Brightly colored embroidered pillow tops, lively and cute puppets and tiger toys, lifelike New Year pictures, shadow puppets, imaginative Shehuo masks... Walking into the National Museum of China "Going to the Folk - Pan Lusheng Folk Art Exhibition", visitors They will all be moved by these warm, simple and full of life folk art.
The exhibition focuses on the folk art collection, folk art research and artistic creation of Prof. Pan Lusheng, vice chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and chairman of the Chinese Folk Writers Association. It exhibits more than 500 pieces (sets) of traditional folk art works and contemporary art creations. The five parts of picking pearls and picking silk, expanding fortunes, chasing glory, and inheriting ingenuity, systematically display the collection, research and transformation and development of folk art in contemporary art creation, vividly reflecting that contemporary folk art workers are rooted in the folk, Inheriting the value pursuit of ingenuity.
Around this exhibition, our reporter interviewed Pan Lusheng, and listened to him tell about his original intention and insights of "going to the folk", the inheritance of traditional folk art in contemporary times and the nourishment it provides for the artist's creation.
Rescue and protect folk art
is our mission
Reporter: When did you first start field research and how did you feel?
Why did you insist on it later, and what drove you to continue to go to the people?
Pan Lusheng: In the early 1980s, I started to investigate and collect folklore.
I remember when I went to Shidao and Dayu Island in Yantai, Shandong to sketch in the summer of 1981, I saw the window grilles pasted by the local fishermen on the windows were very vivid and vivid, and the big fish dishes used in daily life. Create material.
Later, I used the winter and summer vacations to inspect the New Year pictures, paper-cuts, dough sculptures, toys, clay sculptures and other folk handicrafts in Heze, Jining, Binzhou, Gaomi in Shandong, Bozhou in Anhui, Shangqiu in Henan and other places.
At that time, the folk handicrafts were not commercialized as they are today, full of local flavor and simple life emotions.
After work, with the encouragement of Zhang Ding, Wang Chaowen, Zhang Daoyi, Sun Changlin and other teachers, I further embarked on the road of folk art investigation, research, rescue and protection.
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out in his speech at the Symposium on Literary and Art Work: "Chinese aesthetics emphasizes on materialistic aspirations, embodies truth in emotions, emphasizes conciseness, conciseness and restraint, emphasizes both form and spirit, and has a profound artistic conception, emphasizing knowledge, emotion, intention, and action. Unity." Folk art is the creation of the beauty of life and the concentrated expression of the spirit of Chinese aesthetics. As long as you walk into the field, you will be infected by the strong, simple, warm and beautiful emotions.
So immersed in it, I completed my first monograph "On Chinese Folk Art" in 1990.
Wang Chaowen, an older generation of writers and artists from Luyi in Yan'an, wrote in the preface that the publication of the book "is conducive to eliminating the negative influence of national cultural nihilism."
This sentence had a profound effect on me.
Since then, the spontaneous field investigation has gradually transformed into a conscious action to protect the national folk culture, and the scope of investigation and collection has gradually expanded from Shandong to the whole country.
The ideal of goodness and beauty in folk art and the encouragement of the older generation of writers and artists have given me firm strength.
Reporter: What memorable stories did you have in your fieldwork?
How do you think the changes of the times have affected the development of folk art?
Pan Lusheng: The fieldwork directly confronts folk artists and their works, which brings me rich feelings and inspiration.
Each piece in this exhibition has unforgettable memories and stories.
When I was a student, there was no income, and the main way to collect collections was to exchange them for assignments.
The Jiaodong paper-cuts and New Year pictures in the early collections were exchanged for portraits of peasant friends.
There are also objects that seem to have no valuable value and are picked up after being discarded.
Folk art collection is not like antique collection. It collects daily necessities. The important thing is to discover with heart and heart and find the value in it.
The changes of the times and social transformation have had a huge impact on folk art.
It is the historical mission of cultural scholars to rescue and protect folk art and maintain the cultural context of national life.
from local utensils
Get warmth and inspiration
Reporter: This exhibition displays a large number of folk art collections, including traditional embroidery, textiles, woodcuts, printing and dyeing, New Year pictures, clay sculptures, paper-cuts, porcelain paintings, shadow puppets and other crafts.
Please introduce one or two important collections and the stories behind them.
Pan Lusheng: Folk art objects, as handmade objects, originate from the need for emotional communication and expression in life.
There is a group of pottery models for children in the exhibition. In my hometown of Heze, they are pottery models that children use to play with mud.
They are both informative and entertaining.
"Baby Model" is a part of children's entertainment life.
After a child has a child model, he always wants to compete among his peers, who has more stories, tells better, and does more than anyone else.
Through exchanges or exchanges, the children naturally increased their knowledge, learned about historical allusions or myths and legends, and also internalized the moral concepts of benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom and trustworthiness, the meaning of auspicious patterns, beautiful expectations and the ordinary feelings of people in local life. , become the cornerstone of their personal values as they grow up.
I think, this is memory, it is nostalgia, it is the extension of living in the local utensils.
Without them, how can this hometown and life emotion be maintained and how can it be relied on?
We need folk art, which is the link and the bridge to the wider and farther realms of time and mind.
Reporter: There are also your artistic creations in the exhibition. Please introduce a few representative works. What inspiration did they come from, and what nutrients did they draw from folk art?
Pan Lusheng: Art is like the waves in the long river of life.
Drawing creative nourishment from people's life and practice is the basic path for the creative transformation and innovative development of Chinese excellent traditional culture.
In the folk art exhibition "Go to the Folk", the series of works such as "Luban Line" and "There is a Distance Between the Central Banks" were inspired by the ink buckets of folk woodworking tools.
Ink bucket is an important tool made by traditional Chinese woodworkers. Different from the standard measuring tools in the West, the extension of the line is flexible, and it contains the creativity of the connection and fusion of people and things, and things and things.
Through the vertical and horizontal interweaving and infinite extension and intersection of the ink fountain line, it is transformed into a schematic representation of contemporary compositional meaning, and the contemporary inspirational meaning of traditional values is implied.
The work "Master Craftsman on the Silk Road" is based on the theme of "Hundred Craftsmen" on the Silk Road. It uses the form of long scrolls to depict the scenes of traditional craftsmanship on the Silk Road, including handicraft production, trade and commerce, and life pictures of customs and culture. At the same time, it depicts the sea. Pearl mining, trade and shipbuilding on the Silk Road showed the scene of people carrying silk, ceramics and spices on watercrafts, sea boats and other means of transport.
The Silk Road is not only a trade road connecting the East and the West, but also a road for the dissemination of traditional Chinese craftsmanship. This work highlights the dissemination of the works of hundreds of craftsmen on the Silk Road by showing the working scenes, skills inheritance, customs and habits of the master craftsmen on the Silk Road. The history shows the development and changes of traditional crafts on the Silk Road.
The spread of innovation stirs up
wider spiritual resonance
Reporter: The video broadcast on the exhibition site mentioned the overseas exchange activities you participated in.
In the process of exchange, how do overseas audiences view and evaluate traditional Chinese folk art and contemporary artworks created on this basis?
Pan Lusheng: Good works of art can arouse the emotional resonance of the viewers.
The silk, ceramic and metal media paintings in this exhibition were exhibited in France, Italy, Spain and other countries in 2014.
Overseas audiences showed great interest in works full of Chinese aesthetic concepts, and were amazed at the creative energy bursting out of the profound Chinese culture.
Professor Ana Maria of the University of Venice in Italy said: "The crystal clear Luban line looks for directions and paths in the maze map like the brain's structure, runs silently and endlessly, sometimes breaks, sometimes continues, jumps and circles in huge circles. On the porcelain vase, the flowers of fresh life bloom in the endless continuation.” Starting from folk art, returning to the origin of life and exploring the expression space of art also provide a possibility for the dialogue between Eastern and Western art on the spiritual level.
Reporter: Are exhibitions themed on folk art attractive to young people?
How to let more young people know and feel the roots of our national culture?
Pan Lusheng: In local folk art, there are roots of Chinese culture and natural affinity.
Now, the local teaching materials for primary and secondary schools absorb ethnic folk culture and art, and children have been taught to love their hometown and land since they were young, and they have acquired a certain degree of cultural awareness to understand the excellent traditional Chinese culture.
In this exhibition, the most popular among young people are the installation of "Door God" transformed from New Year pictures and the "Heaven and Earth" series of fiber works. They stopped in front of these two sets of works and took pictures together.
Our culture and art have roots and traditions, and they are constantly evolving and developing. The pace of life and the flow of time are not stopped, and new generations are growing up. What we want to pass on is a kind of spiritual power that has been around for a long time, which is cordial and long-lasting.