Zhuge Yi is an associate professor at the Institute of Art Education, Hangzhou Normal University
1. Start with Ophelia
"If our love is destined to be a tragedy, I will still choose to love you..." – She is Ophelia, the tragic heroine of the great British Renaissance playwright William Shakespeare's Hamlet, whose beloved left her for revenge and assassinated her father, and Ophelia was eventually driven mad by the fierce conflict between love and hate. The pain of love and the disappearance of affection, the double blow makes her simple, weak heart unable to bear, she neither has the courage to face her true emotions, nor the determination to pursue and protect her love, she had to use flower language to pour out her heart: "This is rosemary that represents memory; lover, please remember, this is a pansies that represent thoughts..." Finally, she picked flowers and rushed to Qingchi, she muttered to herself before she died: "Here, there is still some for myself; when it comes to Sunday, we may as well call it mercy grass." ...... Here are the daisies; I want to give you a few violets, but as soon as my father died, they all thanked him; they said he died well..." The melancholy love song drifted in the shadows of the dawn, and Ophelia drowned in the arms of the flowers and the love song. Ophelia suffered the tragedy of family and love under the wrapping of the political struggle of Feudal Society in Europe, and she also represented the fate of countless oppressed women of the time.
Data picture of Waterhouse's Miss Charlotte
With the spread of Shakespearean plays and the spirit of the Renaissance, the story of Ophelia became the subject of many excellent literary and artistic works in the following centuries. One of the most famous works is now in the Tate Gallery, London, by sir John Everett Millais, a pre-Raphaelite painter in London, which depicts this melancholy and beautiful girl floating in the river singing before drowning. Today, the most famous "girl" in the history of Western art is lying alone in the exhibition hall of the Pudong Art Museum in Shanghai, until the "Light Tate Collection" closes on November 14 and then returns to the UK.
In the painting, Ophelia's posture – with open arms, gazing upwards – resembles a traditional portrait of a saint or martyr, and even more amazing is the scene around her, realistic, detailed, natural, bright colors in stark contrast to her pale face, empty eyes, and wandering expression, the death of the maiden and the vitality of nature merge into one, looking at it, it seems that a slight and sad song comes from afar, our gaze is surrounded by a kind of silence, we seem to hear her desperate sigh, Feeling her weak sniffles, touching her low-hanging eyelids, we also seem to be in a desolate wilderness, with the glimmer of dew refracted by the grass and flowers, and the breathing throbbing of the deep dark water and the poignant death. All this impresses us with the artist's skill.
In 1936, the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí enthusiastically described the artistic movement that inspired the painting in an article published in the French surrealist magazine Minotaur. He praised: "How can Salvador Dali not be fooled by the blatant surrealism of the British Pre-Raphaelites?" The pre-Raphaelite painters brought us a radiant woman, but at the same time the most desirable and frightening. ”
2. "Victorian Don Quixote"
Milles was a prominent member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. In the mid-to-late 19th century, this art group was like a light in the darkness, a lightning in the haze, a love song in the hustle and bustle, leaving behind both the legendary story of the knights of the Round Table and the exquisite works of art – in their lives and art, reflecting the emotions and ideals, sonatas and shouts of the artists in the early industrial process.
The first word "P.R.B" was first made public on March 24, 1849. At the time, 20-year-old Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the group's standard-bearer, marked this inconspicuous character in red paint on the signature in the lower left corner of the painting "The Virgin Mary's Girlhood", but nevertheless, the fame it represented resounded for a century and a half.
Data picture of Rossetti's "Daydream"
In 1848, Rossetti, Hunter and Milles, who were studying art in London, came together and the Raphaelites were born. It was in the middle of the Victorian period (1848-1875) in England, which is what the historian Hobsbawm called the "Age of Capital": in 1848, the Charterist movement set off by the British industrial workers called for a series of political reforms, and Hunter and Milles joined the demonstrations; mass production destroyed the natural environment, the material worship of products increased day by day, people's spiritual life was neglected and suppressed; industrial technology, especially photography and other technologies promoted the development of natural sciences. It also poses an unparalleled challenge to art; money supremacy and glitz sweep the city, and unprecedented prosperity is behind the collapse of traditional values and the prevalence of hypocrisy. To this end, they oppose all mediocrity, meanness, worldliness and utilitarianism, and they are like Don Quixote in queen Victoria, except that their spear refers to the railway train of the industrial age, the enslavement and oppression brought about by the early industrial system, the toxic smoke from the chimneys of the factory, and the supremacy of technology over human emotions. Their kindness, sincerity, zeal, honesty, and yearning for the Middle Ages is another kind of rebellion against the 18th century, which reveres the classical, the ancient Greek and Roman models, and escapes from the past, which is both a dream away from the hustle and bustle of reality and a romantic hope to change reality. They aspired to form a monastic community, like the knights of the Middle Ages, to set a great example for civilization with their faith in art.
The natural pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's eagerness for reform was reflected in its attack on the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. The Royal Academy of Fine Arts favored outdated thematic paintings, which were despised by young people whose convictions burned. Hunter's passion for the religious and natural elements of painting led him to leave his homeland and live in Palestine for a long time. Rossetti was so interested in the emotions and mysteries of the Middle Ages that he portrayed his beloved Sidal as the medieval poet Dante's Beatrizi. Without their passion for religion and the Middle Ages, Milles adhered to the concept of "fidelity to nature" and achieved secular success by using the best painting techniques.
3. Be faithful to nature religiously
The pre-Raphaelite art knights, like the German Nazarene school, tried to bring the spirit of piety in the Middle Ages into modern art, they believed that Raphael was a symbol of secularism and pagan spirit, Raphael's pre-art was pure and simple and rigorous, and served the faith, but raphael's post-Raphaelite art was flashy, insincere and self-contained, so they had to pursue a simple and pure spiritual form. They declared that "fidelity to nature" must be taken as the aim. The source of this idea, william Wordsworth, is Anglo-Romantic poetry, another rebellion against 18th-century anti-natural standards. "Faithfulness to nature," as these artistic knights understood, was to depict real details with rigor and precision, to depict every leaf with the accuracy of a botanist, to depict every wrinkle and every occasional change in form with microscopic fidelity, and they might want to challenge the scientific precision of the new tool for recording the appearance of objects. And in order to highlight the dazzling colors in the natural light, as we saw in Ophelia, the green grass was painted bright green, the yellow flowers were painted bright yellow, and the purple became jumping purple, and these colors were like undisguised praises - the praise of color!
Miles's "Blind Girl" profile picture
The art critic Ruskin was a fanatical supporter of the Pre-Raphaelites and their guide. Ruskin's love of nature and his fear of its destruction made him want to spread the path that Turner had pioneered more clearly to the world, and his Modern Painting theory of landscape painting into a noble art genre directly influenced pre-Raphaelite artists. The artist "did not blindly imitate the techniques of the masters ... They must go into nature with a silent mind, walking tirelessly and convincedly with nature, without distraction, better understanding the meaning of nature, and listening to her teachings. Ruskin's words greatly encouraged the young Milles and Hunter, prompting them to abandon the traditional and old artistic techniques and styles of reynolds at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and thus paint lifelike works with a theme and from the usual careful observation.
Hunter pioneered Ruskin's naturalism, and in the foreground of Valentine's Rescue of Sylvia from Protos, Hunter pursues perfection in natural details, depicting each leaf in detail, and suggesting through tiny details such as damaged fungi and meadows on the ground that there was once a fight. In the process of creating Ophelia, in order to find a suitable landscape background, Milles spent nearly five months on the banks of the Hogsmere River in Surrey, working six days a week, 11 hours a day, enduring mosquito bites and cold storms and snow, and he once mocked himself as "Robinson", and it was this direct and concrete copy that enabled him to accurately depict the river in front of him and the plants on the banks, thus rendering the right background for the perfect presentation of Ophelia's tragic death. Hunter's small-scale work The British Coast is a landscape with a strong visual effect of attention to detail, and the painter uses all the paints available in modern times to depict the colors he sees from nature, insisting that no matter what the overall effect, he must paint every detail of isolated leaves, butterflies and rocks, drawing their own full colors.
One might question the difference between pre-Raphaelites and French Impressionists – of course, the two understandings of "fidelity to nature" are very different, and although their purposes are similar, their methods of painting are diametrically opposite. The most representative Impressionist painter Monet will spend several days to observe and depict the image of the water lilies in the pond at different times of the day, different light and shadow effects, so as to show the overall effect of the atmosphere, and for Hunter and Milles, observing the landscape for several days and dozens of days is to find out all the details in the natural landscape, and they even think that the Impressionists are unqualified and insincere painters. But the pre-Raphaelites' symbolic techniques, analytical gaze, and painting techniques could not cope with the instantaneous, symbolic nature, and their work was destined to be filled with nostalgia, becoming a solidified ancient song, avoiding the fluidity and fleeting of modernity.
4. The source of inspiration for love and beauty
"They seek beautiful maidens, to save them from mediocrity, to place at their feet an indelible love, to place them at the height of the mystical mystery of idealism, as Sir Bedwell or Lancelot did in ancient times." The famous British art critic William Gaunt wrote affectionately in the introduction to the famous book "The Dream of Raphaelites".
The image of the girl is the most common theme in Pre-Raphaelite art, and it is also an important reason for the attractiveness of this art movement. Long fluffy hair, pale complexion, affectionate gaze and loose robes are the feminine features depicted in pre-Raphaelite art. Under the romantic brush of these artistic knights, the maiden is depicted as the heroine of myths, legends and historical events, pleasing to the eye. The women in the painting are not only models, but also creative partners of the artist, the source of inspiration for love and beauty, and they played a key role in the creation of Raphaelite pre-art and participated in the creative process. Rossetti's lover Sidal was the most famous muse of the Raphaelites, and although she was not a traditional beauty, she could always maintain difficult positions for long periods of time, and in order to cooperate with Miles's ophelia, she lay in a bathtub filled with cold water for many days, so that she eventually caught a cold. Later, Rossetti developed a fiery love affair with Jenny Morris, and the famous painting "Daydream" was written during this period of love.
In the painting, Morris sits on a plane tree, surrounded by leaves, like a forest goddess, dressed in a romantic loose silk robe, elegantly folded and drooping, fused with the leaves of the tree, holding in her hand a small honeysuckle stem, a symbol of Victorian love, and she immerses herself in her own daydreams, looking down, away from the viewer, looking at something mysterious that is invisible. Rossetti wrote a sonnet for Daydream that ended with "She was dreaming; until now, on her forgotten book, a forgotten flower has fallen from her hand." The poem and the painting are obviously about a woman lost in a daydream, but doesn't that just show the artist's own state?
Millais's paintings always exude a strong sentiment of sadness, which may be related to the painter's sympathy for the unfortunate and the hopelessness of reality, which is often attached to the girl by the painter. With the exception of Ophelia, this sadness is extremely profound in his most famous work, The Blind Girl. The painting depicts two wandering beggar sisters, one of whom is a blind musician, resting on the side of the road after a storm. The blind woman put the accordion on her lap, feeling the warmth of the sun on her face, and her right hand groped for a white flower, and in order to smell its fragrance, she tilted her head, trying to find it, trying to capture a little rustic atmosphere. The younger sister protected her eyes from the sunlight and looked at the double rainbow that had just appeared, while the blind woman could not see it, which deepened the bitterness of her situation. A tortoiseshell butterfly rested on the blind woman's shawl, suggesting she was motionless, and a sign hanging around her neck read "Poor Blind Man."
Profile picture of Hunter's "British Coast"
Hunt's last work, Miss Charlotte, completed with the assistance of others due to deteriorating eyesight, depicts a scene from Tennyson's 1833 poem Charlotte. In Tennyson's poem, Miss Charlotte is locked up in a tower on an island near Camelot, cursed not to leave the tower or look out the window, and she weaves a tapestry through which the reflection in the mirror allows her to see the outside world. Dressed in a brightly colored blouse and pink skirt, she stood barefoot, her long hair curled wildly overhead, scaring away the peace doves that perched beside her while she worked, the silver lamp on the right decorated with owls and the bottom decorated with sphinxes, suggesting that wisdom triumphed over mystery. As she succumbed to temptation, the silver lamp went out. The painting attempts to convey a more serious philosophical interest than symbolism by depicting the infectious imagery of Tennyson's poetry, and the rigid linear style of the painting and the strong personality consciousness of the protagonist are typical features of Raphaelite pre-art works.
The pre-Raphaelite painter Wathouse painted the same subject, depicting Miss Charlotte desperately riding a boat to the castle of Camelot, a place where nobles and knights were entrenched, in search of the Lancelot knight she admired, but she died in her own song, unable to escape the curse. Waterhouse's "Miss Charlotte" shocked the art world at the time, and Miss Charlotte's graceful posture, beautiful face and intoxicating dreams depicted in the painting were all praised and praised.
5. Influence and status
For various reasons, the Raphaelites eventually dissolved, but the artists continued to exert influence. Due to their tendency towards a realistic and scientific point of view, Hunter and Milles no longer directly imitated medieval art. Hunter continued to emphasize the artistic importance of the mind, attempting to reconcile faith and science with accurate observation and research, and traveled to Israel and Egypt to trace the remains of biblical stories. Miles abandoned raphaelite principles around 1860 and re-approached the standards of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Rossetti became a pioneer of European symbolism.
Of course, the more fundamental question posed to posterity by the raphaelites is the ideals and values of man in the age of technology. Although these artistic knights escaped from the "dream" of reality, in the face of the industrial and real social forces they rebelled against, they were bound to be a transparent cloud, suspended above the times and unable to land, although their phantom efforts could not destroy the solid existence of the real enemy, but this artistic movement was remarkable. The works of the Raphaelites are unique, exceptionally fresh, bright, and aesthetically pleasing, with their clear silhouettes, jumping colors, precise details, and rich emotional expression. Artists have had an immeasurable influence on later generations, with aestheticism, symbolism, the Viennese Secession, Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts, and even some contemporary paintings from the 1970s onwards. More importantly, their original goal is not illusory, their ideals are precisely to look at reality, to build a society full of love and beauty, freedom and equality. This is probably why their works have always fascinated future generations.
Guangming Daily (13th edition, November 11, 2021)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily