【Snow In Search of Beauty】
Author: Xiao Ge
Brodsky said, "Beauty is still beautiful in low temperatures." ”
Iron Horse Glacier (print) Wang Qishan
In all the weather, ice and snow days are probably the most lovely. People shelter from the wind and rain, but they are willing to face the ice and snow and play with it. Snow like jade covered everything like dust, like a mighty séance ball, and the world transformed into another space as the ice crystals fell. As a result, the hours of ice and snow become variables day after day, small miracles in ordinary life.
In the history of world art, the most famous painting involving ice and snow sports is probably Bruegel's "Snow Hunter". In the painting, the winter Netherlands is blue and dark, and the snow is dead. In the close-up, hunters return with a team of hounds on the snow, their backs to the picture, heading down the mountain, each step trapped in thick snow; lakes, cities, roads and mountains in the distance. Birds are still flying, people enjoy seasonal games on the frozen lake, and you can see that in the 16th century, people already had ice hockey, curling, sledding, and skating, although they were far from modern sports.
In fact, "Snow Hunter" is not a stand-alone painting, it is the most well-known one in Bruegel's "Seasonal Group Painting". The importance of "Snow Hunter" is somewhat related to the fact that it represents a newly enlightened tradition, which is "winter painting".
Ice Painting (Chinese painting, partial) Zhang Weibang Yao Wenhan (Qing Dynasty)
Bruegel's love of nature has a long history. In his youth, like most of his contemporaries, he inevitably embarked on a humanistic journey to Italy. The difference is that Italian painting and sculpture did not conquer this talented artist, and he was thinking about the natural scenery along the way. In particular, the Alpine, which has been covered with snow all year round, has since become a sacred mountain in his heart, and one of the motifs of his creation. It can be seen that the mountain shape in "Snow Hunter" does not match the local mountain shape in the Netherlands. In fact, its prototype comes from the Alps in the painter's heart. He is a splicing of close-up Dutch characters, customs and imaginary grand sacred mountains. In terms of representing characters, Bruegel was influenced by Bosch, there is no so-called focus of the figure, the painting of all beings do their own thing, together to construct a complete human imagination. In terms of composition, the painting method of air perspective is used, that is, without strict focus perspective, the pen is laid out with the general principle of near and far and small, creating a visual sense of space.
According to research, in the mid-16th century, it happened to be the Xiaoice river period, and lowland countries like the Netherlands experienced rare cold weather, which made "winter painting" possible. Many paintings of the time, including some of the paintings with religious themes, used ice and snow to create a landscape. With the large number of winter scenes in the painting, it is gradually fixed as a mature pattern of Dutch genre painting. Under this tradition, there is another painter who cannot be ignored, that is, He is emphatically focused on depicting the ice and snow world.
There are not many historical records of Everkamp, who was born in Amsterdam and was deaf and mute. As a staunch follower of Bruegel, Evkamp gave the Netherlands a new style of winterscape painting and spent his life guarding the ice and snow world of his heart with his brush. He painted fictional castles in the snow, people on the ice in the mist, etc., some people holding hands, some chasing, some horse-drawn carriages pulling and climbing plows, some people falling, some people falling into ice caves waiting for rescue... Everkamp's paintings have a fresh fairy tale texture, gentle, funny, dreamy, seemingly unintentional, but full of details scattered everywhere in the picture, as if to believe that this ice and snow shimmer will reflect and retain all the fading memories of mankind.
Paintings involving ice and snow sports in art history are often found in genre paintings and figure paintings. Although the artistic value of these paintings is debatable, they are like documentaries that reproduce the games of people and ice and snow in earlier times. For example, painter John McKee's Curling On Lake Gilconkel and Charles Martin Hardy's Curling on Lake Casbrick are both depictions of the Curling Traditions of Scotland. The scene of gentlemen dressed in formal clothes and a serious broom with sweeping monks gathering to play curling seems very funny today.
The above examples are all in the West, and there is also ice and snow in Chinese art. Chinese love for ice and snow is like a festival, and prayer is like a private wish. In our culture, there are a dream of the Red Chamber and a dream of gold and snow, a poetry club, a venison, and a folded red plum; there is a West Lake, the idiot Zhang Dai boats to the lake pavilion, drinking with strangers to enjoy the snow; there is a prince who visits Dai at night, takes pleasure in coming, and returns with pleasure... The ancients set the most beautiful stories on the set of ice and snow, and the heavens and the earth, mountains and rivers were pure, as if otherwise it would not be enough to set off the super dust of the characters' actions. It is as if the most beautiful acacia is always in the moonlight, and those secret hearts and minds, those long waits for self-denial, are often related to the ice and snow. In ancient Chinese paintings, there are also many examples of hermits in the snowy scenery of the HanJiang River, but it is not common to make the characters in the painting "move", which is about an aesthetic difference.
Of course, there are exceptions, such as Ice Play, and this exception is very heavy and informative. "Ice Painting" is an official picture scroll written by painters Zhang Weibang and Yao Wenhan during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, recording the royal ice large-scale performances. The so-called "ice frolic" is a Manchu custom, an ancestral tradition brought from outside the Guan. The Qing Dynasty attached great importance to ice play, and the skating team had a daily establishment of 5,000 people, from which 1,600 brave men were selected to train in the palace every year in preparation for the winter solstice to the march and ninth seasons, performing for the royal family and ministers.
The ice scene is very large and extremely difficult. If dismantled and converted into modern sports, it probably includes figure skating, speed skating, ice soccer, ice pitching, ice acrobatics and many other projects. For example, in the "Ice Fun Map" painting the dragon shooting ball, the team of 100 people marching on the ice meanders like a dragon, and need to constantly intersperse the change of formation, the performers have to follow the team, while they have to complete a variety of difficult additional tasks in a dashing posture, there is no room for mistakes, this is a world-class performance.
Ice and snow bring about the change of mechanical conditions and alienation of time and space relationship, and people participate in ice and snow sports, is to obtain the beauty of speed, passion, lightness in a state of almost frictionless, all the self-comfortable and decent are connected with their own strong control, ice and snow sports require people to balance, precision, bravery, decisiveness, clear-headedness, judge the situation, and have a strong ability to drive themselves - it is constantly inward shaping and conquering. The so-called "floating and abrupt stop, manipulating the self with the vertical and horizontal" is the most condensed portrayal of ice sports.
Guangming Daily ( 2022.02.11. 11 edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily