Birds chirp among the mist-shrouded mountains, ink-drawn vines grow freely, and mountain flowers sway in the wind. A boulder stood tall, and two small frogs crawled out, as if indulging in the spring of Yandang Mountain. On the evening of April 11, the third episode of the documentary "China in Fine Arts", "Remembering the Yandang Mountain Flowers", was broadcast, and the opening animation scene made Pan Tianshou's classic masterpiece "fly" out of the drawing paper and become a three-dimensional and perceptible visual spectacle.
In the past documentary programs about art history, large-scale interviews seem to have formed a program "routine", but the recently launched "China in fine arts" has broken the routine, in the form of a 12-minute short film per episode, an episode around a piece of modern and contemporary Chinese art works, with the most cutting-edge digital technology to explain the essence of the work, highlighting the cultural beauty of the Chinese nation, the beauty of art, so that the art classics shine with new brilliance.
In the first episode of "Shrimp", accompanied by the stirring sound of the guzheng, Qi Baishi's shrimp swim in the transparent water, a pair of crabs hold up their claws to "fierce battle", the scene is lively, so that the audience can "dive" into the world of water and grass, a view of the vigorous vitality. The documentary uses 3D modeling technology to "activate" 2D works, making everything in the painter's pen and ink world "come alive" and bringing a sense of real immersion.
Recreating scenes from artists is also a highlight of the show. In the first episode of the show, the actor played the white bearded robe of the old man of Shiraishi, and the appearance was exquisite. He fled all the way from Qi Azhi, a countryman in Xiangtan, Hunan Province, all the way to Beiping to become a "North Drift Painter". From his perspective, the audience felt the growth process of the peasant children, and also had a deeper understanding of the local feelings and home and country feelings of the old man of Baishi. The program recreates the painter's painting process with real people "hand substitution", he outlines the shrimp body with light ink, depicts the shrimp head in thick ink, the curvature of each section of the shrimp back arch, the bending and changing of each shrimp whisker, while showing its ink painting technique at close range, it also makes people feel as if they are immersed in the scene and witness historical moments.
Although each episode is only 12 minutes long, the span of time and space carried in it is huge. Starting from a painting, it intercepts the social and contemporary background of the creation of the work, reflecting the artist's artistic pursuit and spiritual world. The third episode, "Remembering the Flowers of Yandang Mountain", revisits Pan Tianshou's former residence in Hangzhou and the archives of the China Academy of Art, and tells the reasons for Pan Tianshou's thinking about the innovation of Chinese painting through historical images. As a result, the audience also better understands why Pan Tianshou, inspired by the times, uses the mountain flowers and boulders of Yandang Mountain as the theme to express the vigorous Chinese spring.
While highlighting the innovation of audiovisual means, "China in fine arts" is still interspersed with expert interpretations, adding academicity to the documentary with the professional appreciation of "lightweight". For example, the first episode of "Shrimp" invited Wu Hongliang, president of the Beijing Academy of Painting, to appreciate Qi Baishi's painting skills of "a whisker is enough to make future generations sigh", and the second episode of "Wansong Smoke Mist" invited Yu Yang, a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and Guo Shifu, a research institute of the National Academy of Painting of China, to analyze Huang Binhong's iconic ink method, and mobilized visual language to make experts interpret it more perceptively.
With science and technology to lower the threshold of reading and understanding art, the documentary "China in Fine Arts" has made useful explorations in promoting the popularization of public aesthetic education and activating traditional culture.