【Hot spot observation】
The majestic dragon-headed centipede kite, naive painted dolls, and exquisite paper-cut window grilles... The one-month-long "national style is visible - National Art Museum of China's Year of the Tiger Spring Festival Folk Art Exhibition" has come to an end.
The New Year pictures, paper-cuts, shadow puppets, colored sculptures, kites and other folk art works exhibited in this exhibition show the unique cultures and customs of different ethnic groups and regions in China.
Folk art is an art form created by the working people in the long-term production and life, and reflects the simplest spiritual appeal and aesthetic expression of the working people.
The bright colors, unsophisticated forms, and ingenious production of folk art tell colorful Chinese stories, form the basic content of the original culture of the Chinese nation, and carry the common spiritual memory of Chinese sons and daughters.
However, when we look at the history of art, we can see that what people remember are emperors, generals, and scholars and artists. Those folk artists who have created colorful works of art are often difficult to keep their names, and can only use "hundreds of thousands of people". The collective identities of "worker" and "artisan" live in the corner of history.
Inheriting and promoting the excellent traditional Chinese culture requires the participation of folk artists, and rural revitalization and rural aesthetic education are inseparable from the empowerment of folk art.
In the new era, we must not only rediscover the value of folk art, but also think about how to stimulate the vitality of folk art.
Rediscover the value of folk art
Folk art is an art form nurtured in the long folk production and life. In the thousands of years of farming, it is an indispensable part of the people's life. It has both practical value and aesthetic and educational functions.
For example, an embroidered purse is not only beautiful in appearance, but also has a good storage function; a carved wooden stool is not only a beautiful work of art, but also has excellent use value.
The patterns and shapes on these objects are mostly based on folklore, historical allusions, traditional novels, local operas, etc., conveying the values of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, faith, loyalty, filial piety, honesty, patience, and forbearance.
Today, folk art forms such as paper-cutting, peasant painting, embroidery, weaving, printing and dyeing, and kites are still popular, decorating, beautifying and enriching people's lives, and pinning their yearning for a better life.
Historically, the creators of folk art were ordinary laborers (many of them were native farmers). Their lives were simple, their thoughts were simple, and the creative process was accidental, and they directly expressed what they saw in their eyes and what they thought in their hearts.
Due to relatively little influence from foreign culture, folk art has been growing arbitrarily in a native state.
It can be said to be a living fossil of folk culture and an important "window" for studying folk culture psychology and traditional folk customs.
Today, we appreciate those "earth-flavored" folk art shapes, which are actually "dialogues" with the ancestors.
In recent years, with the rise of traditional culture craze, many experts and scholars have turned their research attention to folk art, and some even specially invested in a large amount of collection and arrangement of folk art works.
In modern society, the value of folk art is not only to build a bridge for us to "dialogue" with our ancestors, but also to provide materials and inspiration for modern design.
Folk art and modern art design seem to be far apart, but in fact they have something in common.
The inheritance of folk art has always been carried out in the form of "hand-in-hand". Almost every piece of work is created by hand, which integrates the author's perception and understanding of the world and life. pursued.
At present, folk art has been widely used in many fields such as product modeling design, environmental art design, and visual communication design.
For example, the design inspiration of China Unicom's logo "Chinese knot" comes from the traditional Chinese arts and crafts form of pan-long knot.
Facing the Dilemma of Folk Artists' Existence
From ancient times to the present, most of the artists in professional art institutions are supported by the state, while folk art practitioners can only "shave food" by themselves.
Before the emergence of modern large-scale industrial production, people engaged in folk art work could earn a living income with their own craftsmanship.
When the machine liberated the hands of human beings, these people were forced to the corner of history and caught in the predicament of survival.
Taking shadow puppets as an example, to make a shadow puppet figure with a height of 50 cm by hand, it usually needs to go through eight processes: skin selection, leather making, drawing, drafting, engraving, color application, sweating and ironing, and embellishment. More than 3,000 knives, and it takes about a week to complete all the processes.
You can use the machine, just enter the program, turn on the switch, and you can carve a shadow puppet in just 30 minutes. Even if you add coloring and knotting, it will take three or four hours to complete the whole process, and the shadow puppet made by the machine has smooth lines. , There is no knife error, and the production cost is only a few tenths of hand-made.
Therefore, no matter how exquisite the craftsmanship is, it is difficult for shadow puppet artists to solve the problem of survival in modern society by producing and selling shadow puppet works.
There are also many folk art practitioners such as paper-cutting, embroidery, and clay sculpture who face a similar situation to shadow puppet artists.
Survival always comes first.
When working in folk art cannot support themselves, old artists will change careers, and young people are even more reluctant to come in.
Due to the lack of infusion of fresh blood, after a large number of old artists have passed away, folk art will fall into the dilemma of "the death of the human being and the art of the art".
Of course, there are still some folk art lovers doing related creations.
But these people only regard folk art as a hobby, while the senior artists regard folk art as their career in life.
One is hobby and the other is career. Different positioning means different pay.
Therefore, we see that the works of many folk art lovers mostly repeat their predecessors and fail to create a new artistic language that is compatible with the new era environment and modern people's life.
All these have led to the development of folk art into a predicament.
Stimulate the endogenous power of folk art
Any art form comes from life, all to meet the needs of people.
Therefore, to rescue and even develop folk art, the most important thing is to find the connection point between folk art and modern people's production and life, and explore how to meet the needs of modern people, so as to stimulate the endogenous power of folk art.
As mentioned above, folk art has reference value for modern design.
If the artistic essence of folk art can be effectively integrated into modern design, it will find a way of rebirth.
There are many kinds of folk art, such as painting, paper-cutting, sculpture, paper tying, weaving, embroidery, dyeing and weaving, clothing cutting, etc. Each major category includes multiple subcategories.
With the development of modern design, more and more designers and artists have successfully grafted folk art with modern design.
For example, some places boldly innovate the visual language of peasant paintings, and use modern design techniques to integrate their artistic essence into the packaging of local specialties. .
For another example, some designers have combined traditional tie-dyeing with modern aesthetics to design artistic household items, which not only won domestic and foreign awards, but also sold their products abroad. The thousand-year-old tie-dye has thus changed its old appearance.
In short, through modern design methods, it is the best way to activate the vitality of folk art by digging deep into the artistic potential and commercial value of folk art, broadening the application field of folk art, and creating an art brand of folk art.
From a practical point of view, a major bottleneck restricting the application of folk art in modern society is that those who understand folk art do not understand modern design, those who understand modern design often do not understand folk art, and there is a lack of "generalists" who can successfully connect the two.
Therefore, the author suggests that the art design majors in colleges and universities should, on the one hand, offer courses in folk art, and on the other hand, encourage college students to go deep into the folk and ask more from old folk artists.
Although the practical value of folk art works has weakened in modern society, it still has high aesthetic value.
In other words, in modern society, people do not learn to make kites to sell kites to make money, and they do not necessarily need to be tailors to learn how to cut clothes, but through exposure to these folk arts, they can understand traditional culture, cultivate personal sentiments, and improve their aesthetic level.
In this sense, folk art still has a broad space for development.
The author suggests that universities, middle and primary schools should include folk art in the aesthetic education curriculum, and schools with conditions can choose to hire folk artists to serve as aesthetic education teachers.
In addition, cultural centers, museums, children's palaces and even private educational institutions can offer a certain number of folk art courses, especially hands-on courses such as pottery and paper-cutting. Also improve hands-on ability.
(Author: Yang Xiaoling, professor of Linyi University, this article is the phased research achievement of Shandong Social Science Planning Fund Project [14cwyj06])