, emphases and aesthetic needs, and must not be appreciated in a single set of standards.
A history of art is a history of human nature. For example, Gombrich's famous work "The Story of Art", ostensibly combing through the development process of art in ancient and modern China and foreign countries, is actually using art as a clue to help us gain insight into the love, hatred, joys and sorrows in human nature from the perspective of participants, latecomers and even eternals.
Art is so important, but our perception of art is still stuck in some specious people's clouds, correcting these misconceptions is not only an important guiding value for our appreciation of art, but also because appreciating art is directly related to whether our life is more complete and infinite.
For this reason, I sincerely recommend the three books of art general education
Art: Making People Human is an encyclopedia of the humanities. It covers literature, art, drama, dance, film and other humanities; Humanistic themes such as faith, happiness, death, morality, nature, freedom, and love are discussed in depth.
The Joy of Art: How to **, Appreciate, and Talk About ArtTechniqueThis is a guide to art appreciation, which is enough to provide guidance for museum tours and even art research. Not only does it improve your sensitivity and appreciation of art, but it also communicates your feelings clearly to others.
Gombrich, The Story of ArtA book that understands the history of Eastern and Western art from prehistory to modern times is the most comprehensive and systematic general history of human art in the Chinese world so far, with rich and interesting stories that are eye-opening.
The three books cover a general introduction to art, a guide to appreciation, and a global history of art, forming a clear and complete set of general knowledge of art. Click on the product card below, you can collect it with one click.