Elephant News reporter Swallow Dan
Henan Spring Festival Gala program "Yellow River Mud Baby", whose memories killed? Post-60s, post-70s or post-80s? There is an answer to this question.
On February 2 (the second day of the first lunar month), Elephant News reporter met the "father" of the mud baby in the program, Zhao Enmin, a master of chinese art in the art industry, and visited his "Red Clay Hall" studio.
Born with talent, life is full of inspiration
"My hometown used to live on the Yellow River, and my ancestors were clay diggers." Zhao Enmin told reporters.
Zhao Enmin, born in 1960, is a native of Zhengzhou. Scenes of life by the Yellow River, children's fun games, and the life of the city in the streets and alleys are all sources of inspiration for him.
"Since I was a child, I liked to use mud to pinch chickens, puppies, airplanes, tanks, and when I was nine years old, I saw the Albanian film "The Eighth Soldier's Bronze Statue", and I was able to directly pinch out a clay figure similar to the bronze statue in the film."
The old man pulling the cart, the child on the tractor, the "chicken" caught by the "eagle"... Walking into the "Red Clay Hall" studio, a variety of clay figures come to life, and every moment of freeze frame is like a camera capture.
Restore ancient techniques Phoenix Mountain seeks key raw materials
"The clay people of the Zhongyuan School must choose the red glue mud that has been deposited for many years as raw materials, which is ruddy in color, sticky, shiny, and has good crack resistance." Zhao Enmin's studio is named Red Clay Hall, which is derived from this. It is precisely because of the pursuit of red glue mud that Zhao Enmin restored the long-lost 'plastic space' technique.
"Plastic hollow" refers to the use of mud to mold a section of "hollow" mud tires, and then through superb production skills to stitch them together, and then use clothing patterns, belts and other ornaments at the interface to cover up. The clay sculpture figures created by the "plastic space" method can flexibly rotate and interchange their heads and hands, and the weight is reduced by about 75%, which changes the unchangeable characteristics of traditional clay sculpture once formed. Each piece is handmade, only unique, not reproducible, and is a masterpiece.
"The Terracotta Warriors and Horses of the Qin and Han Dynasties used the technique of 'plastic space', which made the Terracotta Warriors lose a lot of weight than the solid figurines, facilitate back and forth transportation, and also gave the Terracotta Warriors and Horses the conditions that could be fired, which was also an important factor in the preservation of the Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huang for thousands of years."
More than 20 years ago, in order to restore the 'plastic space' technique, Zhao Enmin had painstakingly pondered many ways to consult. Someone told him that he could turn the mold, but he wanted to keep his fingerprint mark of the clay sculpture work, and did not want to be factorized and batched; the teacher of the Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts suggested putting a paper cylinder inside, but Zhao Enmin decided that the "plastic space" must not rely on other things as support. He himself also tried to build a shelf and then mold the mud, and the result was that the formed clay people were all stiff and tight, without any flexible and lively posture.
"Could it be that there is a problem with the raw materials?" After many inquiries and visits, Zhao Enmin finally found a kind of red clay with high plasticity and high adhesion in the stone cracks and soil layers around the Phoenix Mountain, also known as the "Red Mud Mountain" in the Xingyang Land Boundary, making this skill reappear in the human world.
If we don't leave this behind, no one will be able to remember it later
"In the field of clay sculpture, the northern school is based on the four famous works and has bright colors, and the southern school is based on opera characters, commonly known as 'pinching opera text'. The characteristics of our Zhongyuan clay people are original and close to life, and my works are to show the lives of the people in the Central Plains. Zhao Enmin said.
The shape of the Henan Spring Festival Gala's program "Yellow River Mud Baby" is inspired by the games that Lao Zhao played when he was a child. He said he was a post-60s man, but there are many games that have also continued into the childhood of the post-80s. For example, cockfighting, horseback fighting, and vaulting horses. "We all remember the saying 'kill a chicken without a head', 'you have to stick your head out and kick it without complaining about me.""
"Today's children don't have that kind of childhood, it's not easy to see a little soil, and parents will be afraid of dirty obstacles." In the past, children grew up in the dirt, tumbling and climbing high and low, and even sat bare-ass on the ice, and there was a saying in the past that God would stick the child's ass for three years! Zhao Enmin sighed.
"After the program was broadcast, there were many more young people who came to me, and there were more media, which made me very pleased, and more people had interest and understanding of Henan's clay sculpture skills." Zhao Enmin hopes that the attention can make more people fall in love with clay sculptures and pass on the craftsmanship of the ancestors. "If we don't leave these things behind and tell them to the young people, no one will be able to remember them in the future, just like a gust of wind."