The pictorial art of mankind is rich in all kinds of information, and it is the product of the role of creators and historical contexts. Any work of art has physical properties and is at the same time an artifact. Through contextualized, partial interpretations of the past or present, art history, archaeology, and anthropology reveal this creative and interactive process from multiple perspectives: artists translate life experiences and cultural ideas into symbolic images that, in turn, shape our historical and cultural concepts.
A metamorphosis of a piece of iron
A piece of "broken iron" entered the sight of Zheng Yan, a professor at Peking University, and wrote "Iron Robes: Destruction and Rebirth in Art History" (Life, Reading, and Xinzhi Triptych Bookstore, January 2022 edition).
The Iron Robe: Destruction and Rebirth in Art History
By Zheng Yan
Life, Reading, and New Knowledge Triptych Bookstore was published in January 2022
This piece of residual iron is called "Iron Robe" and belongs to the Changqing Lingyan Temple in Shandong. Standing on the edge of a mountain spring, it has weathered the wind and frost but has not floated rust, and its touch is soft and clean, which is in stark contrast to the fleeting spring flowers and autumn moons around it. Countless troublemakers have left psalms for it, and legend has it that it "gushes out of the ground" and "I am clothed with the iron of Buddha's mercy".
Zheng Yan started from the material characteristics of the iron robe, and the "natural paddy field pattern" on the iron robe was actually a seam cast in the model, using the sand breaking method, and its casting was between the early Tang Dynasty and the Sheng Tang Dynasty. After determining the chronological range, we will continue to deduce its more complete image and reconstruct the historical facts related to it. Wu Zhou made Buddhas, and Wu Zong destroyed Buddhas. The iron casting Vajra at Lingyan Temple, who was responsible for the protection of the Dharma, lost all his power in this disaster, and his body was crushed to pieces, and there were iron robes left in this place. Zheng Yan then quoted various legends, such as the story of the Six Ancestors Huineng's attainment of the Dharma, and expounded Nanzong Zen's concept of the robes, which were not only the robes of the law, but also the evidence of the secret tradition.
On the basis of the rich and detailed classic materials and the comparison of archaeological excavations, Zheng Yan reveals the deep cultural basis for the sacralization of the statue of Vajralus. The physical characteristics of this artwork play an important role. Iron objects, forged and reborn from the fire, are very similar to the Buddhist worship of relics, and this association further reinforces the belief in this piece of iron, whether it is seen as a part of an image or the clothes of a saint. The years are deep, the wind and rain are devastated, and it transforms into a symbol of time in a silent and standing posture, allowing poets to feel that "the present and the ancient rise and fall".
An iron robe, its production, destruction and imagination, connecting the history of historical events and the shaping of ideas. In the outer part of the book, Zheng Yan adds four examples, analyzing the Afang Palace Diagram, the Dragon Jar and the Wu Pot, the Golden Ash Pile of Liuzhou, and the installation art "Where to Stir Up Dust" made by contemporary artist Xu Bing collecting the dust of the "9/11" event, which forms a confirmation with the iron robe, from tangible to intangible, from ancient to modern, material materials, modeling techniques, visual language, combined with the relevant context of the construction of art forms, together to promote the concept of nothingness into a real image.
"Fragmentation is the result of fragmentation, and fragmentation is an event." Zheng Yan said, "Saving, taking responsibility, boundaries, concealing, prevaricating, fighting, repairing, discarding, burying, consternation, stealing joy, mourning, recalling, forgetting, etc. are also events..." Thus, a static piece of residual iron has become a huge container containing countless dynamic events.
The creation of indigenous high art
Also becoming containers are paintings. The Pintu pips were one of the last indigenous people in australia's remote areas who had not yet had contact with the outside world. In the 1950s-1960s, most of them came out of the jungle as a result of the "Pintu Pippi Patrol" relocation program. In 1971, some of them began to translate traditional motifs and cave paintings from ritual and body decoration into a new, partially commercial form, the "acrylic painting on the plane," which was sold to white people in exchange for money.
Fred M. Thompson, professor of anthropology at New York University and president of the American Society for Ethnographic Studies, said that he would not be able to do so. R. Miles's book, The Culture of Painting: The Creation of Indigenous High Art (Translated Forest Press, February 2022), is an academic achievement at the intersection of art, anthropology and material culture. What attracted me to the book was the difference and fusion of the indigenous concept of creation and the artistic concept of western white people.
Painting Culture: The Creation of Indigenous High Art
【Beauty】Fred by R. Miles
Published by Yilin Publishing House in February 2022
The original intention of the Pingtu Pipers to paint is not aesthetic needs, but a record of life. The subject of these paintings is their dreams, which are based on one's identification with the named place, with the homeland. Their paintings are objective ritual performances for others based on ancestral myths, presenting these knowledge and images to white people. Painters initially expected the existence of a relationship that fulfilled their role by showing, giving, and receiving important objects.
The flatheads emphasize that the value of painting lies in their "authenticity" (their dream origins) rather than in their beauty. Whether they are badly painted or beautifully painted, the value of these paintings comes from dreams, so all paintings deserve a similar price, because each painting represents "a very important dream".
From the text narrative and the matching pictures, we can understand that the important figures in the flat figure piper painting are circles and lines. This circular-line graphic and intricate pattern composition is both figurative and symbolic. They represent scenes of daily life such as labor, rest, walking, intercourse, eating, and sleeping in countless combinations, as well as the hearings and teachings they receive from their ancestors and from their dreams. The subjects of the paintings are closely linked to the specific journeys of the land and the dream figures, and most painting techniques use the motifs of the creation period to represent the landforms, thus establishing a connection with mythological stories. These paintings express the religious life of the aborigines and the knowledge of the relationship between painting and the land.
Many people who buy paintings may initially have little interest in the meaning they contain. Subsequently, the flat-dipty pipa painters discovered the parts of the paintings used for sale that catered to the aesthetic preferences of the buyer, and the "paintings produced as practice" changed in both form and content, imagining or advocating that their circulation would enable value conversion in the form of economic exchange. Aboriginal painting culture gradually moved away from the framework of anthropology, into the realm of fine art, into the vision of Western viewers and patrons, and challenged the way we are familiar with the formation of cultural products: money is paid for dreams, not completed works.
For both parties, this is a reconstruction, an attempt to redefine the meaning of Aboriginal image making. These paintings entered a global trading system, meaning a change in the connections between these objects and the communities that created them.
That's how art shaped France
Eyes turned to France again. Catherine de Medici's admiration for the thin waist gave birth to the corset fashion that has been popular in Europe for hundreds of years.
In France Because of Art: From the Birth of France to the Napoleonic Era (Beijing United Publishing Company, January 2022), Weng Xin tells this anecdote. The women in the famous paintings, their bodies often bound into hourglasses, and their breasts protruding high from the top of their clothes, are exactly the intricate and varied artistic style of the Baroque period, full of exaggerated dramatic effects. Painting embodies the fashion of the times, and art is a good memory reservoir.
France Because of Art: From the Birth of France to the Napoleonic Era
Weng Xin
Published by Beijing United Publishing Company in January 2022
In terms of glory and influence, French art is indeed a bellwether. The cultivation of taste has undergone the infiltration of time. We often think that French art represents a refined and understated elegance, a belief in beauty and a rejection of vulgarity. This is a single influence, and Weng Xin's work presents a more three-dimensional, multiple aspect.
The book talks about many artists. Poussin, Boucher, Ingres, David, Delacroix and other trendsetting figures have appeared, they have practiced their artistic ideals, and their personal fates have been shared with the fortunes of france. For example, Jacques-Louis David's artistic career is deeply embedded in the historical process of the French Revolution, and paintings such as The Death of Marat, Napoleon Crossing the Grand Saint Bernard Pass, and Napoleon's Coronation serve as historical images and influence the understanding of French history in later generations.
In addition to these familiar artists, the book also talks about many forgotten artists who are now less well known but also of some importance at the time.
Claude Loren, Charles Le Brun, Jean-Battist Götze, Alexander-François Deporte... Art history rarely talks about them now, but they were also household names at that time. Loren's paintings are light and pleasing to the eye, and the audience feels nourishing; Geertz's paintings penetrate the indoctrination of religious morality and are the "national painters" of the time. The popularity of these painters reflects the aesthetic orientation of their time, and the themes of their paintings are mostly depictions of social landscapes, while the decline and forgotten phenomenon of their reputations is the result of the decline of fashion and the change of life.
For France, history and art seem to be twins. Although the French infuse sensual pleasure, the law of reason, delicacy, mystery and the luxurious atmosphere of the royal family and nobility into their art, they will also have secular images of civilian tastes, city atmosphere, dexterity and wisdom, some paintings are majestic, some paintings are flashy and shallow, some painters are famous in history, and some painters are like clouds... All of this is an indispensable part of the development of art.
We are entering the era of visual culture, and images are increasingly becoming an important tool for shared cognition and communication in the lives of modern people. These three works reveal the role of pictorial culture in shaping the history of countries, ethnic groups, and the communication of different groups of people from three perspectives, and on the basis of reading them, we can also expand our horizons and thinking, and better understand the origin of the world in which we live.
Author:Xiao Lin
Editor: Zhou Yiqian
Editor-in-Charge: Zhu Zifen
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.