A porcelain vase as white as jade, simple enough to render without any color, only white, as plain as snow; it stands tall, almost without any pattern decoration, just a few simple lines, making the posture more upright; it stands quietly, telling rich emotions in the simplest form...
It is called "Wenjun Bottle", white as snow, as moist as jade, transparent as silk, and is the only official gift of the Olympic family of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games and the International Paralympic Committee. Such a simple and simple shape, such a single pure color, is rare in the past Chinese national ceremonies. How did it become the national ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, and what kind of Chinese culture does it want to show the world?
On the sixth day of the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger, we drove to Jingdezhen to chat with Bai Ming, the author of "Wenjun Bottle", a famous pottery artist from Jiangxi with international influence, and listened to him tell the story behind the "Wenjun Bottle".
"Red Rhyme - Flying Around"
Winter Olympics Wenjun bottle (left) Winter Paralympic Wenjun bottle (right)
Only by understanding the rules of sport can we explore the beauty of sports
Post-60s artist Bai Ming is tall and thin, and at his age, he looks very fit, but he says that he is usually not too exercised, just obsessed with sports, loves to watch various competitions, likes to think about sports rules, and explores sports aesthetics. He believes that in any area of communication in the history of Eastern and Western civilizations, sportsmanship is the most obstacle-free way.
He once made a special trip to visit the ruins of ancient Olympia in Greece, and marveled that he could find track and field fields and fire points in the deserted ruins without a guide. There is no need for text introduction, and with the fate accumulated by reading over the years, you can echo many buildings and landscapes.
So, in 2006, in preparation for the Beijing Olympic Games, Bai Ming and Jiangxi cultural scholars planned and published a set of books "Reading the Olympics". Because Bai Ming saw that at that time, China was about to host the Beijing Olympic Games, and in addition to enthusiasm, there were quite a few people who did not know much about the historical origins, sports rules and sports aesthetics of the Olympic Games, "especially the aesthetic concept brought about by competitive sports is almost very weak." ”
Just like having not been educated in Tang poetry and Song Ci, without cultural edification through thousands of hammers, it is difficult to feel the beauty of Chinese characters, and the charm of understanding it is extremely limited. Sports is the same, only by understanding its rules, can you experience its beauty through reading through vision, even if you don't go to the scene, you can understand why it is so fascinating.
"We appreciate football, in fact, to see the two sides around a ball and involved in the state of the program, the competition is strategy; curling, such a slow movement is not visible, but it is fascinating. It is similar to Chinese Go, Western chess, you must have the layout and strategic vision of the chess player, you must know how to stand, how to use the first hand and the back hand, to defend or score..."
Bai Ming sighed that the most difficult thing to control in sports is emotions, "On the surface, what you see is speed, but in fact, it is the comprehensive quality of athletes, it is this person who is in the scene of huge world attention, how to be calm as water." "Just like the biathlon competition of cross-country skiing and shooting in the Winter Olympics, both require speed, and when you come to the shooting range, you must immediately adjust the speed, and quickly reduce the heartbeat of 180 beats per minute to eighty or ninety, "This is the quality of great athletes, such beauty should be known to others." ”
Bai Ming hopes that the Chinese people will not only watch and cheerleaders for the Beijing Olympic Games, but also put more and more positive actions into action. "I must make a set of books to spread the beauty and rules of sports in China." This is also what he can to host the Beijing Olympic Games for China for the first time.
The 10-volume Reading Olympics is the first large-scale color plate series on the mainland to systematically introduce Olympic culture. As an artistic director, Bai Ming not only invited the authors, but also the typesetting to participate personally. The book caused strong repercussions inside and outside the industry, and now when it comes to this matter, Bai Ming is most pleased that "it was quickly sold out at that time."
The style in ancient poetry is a traditional Chinese aesthetic
The "Wenjun Bottle" was selected as the national ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics, in fact, it is not the first time that Bai Ming has held hands with the Beijing Winter Olympics. As early as the time of Beijing's bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2015, the large plate "Red Rhyme - Flying Around" created by Bai Ming with a diameter of nearly 50 centimeters was also given to the International Olympic Committee as a national gift. Red rhymes symbolize good fortune, Bai Ming uses glazed red to create a rich and rich color, and uses "flying around" to express the good wishes of sports to unite people's hearts.
All of Bai Ming's creative aesthetics are derived from tradition and express abstraction. Just like Li Bai's "flying down three thousand feet" and Wang Wei's "Desert Lonely Smoke Straight" poem shows the grandeur, in his view, these are the greatest traditional aesthetics in China, which have been from afar and have become the cultural wealth that the descendants of China will always enjoy.
But from "Red Rhyme - Flying Around" to recreating "Wenjun Bottle", another 7 years have passed. In the past seven years, the speed of China's development is no less than the change in the past 20 or even 30 years of the last century. "This made me rethink one thing, how to let the world see the spiritual connotation of today's China."
Complicated craftsmanship, long time, exquisite technology, is the basic standard of excellence in the past national ceremony. In terms of design, we have also expressed China's strong national strength through ostentatious language, and used the magnificence of materials and forms to reflect the prosperity and strength of the motherland. When such expressions have already been made, Bai Ming hopes to let the world see a truly cultural China, which is not external self-confidence, but self-confidence with foundation, "What should I let them see?" ”
Bai Ming is reluctant to choose something too traditional, expressing tradition is not relying on style, tradition is spirit. "The most important thing is to embody the nutrients extracted from the depths of tradition, what is the depth of our traditions?"
As a ceramic artist, Bai Ming's first thought was, of course, porcelain. "Ceramics represent China is the last word, China's thousands of years of civilization history has so many things to be proud of, when you subtract them one by one, the most internationally recognizable is only porcelain."
Chinese ceramics can lead the history of the West for more than 1600 years, in Bai Ming's view, it is the Lack of Concern of Westerners for the two ancient elements of earth and fire, "They see physical phenomena, they do not see anything other than physical phenomena." This in itself is worth investigating, and there must be cultural significance, scientific and technological significance, and the meaning of thinking style. ”
Remove any intricate details with the most concise fluency
The plum bottle is a traditional Chinese porcelain, and its beautiful shape can be regarded as the first shape of Chinese porcelain. Bai Ming said that the most remarkable thing in porcelain is the thought of utensils and the dignity of utensils. "Artifacts are dignified, we sometimes look at a bottle, why does it make you feel so comforted?"
"Why do the tanks of the Han Dynasty make people feel full and majestic, why do the tanks of the Yuan Dynasty feel very powerful, why did it become rounded again in the Tang Dynasty, and why did the tanks of the Song Dynasty feel that it was rational? If you draw these different tanks as a picture to coincide, in fact, the difference is not large, it is nothing more than a little higher or lower shoulders, a little larger or smaller. ”
Looking at it from the perspective of our rapidly changing and individualized times, the gap between them is very small, but it has formed a history spanning five or six hundred years and the characteristics of different eras, which is exactly what Chinese contribute to the world. "This subtlety is precisely what China wants to see in this day and age."
At present, China's economy is developing rapidly, the country is rich and the people are strong, and there is no need to rely on the appearance of publicity to reflect itself. Just like a truly cultured person, after solving the problem of food and clothing, he will not show wealth. China has entered an era of take-off, which is both historical and the result of traditional origins. At this time, China showed the world implicit tolerance, more culture, and more depth.
Therefore, "Wenjun Bottle" is first of all a straightforward expression of the literati gentleman in the name. In the production, the shape of the classic utensil plum bottle is adopted, and the commonality of many kinds of Chinese utensils is put into it, so it is not a traditional plum bottle. There is no pattern decoration, just outline the minimalist lines on the bottle body, and absorb the charm of ancient murals such as Buddhism and Taoism and Chinese lines, with the simplest fluency, remove any complex details. And how to reflect the "Wenjun bottle" and sports related, it is also fluent. Fluency can make people feel the speed, in the soothing beauty, any movement in the world is beautiful, especially the beauty of ice sports makes people infinitely reverie.
Of course, Bai Ming, who loves sports competitions, also brings some new judgments to his artistic creation when thinking about the human beauty released by sports. "Every time I watch a fierce game, my heart beats faster, my hands and feet are cold, and the whole person gets excited. I think excitement is the most touching time of my life. ”
Such a feeling made Bai Ming realize that when the works created are getting better and better, they must remind themselves to pursue new things, "although new things are not necessarily satisfactory, they must also be innovative." If I don't need to think much to finish creating, then stop. Because such creations have no meaning, they cannot bring spiritual happiness and stimulation. So you have to try to change, and change may excite me or it may be frustrating, but frustration is also fascinating. ”
The purity of the ice and snow gives rise to a kind of beauty associated with poetry
What can represent Chinese culture is not only the country of porcelain, which the world calls porcelain, but also the country of thread (calligraphy) and the country of poetry. Bai Ming said that the depth of China's origin culture is poetic. "I wonder why the Tang Dynasty became a remarkable dynasty, an extremely bold and powerful era in the history of Chinese civilization."
"In the Tang Dynasty, there was Li Bai, a romantic and extravagant poet who despised the powerful and did not even eat fireworks in the world, du Fu who paid attention to the life around him, cared about the suffering of the people, and grew up with the fireworks of the world, and Bai Juyi, who wrote poems that could be understood by old ladies... Abundance is the temperament of a country, just as subtlety is also the temperament of a country. ”
In Bai Ming's view, the most remarkable thing about ice and snow sports is purity, its elegance, speed, rhythm, and color, will make people produce a kind of beauty related to poetry and purity. Therefore, he made a "Wenjun bottle" made of white porcelain, and the whole work is all single white, and even the Olympic symbol is the same color as porcelain. Bai Ming said with a smile that simple shape with a single color, such a simple and elegant "Wenjun bottle" is also rare in the national ceremony.
There are two types of "Wenjun Bottle", namely the Winter Olympic bottle and the Winter Paralympic bottle, the two national ceremonial porcelain bottles are uniformly designed, but there are some changes. Even many people think that the more graceful Winter Paralympic bottle looks more beautiful, more stretched, more emotional.
Bai Ming explained that he had a reverse understanding of the design of the two porcelain bottles. The world civilization that has entered the 21st century is more embodied in the humanistic care for the vulnerable groups and the great respect for the small groups that naturally have a certain difference from the general public. "Powerful people we can ignore, but people with physical disabilities, their understanding of sports and great spirit is no different from that of ordinary people, and even better than ordinary people in some kind of spiritual personality strength, because they have to make greater efforts and embody a more remarkable brilliant brilliance of humanity." 」
As a result, Bai Ming made the "Winter Paralympic Wenjun Bottle" more romantic and lyrical. The line of the Winter Olympic bottle is carved down, and the line of the Winter Paralympic bottle is convex, one concave and one convex, and the yin and yang are expressed. The lines also represent the track, the order, and they form very subtle small changes at the bottom of the bottle, like lotus petals, showing auspicious blessings for the Olympic Games for athletes and for the world.
Through the "Wenjun Bottle", Bai Ming decomposed his understanding of the Winter Olympics into different words to express, including the history of Chinese ceramics and important words of oriental aesthetics, such as implications. When creating, Bai Ming gathered the etiquette, thoughts and emotions of Chinese, "If you want to read it, you have to look at it with your heart, only by reading it can you echo the different thinking of Eastern and Western cultures, and echo your understanding of romantic and mysterious Chinese culture." ”
Standing in the world and looking at Jiangxi, I know why I love it
"Wenjun Bottle" was selected as the national ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, and a grand press conference ceremony was held in Beijing, before Bai Ming had already been interviewed by many media across the country, but this time he accepted our invitation, and as soon as he met, he solemnly expressed his special attention to this interview. He told us that ceramics once again represent China to express their feelings to the world, such publicity and promotion will be more meaningful in Jiangxi, and the discussion, transmission and attention to the aesthetic concept of ceramics triggered by the "Wenjun Bottle" will also have a positive impact on Jiangxi, a traditional ceramic town.
As an artist, Bai Ming believes that the works created in this era must be modern, and it is the artists of this era who give this era a different aesthetic that is different from the past, and it is not a copy of the past.
The biggest feature of the creation of "Wenjun Bottle" is simplicity. "Simplicity is a very modern word, but the aesthetic of simplicity is very old in China." The aesthetics of the Song Dynasty were very simple, and the literati of that time especially hoped to pursue everything in a quiet monochrome with the help of pure jade quality. "Therefore, many of the epidemics in the history of human civilization are spiraling upwards, and they are consistent and different, because their demands are completely different and higher."
In life, many people will have a wrong understanding of tradition, believing that reproducing the same things as the past is inheriting tradition. "In fact, this has nothing to do with tradition, and when we talk about the culture and art of the Tang Dynasty, the Song Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty that we are talking about today, all of them are innovative in their time, which has never been done in the past."
Bai Ming revealed that the reason why he is very happy and interested in taking over the work of making national ceremonies for the Winter Olympics this time is not because there are new works that can be seen by everyone, "I hope to use such things to make everyone think about more things." "For example, the greatest tradition is that cultural and artistic creation has the style of the times, and all works that have the style of the times must have new ideas, and if it can still lead the future, it is the era of a strong country." At present, the creation of Chinese artists should strive to have their own contributions to the future, and Bai Ming believes that the artistic creation of Jiangxi should also be the same, to express the present, to show the emotions of even the moment at that time.
Bai Ming, a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University, the head of the Ceramics Department and a doctoral supervisor, set up his studio in Jingdezhen in an old factory building in 2008. Since 1994, he has brought graduates to Jingdezhen every year, bringing a total of 28 classes. Therefore, for so many years, he will stay in Jingdezhen for a long time every year, and he has done a lot of things for Jingdezhen and his hometown. For example, the publication of "Jingdezhen Traditional Porcelain Making Technology" won the 14th "China Book Award"; for example, he actively promoted the third Chinese contemporary ceramic art exhibition being held at the Art Museum of Nanchang High-tech Zone.
We often say that those who have seen the world will have a broad vision, a broad mind, and a pattern of thought. Bai Ming, who was born and raised on the shores of Poyang Lake, went out of Jiangxi to see the world, and now often comes back because he thinks his hometown is very cute. He believes, "When I look at my hometown from the perspective of the world, I know why I love it and what to do for it." Therefore, he is very happy to accept our interview on the rainy afternoon of spring and holidays, and is willing to hold hands with the media in his hometown to jointly convey the ideological pattern in cultural and artistic creation, and art is contemporary!
Text/Photo Duan Ping, all-media reporter of Jiangnan Metropolis Daily
![Internationally renowned artist and leader in the contemporary ceramics industry - Bai Ming[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)