On the first day of the New Year of the Tiger, I wrote a picture of "Tiger Tiger Shengwei" to wish everyone a good new year. At that time, I wrote two pictures, and it was very interesting to compare them, so I took them out and told you about them. Notice that I'm not talking about calligraphy, I'm not talking about calligraphy, I'm talking about universal aesthetic experience.
Please compare and see, what is the difference between the two works? Basically no different, the difference lies only in the position of the two new words, the next point of the previous word, which is also the first word I released on the first day of the New Year, and the last word is a little higher. Then, the interesting place comes: please use a little time to compare, from the overall feeling, do you think that the first word weighs heavier, the same weight as other words? And the second new word, does it feel very light, and the weight of the other three words is very different? But if you only compare the strokes of the two new words, the thickness and thin structure are basically the same, why is it that just because the word is moved up to one centimeter, there will be a change from heavy to light?
The reason is that we all have common cognitions in our heads. Each of us is a social person, society is based on the community as a unit, and the premise of the existence of the community is that we can communicate with each other, so there will be a lot of consensus: for example, everyone speaks the same language, and for example, if we say a "water" word, we all know what it means, and those who have faith will agree with what is auspicious and what is ominous, etc. This is a common cognition that belongs to the cultural category.
There is also a common cognition, which is perceptual, such as fear of darkness and warmth of light. The reason why the word is moved up a centimeter to become lighter is a common cognition from the perception class, it is: we generally think that what goes down is heavy, weighty, and the typical scene is that the big stone rolls down the mountain, and the thing up is light, weightless, such as dandelions, hydrogen balloons, even if it is so heavy aircraft flying in the sky, we will feel that the plane is very light.
Please look back at the two works, the word down with the bottom of the tiger character on the right is flat, we will automatically think that this flat line is similar to the ground, although the word is shorter than the tiger word, but because it feels that the word is falling down, it falls heavily on the ground, so there is no difference in the weight of the two words. And move the new word up a centimeter, we will feel the new word leave the ground, it becomes an upward force. Just a centimeter apart, one feels sinking down, one feels drifting up, so it feels like they weigh completely differently. It should be emphasized that I don't think that because I say this, I think that to ensure the same weight, I must only stick to the "ground". This is just one of the ways, any creation, in the end, is to "silent is better than sound", follow the rules of creation, and always try to break through the rules.
Many artists will use common cognition to create, or to put it this way, because of the common cognition, so their creation is so wonderful, and many times, their method will deliberately stimulate this cognition. A contemporary artist made something that looked very much like a hydrogen balloon, very large, as if it would float away quickly with less effort, but in fact it weighed several tons. He is taking advantage of the collision of visual light and practical heaviness, "what you see is not what you get."
The more famous creation is the strange bearded Dalí. The famous melting clock softens the steel that we feel is incomparably hard in our cognition, softening like dissolved ice cream, and if we don't have the common cognition that steel is very hard, then his softening treatment will not bring such a shocking impact. And his space elephant, why not get a space cat or space dog? Because neither cats nor dogs are in our common perception of "feeling very heavy", and elephants are typical of very heavy cognition. So when Dalí changes the elephant's feet to be thin, tall and floating, he is impacting our common understanding of elephants, which is the authentic artistic impact!
So, what aesthetic feelings will this creative approach bring? Artists use such cognitive collisions to tell us: we can look at the world and ourselves from another perspective, do not be trapped in the inherent framework, the heavy is not necessarily heavy, the light is not necessarily light, the difficult is not necessarily difficult, the easy is not necessarily easy, the real is not necessarily true, and the false is not necessarily false. Of course, art can be understood from many angles and levels, and my understanding is not the standard nor the only answer.
To amplify the question a little more, why do humans need art? It seems to me to be like why we need to eat a barbecue. Is a barbecue a must? No. Will I starve to death without eating barbecue? No. So why do we always feel the need for a barbecue at some point? Because eating barbecue will bring people a sense of pleasure outside the stylized trajectory of going to work, overtime, and sleeping, barbecue is not only satisfying for the mouth, but also a spiritual level of relaxation. Art, on the other hand, is equivalent to giving our spiritual world a barbecue and making the spirit happy.
If it is mysterious, our human love for barbecue may not only be because we need to relax, but also because barbecue can awaken the most primitive genes in our human body. Barbecue can be said to be a kind of "back to the ancestors", we humans first found cooked food, that is, accidentally put the raw meat from hunting back into the fire, this is the beginning of barbecue, and the wonderful thing is that the earliest art of human beings is to depict hunting activities on the cave wall, so art and barbecue are actually quite related. Of course, you should leave me alone with this view.
Back to the point, how do we get the pleasure that art brings? This is a bit more complicated than eating barbecue. In the face of art, the most inappropriate mentality is also the mentality of many people now - I think good is good. Be careful not to interpret this sentence in reverse, I am not saying that what looks bad is art. Many people will think that as long as they feel good and look happy, they are good art, which is the purpose of mistaken art. Art does bring pleasure, but instead of bringing sensual pleasure, pure sensual pleasure, erotic films are more intense than art, and even watching animal slaughter in wildlife documentaries can bring more sensory stimulation, so why look at art? The pleasure brought by art is to let us improve ourselves through art, and it is the pleasure after the improvement of our spiritual world, which is the unique value of art.
So what kind of mentality should be used to face art in order to enhance the spiritual world? I would portray it as the mentality of the deep mountain desperate to find a mobile phone signal, an urgent effort to seek communication, trying to communicate with the author through the work. In the mountains, the mobile phone signal is very weak, or even not, but if you want to communicate with the outside world, what will you do? Will actively hold the mobile phone around, hoping to find a signal, this is the correct artistic aesthetic mentality, rather than seeing the signal is not smooth, directly throw the mobile phone and scold the street. When encountering a work of art that feels very strange to you, it is very normal, do not rush to scold, rush to deny, such a denial is worthless, to think about why the author expresses it this way, to understand, if you still deny it later, then this denial is already valuable, people can not call all works of art, but first try to call it, the process of this attempt is the process of improving the spiritual world. If you like it at first glance, you should also ask why, think about why you call the author immediately, where is the reason, and gradually turn your feelings into understanding.
Such an artistic aesthetic seems to be quite tiring, right? Yes, please remember that not only does artistic creation need to be painstaking, but artistic aesthetics are also very laborious, rather than going to the art museum to take a photo and punch a card. For example, if you do not understand the significance of the basho rockery in traditional Chinese culture, it is difficult to understand the spiritual loneliness of the characters sitting in front of the banana rockery in Chen Hongshou's pen, and you cannot hear the deep sigh of the characters in the painting.
I said that sixteen is a fishing rod, when you have time, you can't help but tempt you to move the fishing rod, fish for the cold moon, and explore the beautiful aesthetic world together, thank you for seeing you here.