Today, aesthetic power has become the core competitiveness of a person. A person with aesthetic power has a whole poetic world, where he can discover infinite beauty and hope. And for those who lack aesthetic power, this poetic door is closed, in the world of these people, there will always be only practicality and utilitarianism, their emotions are indifferent, life is boring, and all the good things in the world are doomed to be out of touch with them.
Therefore, many parents attach great importance to cultivating their children's aesthetic ability from an early age, and often take their children to art galleries and museums to admire famous paintings, hoping that children can understand the aesthetic power from these famous paintings.
However, if you want to appreciate a famous painting, you first need to have a deep artistic background. For ignorant children, letting them appreciate famous paintings as soon as they come up is tantamount to teaching calculus to primary school students! What is hidden behind the famous painting, not to mention the child, even the parents themselves may not be able to say clearly!
Take Van Gogh. As one of the most well-known painters in the history of art, even an "art layman" who had never seen any paintings must have heard of Van Gogh's name. Throughout the art circle, the fame can be so great that almost one hand can be counted, such as Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and other top art masters. But why is Van Gogh so famous? Do you know what's so good about Van Gogh's work?
In response to these problems, Japanese female artist Masako Yuki pointed out that if you want to guide children to appreciate works of art, understand art stories, and guide them to contact art and fall in love with art, you can't directly instill those boring knowledge into them, which will only have a counterproductive effect and dampen children's enthusiasm for learning art.
To this end, Masako Yuki proposed a new concept of picture book creation, that is, like meeting with friends, meeting famous paintings, and encountering art. Under the guidance of this concept, Masako Yuki created a set of picture books called "Hello, Art", which introduced the works of the world's top masters such as Van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin and Picasso to the children, as well as the different artistic styles of these masters.
In this set of picture books, Masako Yuki uses poetry or prose as lively and beautiful words, full of scene sense and dialogue, to break the distance between children and famous paintings, guide them to immerse themselves in the ocean of art happily and freely, and silently improve their aesthetic power and appreciation.
Now let's talk about why Van Gogh's fame is so loud?
In fact, the answer is very simple: because Van Gogh's painting style is very unique, it can even be said that his style is unique in the world!
The peculiarity of Van Gogh's painting style lies in his heavy brushstrokes. In Van Gogh's paintings, there is always a thick layer of paint piled up – how thick is it? It's as if it wasn't painted with a pen, but squeezed directly onto the canvas. It is said that Van Gogh always used twice as much paint as other painters when painting, but this special painting method can create an inexplicable three-dimensional feeling.
In addition, his special painting style is also reflected in the color matching style. Van Gogh liked to use blue + yellow, or red + green and other colors. In colorology, this collocation method is called "hedging", that is, putting together colors with completely opposite phases. Other painters would never dare to try this kind of collocation easily, you know, once it is not done well, it will be self-defeating and ruin the entire painting. And Van Gogh's awesomeness is that he can easily control these wild colors. Because of this, Van Gogh's paintings have the strongest contrast, the brightest tones, and can be recognized at a glance.
So how did Van Gogh develop this skill?
Van Gogh was very keen to learn color theory, and he not only mastered the traditional "synchronous contrast" technique, that is, juxtaposing complementary colors to make them emphasize each other. And Van Gogh also learned the latest "optical mixing method" at that time, that is, juxtaposing multiple solid colors on the canvas, rather than mixing them together, in order to obtain more vibrant colors.
In addition, under the influence of the Neo-Impressionist painters Pissarro, Seurat and others, Van Gogh also abandoned the dull and heavy colors of the early days of his painting career, and began to use high brightness, high purity, and high brightness colors, and it was these bright colors that made Van Gogh's paintings appear full of tension.
But in the theory of color, Van Gogh has gone farther than anyone else, and his use of complementary colors has reached the point of being fascinating!
What is a complementary color? This is actually a fine art term. In a 360° color ring, we call each set of 180° relative colors a set of complementary colors. For example, yellow and blue, red and green, are very classic complementary colors.
If the two complementary colors are reconciled with each other in a certain proportion, a hue that is approximately dark gray and very close to black is obtained. Moreover, when two complementary colors are placed together, it also brings a very strong color contrast effect. In Van Gogh's paintings, this color effect is further emphasized. For example, Van Gogh liked to paint sunlight a bright orange-yellow color, and then paint the shadow of the object into a deep blue-purple, that is, an orange-yellow complementary color, so his paintings will bring the audience a very strong vitality.
When Van Gogh took this technique to the extreme, a strange masterpiece was born.
"This is one of the ugliest paintings I've ever painted!"
In a letter to his brother, Van Gogh specifically mentioned the famous Night Cafe, saying to his brother: "I painted this painting to express the idea that the so-called café is a place of depravity, madness and crime. ”
If you compare this painting of an indoor café with another painting of Van Gogh's outdoor café, you can see what he means.
The café is the soul of Europe, and in that famous café exterior painting, Van Gogh accurately captures such a moving picture: on a summer night, three or five friends gather in the café to talk and laugh, the blue starry sky reflects the orange and yellow gas lamps under the terrace, and the lights sprinkle on the pebbles with violet and pink colors. Yellow-orange lights and the deep blue night sky complement each other, creating a quiet and happy atmosphere.
In contrast, in this indoor café, there is a layer of anxiety that cannot be dissolved. If the outside of the café is the nightlife of your dreams, the inside of the café is a nightmare; if the outside of the café is a place for friends to chat and laugh, then the inside of the café is a place where you can ruin yourself, make you crazy and commit crime!
In this painting, Van Gogh uses very strong complementary shades of red and green to express and emphasize the uneasiness and anxiety that pervade the interior of the café – as Van Gogh himself put it: "I try to use red and green as a means to express the terrible passions of mankind!" ”
When we look at this painting, the first thing that catches our eyes is the blood-red walls and the green ceiling. These two intensely conflicting colors draw all of our attention to the past. Moreover, there was no balance between the two colors, and the blood red of the walls clearly overshadowed the green, creating a strong uneasiness. The space left on the canvas, controlled by a sulfur color full of anxiety, not only erodes the green pool table, but also clashes with the blood-red walls, inserting into the blood-red walls with great force!
In addition, the scene of the painting itself is also very confusing: the customers lie on their arms in strange postures, the glasses and bottles on the table form strange angles, and the perspective view of the whole painting also has a distorted texture. The lines in the painting do not seem to be on the same plane, and these slightly curved lines form an eerie sense of space, which makes you feel a sense of fear that you will be suddenly pulled into the painting and cannot escape.
Two months after completing the painting, Van Gogh's old friend, another famous painter, Paul Gauguin, came to Arles to eat and live with Van Gogh. This was something Van Gogh had been waiting for for a long time, and therefore, Gauguin's arrival brought him great joy.
However, when the initial excitement passed, the sensitive and lonely Van Gogh developed a new depression. He became more and more worried that one day, Gauguin would abandon himself and continue to advance towards his artistic path, leaving only his lonely self behind him. The fear of abandonment that pervades Van Gogh's heart is the despair and loneliness we can feel in this painting of an indoor café.
The lonely Van Gogh lived his whole life in his own small art world, but his loneliness eventually grew into a colorful and bright garden In this boundless huge garden, there are not only sunflowers, irises, apricot blossoms, but also stars, wheat fields, cafes... Van Gogh uses flowing and vibrant brushstrokes, brilliant and powerful colors, to show us the exuberant vitality and vitality of everything in the world.
If Gauguin's greatness lies in his ego and rebellion, and Monet's greatness lies in his love for man and nature, then Van Gogh's greatness lies in the fact that no matter how embarrassing life is, his works are always bright, beautiful, innocent, and positive!