【Treading the Snow to Seek Beauty】

  "Beauty is still beautiful at low temperatures," Brodsky said.

  To sum up, in all weather, ice and snow days are probably the cutest.

People shelter from the wind and rain, but are willing to face the ice and snow and play with it.

Snow is like jade and dust covers everything, like a grand séance ball, the world turns into another space with the shaking of ice crystals.

As a result, the time of ice and snow has become a day-to-day variable, a small miracle in ordinary life.

  In the history of world art, the most famous painting involving ice and snow sports is probably Bruegel the Elder's "Hunter in the Snow".

In the painting, the Netherlands in winter is clear and blue, with white snow and dead branches.

In the close-up, the hunters return from the snow with a group of hounds, with their backs to the picture, they walk down the mountain, every step is immersed in the thick snow; in the distance are the lake, the city, the road and the mountains.

Birds are still flying, people are enjoying season-limited games on the frozen lake, and you can see that in the 16th century, people already had amusements such as ice hockey, curling, sledding, and ice skating, although they were still far away Not a sport in the modern sense.

  In fact, "The Hunter in the Snow" is not an independent painting, it is the most well-known painting in Bruegel's "Seasonal Paintings".

The importance of "Hunter in the Snow" is somewhat related to the fact that it represents a new tradition, which is "winter landscape painting".

  Bruegel's love of natural beauty has a long history.

In his youth, like most of his contemporaries, he inevitably embarked on a humanistic journey to Italy.

The difference is that Italian paintings and sculptures did not conquer this talented artist, but instead he was thinking about the natural scenery along the way.

In particular, the Alps, which are covered with snow all year round, have since become a holy mountain in his heart and one of the motifs of his creation.

It can be seen that the mountain shape in "Hunter in the Snow" does not match the local mountain shape in the Netherlands.

In fact, its prototype comes from the Alps in the painter's heart.

He stitches together the personalities and customs of the Netherlands at close quarters with the imaginary majestic stretches of holy mountains.

In terms of expressing characters, Bruegel was influenced by Bosch. There is no so-called focal character. All beings in the painting go their own way, and together they build a complete human imagination.

In terms of composition, the painting method of aerial perspective is used, that is, without strict focus perspective, the brush strokes are arranged according to the general principle of near, large and far, to create a visual sense of space.

  According to research, in the mid-16th century, which happened to be the Little Ice Age, low-lying countries like the Netherlands experienced rare severe cold weather, which made "winter landscape painting" possible.

Many paintings at that time, including some religious-themed paintings, used ice and snow to create the environment.

With the large number of winter landscape paintings, it was gradually fixed as a mature schema of Dutch genre painting and passed down.

Under this tradition, there is another painter who cannot be ignored, he is Averkamp, ​​who focuses on depicting the world of ice and snow.

  There are not many records about Evercamp in historical materials. He was born in Amsterdam and was deaf.

As a staunch follower of Bruegel, Iverkamp gave a new style to the Dutch winter landscape painting, and spent his life guarding the ice and snow world in his heart with a brush.

He painted imaginary castles in the snow, people of various colors on the ice in the mist, some people walked hand in hand, some people chased, some carriages pulled sledges, some people fell, and some people fell into ice caves waiting for rescue... Evercamp's paintings have a fresh fairy tale texture, gentle, funny, and dreamy. They seem to have no intentions, but they are full of details scattered all over the picture, as if believing that the glimmer of ice and snow will reflect and retain all human life. Memories that will fade.

  Paintings involving ice and snow movement in art history are often seen in genre paintings and figure paintings.

Although the artistic value of these paintings is debatable, they are like documentaries, replicating the games of people and ice and snow in earlier times.

For example, painter John McKee's "Curling at Gillconker Loch" and Charles Martin Hardy's "Curling at Cosbrick Loch" both depict curling traditions in Scotland.

The spectacle of gentlemen in formal attire, solemnly holding sweeping brooms together for a curling match, seems hilarious today.

  The above examples are all in the West, but there are also ice and snow in Chinese art.

The Chinese people's love for ice and snow is like celebrating a festival and praying for it like a private wish.

In our culture, there is a red mansion, a dream of gold and snow, starting a poetry club, eating venison, and folding red plums; on the West Lake, the idiot Zhang Dai boats to the Huxin Pavilion, and drinks with strangers enjoying the snow; there is Wang Ziyou Visiting Dai on a snowy night, taking advantage of the excitement, and returning with joy... The ancients set the most beautiful stories in the setting of ice and snow.

It's like the most beautiful lovesickness is always in the moonlight, those secret and unannounced heart-to-heart connections, those long waits for self-denial and return of rituals, are often related to the realm of ice and snow.

In ancient Chinese paintings, there are also many examples of fishermen, woodcutters and hermits appearing in the snowy scenery of the cold river, but it is not very common to make the characters in the paintings "move", which is probably an aesthetic difference.

  Of course, there are exceptions, and "Ice Playing" is an example, and this exception is also very heavy and informative and interesting.

"Ice Playing" is an official drawing scroll jointly written by painters Zhang Weibang and Yao Wenhan during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, which records the large-scale performance on ice by the royal family.

The so-called "ice play" is a Manchu custom, an ancestral tradition brought from outside the customs.

The predecessors have said that "walking on white ice" means "walking with all kinds of diseases". The Qing Dynasty attached great importance to ice play. The daily skating team consisted of 5,000 people, and 1,600 brave people were selected every year to come to the palace for training in preparation for the winter solstice to March 9 In season, perform for the royal family and ministers.

  The scene of ice play is very large and extremely difficult.

If disassembled and converted into modern sports, it probably includes many items such as figure skating, speed skating, ice football, ice pitching, and ice acrobatics.

For example, in "Ice Playing Picture", the dragon shoots the ball. A team of 100 people marches on the ice like a dragon, and needs to constantly intersperse and change the formation. The performers have to keep up with the team and complete it in a stylish manner. All kinds of difficult additional tasks, not to be missed, this is a world-class performance.

  Ice and snow have brought about changes in mechanical conditions and alienated time-space relationships, and people participating in ice and snow sports are to obtain the beauty of speed, passion, and lightness in an almost frictionless state. Linked to control, snow sports require people to be balanced, precise, brave, decisive, clear-headed, judging the situation, and having a strong ability to drive themselves - it is constantly shaping and conquering inward.

The so-called "floating and abrupt stop, manipulating oneself to follow the vertical and horizontal" is the most concise portrayal of ice sports.

(Author: Xiao Ge)