A colleague suddenly asked one day, "Are there aestheticians in China?" I was a little excited and blurted out, "Of course there are, Wang Guowei, Zhu Guangqian, Zong Baihua, li Zehou." After answering, I always felt that something was wrong, probably because I was answering an aesthetician in the sense of the discipline.
Aesthetics, a high cold word. I remember when I was in my senior year, I was struggling with what major to take the graduate school entrance examination? A friend asked me what I liked, and I blurted out the same thing, "Music, literature, art, movies... Probably all liked it. The friend smiled and said, don't bother, just learn aesthetics.
The three years of studying aesthetics were wonderful, and in class, there was a discussion about "What is beauty?" "What is art?" Such endless, metaphysical questions have never been answered; beauty has begun to be recognized from looking at a flower, looking at a painting, and being in a daze for a minute. Outside of the classroom, people often ask, "What is aesthetics for?" What kind of work do you do after you learn it? I was dumbfounded by the question. In the secular sense, aesthetics is probably the typical "useless science".
After graduation, I found that there are "aesthetics" everywhere: hairdressing has styling aesthetics, beauty has image management aesthetics, design has brand aesthetics, health care has life aesthetics, decoration has home decoration aesthetics... It's just that most of these "aesthetics" are only secular beauty, and the beauty that can be purchased with money can be obtained. It is a pre-defined beauty, a temporary, ephemeral beauty.
We seem to have entered an era of pseudo-aesthetics, shouting aesthetics, but rarely trying to appreciate the truth and subtleties of beauty. Shouting aesthetics, but still constantly pursuing the "utilitarian nature of aesthetics", and that clear, subtle, and true beauty that emanates from the heart has long been a luxury...
What is true aesthetics? As soon as this kind question was thrown out, the situation that everyone in the class discussed together came to mind: "Beauty is harmony", "Beauty is the idea", "Beauty is God", "Beauty is perfection", "Beauty is the perceptual manifestation of reason"... The Western philosophers always answered this question, stripping away the cocoon and getting into the slightest detail, and beauty here is cognition and speculation, always full of ideas.
Knowledge is not the same as wisdom, knowledge can be certain or proven right, knowledge can be mastered through continuous learning. Wisdom is not like this, it is more permanent than knowledge, and it is more erratic and elusive than knowledge. It is multidimensional, it can be a momentary realization, or it can be a conscience rooted in the depths of culture and the depths of the soul.
Back to our traditional culture, there is no word "aesthetics", but "beauty" can be seen everywhere. In the contextual expression of our traditional culture, "beauty" is often opened with "wisdom".
When he was young, his teacher told the story of "Zilu, Zeng You, Ran You, and Gongxihua sitting" in the Analects, and Confucius asked the four disciples about their ideals. Zi Luxian hurriedly stated that his ideal was to govern a weak country where the soldiers were weakening and the people were hungry, so that the people of the weak country could learn to be brave, and the natural country would be rich and the people would be strong; Ran you was a little modest, saying that he could govern a relatively stable country and make the people rich; Gong Xihua was more modest, and he was only willing to be a petty official and abide by etiquette.
Confucius shook his head after listening, and asked Zeng Hao, who was next to the drum, Zeng Hao was not in a hurry, the piano sound gradually thinned, and said of his ideal, "Twilight spring, spring clothes are complete, five or six crowns, six or seven boys, bathing, wind dancing, singing and returning." "My ideal is nothing more than early spring, wearing spring clothes, and a few friends, with a few children, to bathe in the Yi River, blow the wind on the dance stage, sing songs and walk home.
Confucius smiled when he heard this, and he was the same as Zeng Hao's ideal. Such an ideal is not big, even very small, very everyday, but there are four seasons, there is heaven and earth, there is a human heart, it is completely pure and clear, such a sense of beauty is natural, this is also an extraordinary wisdom, is the real beauty.
Similarly, in the eyes of the modern aesthetic master Zong Baihua, the search for beauty and poetry is a beautiful ideal. This person who has eaten through the culture of the East and the West gave a very plain and extremely long ideal answer:
Where to find the poem?
In the drizzle, the sound of falling flowers
In the breeze, the sound of running water wafts in
At the end of the blue sky, a crumbling lone star
True beauty is never painstakingly sought, but at the finest details of life. Like Confucius and Zeng Hao's ideal of "Returning home from the chant", it is pure, kind and peaceful.
Mr. Wu Guanzhong once said, "There are not many illiterate people in China today, but there are many beautiful illiterates." "Now the times are different, all kinds of "aesthetics" are varied, and aesthetic education abounds. It is undeniable that the aesthetics of our time are diverse. People's material conditions are better, and there are more and more choices, and they can choose everything they like at will.
We seem to have mastered the dominance of aesthetics: when brushing a treasure and a certain sound, big data calculates our preferences and pushes the things we like; every day there are many style bloggers who teach you to dress up the good-looking self in the eyes of others; want to have a good body, have a weight loss training camp, eat a protein bar that has been configured with nutrition to solve everything; open the e-book city, there is a "guess you like", if you don't like it, you can click "Change"... Is what we see really what we like? Is the world of pan-entertainment and pan-personality really "beautiful"?
I remember a friend, who is known as the "older leftover girl", who wants to get rid of this dilemma and find the best version of herself. So I signed up for an aesthetic image management class, and I wanted to be confident in my appearance first. Who knows, the so-called professional medical beauty "aesthetician" analyzed her facial features, a brain of her plastic surgery, from the face shape to the nose, from the double eyelids to the hairline are adjusted according to the popular "beauty", saddled with a body of debt. Seeing her now, she has big eyes, double eyelids, and a high nose bridge, but she lacks the original nature, and how to look at it feels awkward.
There are also some so-called aesthetic education, teaching children to write essays indoors, changing countless writing routines, and the rules are like formulas. The articles written by children are completely high-scoring routines as they know, rather than the truth and beauty they feel.
The era of shouting aesthetics may be an era of pseudo-aesthetics. The "likes" selected by big data are also shortening our horizons to a certain extent, telling us that the world is actually around our loves; the "aesthetics" on the market can quickly occupy our hearts and can be quickly forgotten by us; aesthetics majors are still the coldest and most difficult disciplines to find jobs; people who talk about aesthetics are still living in a screw, suddenly high, suddenly full of trauma, saying that people do not understand beauty.
Beauty is not a momentary pleasure, nor is it a pleasure that floats over the senses. Beauty cleanses the soul, not inflates desire; beauty is natural confidence, not living in the eyes of others; beauty needs to be precipitated, not suddenly exaggerated.
Beauty is what makes people "free from vulgarity", not to make people fall into the "cliché"; beauty is not simply possession, or a figurative thing, but the formation of a "field", like air, naturally flowing, open to the self and the truth of the world.
"How do you get into an era of true aesthetics?" When I ask this question, I am timid and lost, but there is always hope in my heart.
Eighty-eight years ago, Mr. Zhu Guangqian said in "Talking about Beauty", "There is a big car road in the Alpine Valley, lined with beautiful scenery, and a placard inserted in the road advises tourists: 'Walk slowly, appreciate!'" But many people live in this world of flowing water and horses, just like a car ride in the Alpine valley, hurrying through, and there is no time to look back and linger in the scenery, so that this rich and gorgeous world becomes a lifeless prison, which is a pity. ”
Mr. Zhu Guangqian has limited disappointment and unlimited hope in his heart, and only wants to gently tell people to "go slowly, appreciate!" ”
Today, eighty-eight years later, there are too many rushes, too many pleasures that want to possess, too many insincere and self-aware "likes", but most of the time we still dislike the boredom of the environment in which we live, self-deprecating and mournful and instigated, and our hearts are clearly pulled farther and farther away from the original ideals.
We need to "walk slowly and appreciate the beauty" attitude to live and enter a real aesthetic era. Take the eyes that discover beauty to wander in this world, listen to the opening of a flower, gaze at the transparency of a pair of eyes, understand the cuteness of a smile, and the slowness of the clouds in the sky. Beauty should not be just distant ideals and noble words, but honesty with the self and reverence for all things.
I think that everyone can be an aesthetician, and life is the biggest and most interesting art. As long as we feel the real beauty at this moment, this moment is an aesthetic era.
When I wrote this article, I was afraid that talking too much would become reasonable; I was also afraid that I would say too little and become general. After leaving school, I found that aesthetics is not a good reading of a few aesthetic books and philosophy books, those books that have been read are just seeds, as for germination, growth and blossoming, it is not just watering and pruning, but also the changes of the four seasons, the vast world and the people who pass by.
Aesthetics, perhaps really difficult, is always difficult to accurately convey its meaning in words, and a little carelessness will even destroy its true color.
Aesthetics, perhaps simple. It is the most primitive "because of liking", not the "truth, goodness, and beauty" that is high above, but a real "truth, goodness, and beauty", in the mountains, in the water, between our hands and feet. "Because of like" is also the beginning of all interesting stories, but this like must be sincere, it is extended, it will touch the depths of the heart, and beauty will arise because of like.
If we really entered an era of aesthetics, would this era be good? This era will be better.
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