Ni Minjing: The power of art

Ni Minjing, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Education

Art has two basic characteristics, one is beauty and the other is creativity. Without any one feature, it is not art. Art is expressed as painting, music, dance, poetry, calligraphy, sculpture, architecture, etc., but art is essentially irrelevant to any particular thing, and anything that rises to the level of beauty and creativity becomes art. Because of this, cooking, talking, brewing, and even fighting wars can rise to the level of artistry. The essence of art lies in the fact that it can express the ordinary things that can be seen everywhere around us, and it can fully give the world we usually see a special power to touch people's hearts. Therefore, the essence of art is people, not works of art.

Artwork is the materialization of the narrow field of art, is the product of human artistic activities, people in the art of art, is from their own point of view of the creative activities condensed by the art to rediscover and recreate.

The creative activity of the artist is sometimes far ahead of the comprehension of the times, which is also a characteristic of art. Van Gogh was not appreciated in his time, he did not sell a single painting during his lifetime, not even as a gift, no one wanted to accept, and the same paintings are now worth tens of millions of dollars. Van Gogh brought a new perspective to mankind, but it took a long time for people to slowly feel the special connotations in his paintings. Therefore, creative people always precede the entire era, which is why art gives power to people. The essence of a great work of art that transcends time and space lies in transcending the artist's personality and achieving resonance between the work and the viewer's mind.

Artistic activities are the inevitable product of cultural evolution, it can be inferred that if there is intelligent life in the outer galaxy, the form of life may be very different, and even the evolutionary quantum of life is not genes and DNA, but its sign must be the same existence of artistic activities, because artistic activities are an expression of intelligent life's understanding of the natural world, which transcends the survival instinct and is a bridge to seek the meaning of life.

Simon Shama asks in his book The Power of Art: If art can make you happy, can it also make you kind? If art can make you ecstatic or sad and cry, can it also make you an outstanding citizen? Good religious painting can save souls from sin, but does modern secular painting also have such a reversing power: to save the soul from selfishness? Should the power of art be involved in the struggle for power?

When people stand in front of the murals of the Altamira Cave more than 10,000 years ago, when people listen to the music played by the Jiahu bone flute 9,000 years ago, no one cannot be deeply moved by the power of its art. At the moment when the creativity of our ancestors resonates deeply with them, we feel a spiritual connection with them, so beauty is actually a cultural identity. Art is to gain people's attention and love for works of art through formal beauty, so that their creative achievements can be better protected. For every work of art, beauty is the table, creation is the foundation, time accumulates value, from this point of view, art and technology, with free will, it has a spiritual life.

There is a very delicate connection between art and science, and many scientists have deep artistic accomplishments, such as Einstein is very fond of playing the violin, Qian Xuesen is very fond of calligraphy and painting, and Qian Xuesen has also written a book called "The Art of Science and the Science of Art", believing that if the two are not combined, they will not become a great instrument. In fact, the similarities between art and science are both aesthetic and creative, the beauty of art is the beauty of image, the beauty of science is the beauty of logic, the creativity of art is to shape our spiritual home, and the creativity of science is to reveal our spiritual home.

Art itself also needs the support of science, without the progress of science and technology, there would be no current oil paintings, there would be no modern pianos, and of course there would be no great oil paintings and piano songs. Science needs the nourishment of the soul of art, so that science and technology can develop towards the perspective of goodness and beauty, and avoid the disastrous consequences of the power of science and technology.

The paradox of art is that you need to learn its norms first, and then forget them completely. If you don't know the basic way art works, you can't really go deep into it; but if you only know the techniques, if you only know how to use those techniques continuously to become a very skilled person, then you will never be an artist, but a technician, a craftsman.

The contradiction of science is that you need to learn the scientific conclusions and basic academic methods of your predecessors first, and then discover the problems in the theories of your predecessors and use new methods to solve these problems. Therefore, the relationship between the basic methods of scientific research and scientific and technological innovation is not a causal relationship, but a contradictory relationship, and likewise, there is no causal relationship between artistic creation skills and great works of art, but a contradictory relationship. The more intense this contradiction, the greater the creativity of art and technology.

Language is not the only way of thinking, art is a creative way of thinking that does not rely on language, and for ordinary people, creation seems very mysterious. After completing a statue, the sculptor Michelangelo invited the shopkeeper to his home to see his work. The shop owner couldn't believe his eyes and asked, "Where did you find such beautiful marble?" Michelangelo said, "Don't you recognize it?" It's that ugly stone, the stone that's been in front of your shop for twelve years. The owner of the store asked, "How did you do that?" Why do you think that ugly stone can be turned into a beautiful statue? Michelangelo said: "I never thought about it, but I used to dream of carving a statue like this." As I passed the stone, I suddenly heard a call from Jesus: I was trapped in this stone, let me out, and help me get out of the stone. I saw a statue in that rock that looked exactly like this one, so the work I did was actually insignificant. I just removed the excess on the stone, and then Jesus and Mary were freed from the shackles. ”

Picasso's "Bull's Head" uses ready-made objects as materials, a bicycle seat and a handlebar, which stimulates his imagination and cleverly conceives a "bull" head.

The birth of every great work of art is part of the evolution of human culture. Seemingly bizarre creation is in line with the laws of evolution, and the production process of a work of art is the result of the joint action of people and the environment, full of uncertainty. But the principle of the production of works of art is certain, and it is the "quantum effects" of people and the environment that play a role. The Virgin mary and Jesus in the stone form a gestalt in Michelangelo's brain, and the handlebars and cushions of the bicycle form the gestalt of the bull's head in Picasso's brain, which is then presented through carving or combination. Therefore, the quantum effect of the evolutionary quantum of man is actually the uncertainty of thinking, and when this uncertainty interacts with the environment, a closed loop of thinking is formed, resulting in new works of art.

This is true for individual works of art, and it is also true for grand buildings, but the grand design we are talking about is the formation of an overall closed loop of the thinking of many people, and it is a technical way to ensure the total "quantum effect" of multiple thoughts. A stone may form different closed loops in different brains, will produce different works, but it must be the artist in the midst of painstaking meditation or inspiration, suddenly formed a thinking gestalt, that thing is there. If the mind doesn't form a Gestalt, that thing won't appear. The so-called artist is able to form gestalts in the brain more than the average person and create them.

Beauty is the feeling of beautiful things, and it is the viewer's feeling of things that aggregate in the brain to stimulate a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which makes us feel happy. Please note that seeing something beautiful will reward you with pleasure and make you more willing to pursue beauty, which shows that it is human nature to pursue beauty. Human beings' common value judgment of beauty has a great relationship with the evolution of life, and what we commonly believe that beauty is often conducive to the survival and development of life, which is slowly accumulated in the process of life evolution, and finally evolved into a physiological mechanism. Although some beautiful things are not friendly to people, such as poisonous mushrooms. But from the perspective of the poisonous mushroom, it uses the mechanism of other life to pursue beauty to create opportunities conducive to its own survival, so beauty is also a special force for poisonous mushrooms.

At present, it is urgent to study and break through six aspects of art education: first, the relationship between aesthetic education and art education; second, the relationship between art curriculum and artistic quality assessment; third, the relationship between cultivating all students, students with special skills, and art masters; fourth, the relationship between school art education, off-campus art education and family education; fifth, the relationship between students' basic aesthetic education and each student's special ability to art; and sixth, the relationship between traditional art inheritance and artistic creation and innovation.

General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out in his reply letter to the old professor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts: "Art education is an important part of aesthetic education and plays an important role in shaping a beautiful soul" "To do a good job in aesthetic education, we must adhere to the virtue of cultivating people, take root in the life of the times, follow the characteristics of aesthetic education, carry forward the spirit of Chinese aesthetic education, and let the young generation of the motherland grow up healthily physically and mentally." "We attach importance to aesthetic education because we believe that beauty has the power of goodness, the power of creation, and the power of the evolution of life. If our children lose the sense of beauty, they lose the roots of the evolution of life and cultural evolution. Art education should become the basis of students' aesthetic ability and ability to create beauty, the content and methods of school environment and discipline teaching should promote students' understanding of diversity of beauty, and the free, democratic, equal and diverse atmosphere created by the teaching process will help form students' harmonious psychological quality and the quality of the pursuit of truth, goodness and beauty, and the sensitivity and creativity of beauty should be accompanied by all learning.

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Source | This article was published in the December issue 4 of The Educator, originally titled "The Power of Art"

Author | Ni Minjing, Deputy Director of Shanghai Municipal Commission of Education

Edit | Xing Xiaofeng

Design | Zhu Qiang

Co-ordination | Zhou Caili

Call for | "The Growth Story of a Mentor in a Big Country"

The second "Looking for Good Teachers in Big Countries" public welfare activity launched by "Educator" was recently launched. The event is divided into a trilogy:

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The campaign ends at the end of 2022. According to the selection criteria and participation requirements, 10 "2022 Great Power Mentors" will be selected and awarded the title of "Great Power Mentors", and each "Great Power Mentor" will receive a growth incentive fund of 100,000 yuan (before tax) provided by the organizer.

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