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Research and Development Center of Middle School Chinese Course Textbook of People's Education Publishing House

Author Profile

Feng Zikai (1898 ~ 1975), a famous modern painter, writer, art and music educator in China, is a master of literature and art with many achievements. After liberation, he served as executive director of China Artists Association, chairman of Shanghai Branch of Artists Association, president of Shanghai China Painting Academy, and vice president of Shanghai Foreign Culture Association. Feng Zikai's unique cartoon works have great influence and are deeply loved by people. His works are profound and intriguing.

Feng Zikai's prose also has great influence in the history of Chinese new literature. His main works are Yuan Yuan Tang Essays, Yuan Yuan Tang Re-writing, Twenty Essays, Sweet Memories, Artistic Interest, Frank Collection and so on. Except for some artistic comments, most of these works describe his own personal experience and daily contact with people, showing a strong interest in life.

The theory of the origin of art

The origin of art has always been called the "Sphinx mystery" by academic circles, mainly because people know little about the early history and art of mankind. Nevertheless, many scholars in history have made unremitting exploration and efforts in this field and put forward various theories about the origin of art from different angles. These theories reveal some conditions and basis for the occurrence of human art from different angles, which is of great value to the study and education of art. Although these theories about the origin of art inevitably involve all aspects of human art, the discussion about the origin of art is usually an important aspect of these theories. Let's briefly introduce and comment on several major theories about the origin of human art in history:

1. representative theories:

This is the oldest theory about the origin of art, which began with ancient Greek philosophers. This theory holds that imitation is the inherent nature and instinct of human beings, and art originated from human imitation of nature. In the eyes of ancient Greek philosophers, all art is the product of imitation. Aristotle thinks: "The object of artistic imitation is the real world. Art not only reflects the appearance of things, but also reflects the internal laws and essence of things. Artistic creation depends on imitation ability, which is the nature and instinct that people have since childhood." After the ancient Greek philosophers, Leonardo da Vinci in the Renaissance, Diderot, the French enlightenment thinker and Chernyshevski, the Russian writer, all inherited and developed this theory to varying degrees. This theory still has great influence until the end of 2119.

2. Game theory:

Game theory holds that art originated from game, which is an influential theory in the theory of art occurrence, including fine arts. Its representatives are Schiller, a famous German aesthetician, and Spencer, a British scholar, so people call the game theory "Schiller-Spencer Theory". Schiller, through the comparative study of the relationship between games and aesthetic freedom in the letters of education, first put forward the view that art originated from games, and thought that art was a game of aesthetic freedom with the purpose of creating formal appearance. "Freedom" is the essence of artistic activities, which is not limited by any utilitarian purpose. Only in a mental game can people completely get rid of the shackles of practicality and utilitarianism, thus gaining real freedom. Game theory also holds that people's aesthetic activities, like games, are the use of excess energy, and the remaining energy is the driving force for people to play this spiritual game of art. Man is a higher animal, and he doesn't need all his energy to engage in material activities to maintain and extend his life, so he has excess energy, which is embodied in free imitation activities, and there are games and artistic activities. Spencer, like Schiller, also thinks that the game is the vent of excess energy. Although it has no direct practical value, it helps the players to practice their organs, so it has biological significance and is beneficial to the survival of individuals and the whole nation.

Game theory emphasizes the important relationship among game impulse, aesthetic freedom and human nature perfection, which is of great value for us to understand the occurrence of art in aesthetics. It reveals some necessary biological and psychological conditions for the occurrence of art, such as the remaining energy is an important condition for artistic activities, the entertainment and aesthetics of art, and reveals that spiritual freedom is the core of artistic creation, which is enlightening for us to understand the essence of art.

3. Expression theory:

This theory holds that art originated from the needs of human beings to express and communicate emotions, and emotional expression is the most important function of art and the main motivation for the occurrence of art. This theory is mainly held by British poet Shelley, Russian writer lev tolstoy, and some modern and contemporary aestheticians in Europe and America. According to this theory, all primitive art has only one main driving force, that is, they express their feelings through various arts, thus contributing to the occurrence and development of art. For example, Tolstoy said: "Art originated from a person who wants to convey the feelings he has experienced to others, so he reawakens these feelings in his own heart and expresses them with some external signs." These external signs are artistic images expressed by actions, lines, colors, sounds and words. Through the communication of these artistic images, others can experience the same feelings. In this way, the feelings experienced by the author infect the audience or audience, which is an artistic activity.

4. Witchcraft theory:

Witchcraft theory is the most influential and powerful view in western theories about the origin of art. This theory was put forward on the basis of directly studying the relationship between primitive works of art and primitive religious witchcraft activities. It was first put forward by Taylor, a famous British anthropologist, in his book Primitive Culture. This view explains the origin of art with practicality, and holds that in the minds of primitive people, the original art has great practical and utilitarian value. According to this theory, although there are many beautiful animal images in prehistoric cave murals depicted by primitive people today, they were motivated by a motive unrelated to aesthetics, that is, witchcraft. For example, many cave murals and sculptures in the late Paleolithic period are often located in the darkest and inaccessible places of caves. Obviously, they were not made for appreciation, but prehistoric humans attempted to ensure the success of hunting by witchcraft. Some animals are painted or engraved with marks that have been stabbed and struck by spears or sticks. According to witchcraft, this is because there is a kind of sympathetic witchcraft in primitive tribes. Primitive people think that the image of anything has a real connection with the actual thing. If you influence the image of something, you actually influence it. Painting scars on animals means that they can successfully hit their prey in actual hunting. These animal images with stab or wound marks in the original murals have become strong evidence to support the theory that art originated from witchcraft. Witchcraft theory is of great significance for us to understand the motive force of primitive art, especially primitive art, and the non-aesthetic nature of these arts under the conditions at that time.

The above theories about the origin of art can help us to understand the origin and reasons of primitive art from different aspects. Although there are essential differences between primitive art and children's art, there are many similarities between them, especially in the form of expression. Therefore, understanding the occurrence of human art can be used for reference for us to correctly understand and understand children's artistic activities.

Children's Painting (Feng Zikai)

Children often hide charcoal sticks, yellow clay blocks and chalk heads in their bags, which are their painting tools. When adults don't pay attention, they secretly take out these painting tools and display their works on snow-white walls or bright windows and doors. When the adults saw it, they flew into a rage and said it was dirty, immoral and unsightly. It is harmful to neatness, morality and aesthetics, and must be strictly prohibited. While trying to destroy these works, he cursed their authors and confiscated their painting tools. However, this prohibition is often invalid. A few days later, the children had that kind of painting tool in their bags, and that kind of work was published on the walls and windows.

Adults are right. It is indeed harmful to neatness, morality and aesthetics to paint windows and doors at will. However, when destroying these works, if we have to look at them carefully and think about them a little, the criminals in this family will certainly be able to stop and get a good opportunity to teach. Because if you carefully examine this smear, you will know that it is the discovery of children's painting instinct. The pens and pens all flow out of the small artistic heart, and the pictures are all pinned by the small feelings, which makes you unable to bear to destroy them. However, you should consider ways to cultivate this artistic heart and cultivate this feeling.

In fact, apart from malicious graffiti, children's murals are often more artistic than the school's art department's painting scores. Because this is automatic, not forced, not artificial, and always accompanied by enthusiastic interest. Therefore, his paintings are often novel, bold and lively, which cannot be seen or described by adults. However, this kind of painting, unfortunately, violates the family's ban and is hard to preserve. In a slightly superior family, there is no filth on the wall in the room of Qionglou Yuyu, and this kind of painting will never be visible. You can see it a little in the house of the poor family. The walls of abandoned temples, ancient temples and road pavilions are where the art of village children comes into play. I once recalled that during my trip, when I was sitting in a temple or a road pavilion, I enjoyed watching the dragons and snakes on the wall, exploring their interest and identifying their strokes, which was really endless. I often think that if I can concentrate on visiting and studying this kind of painting, I can really know the reality of children's life in a place and really understand children's feelings. As far as I can see, planes have appeared on the ruined wall of the abandoned temple in the countryside recently. It is shaped like a huge strange bird, fighting with each other. I didn't know it was an airplane at first. After seeing each other, I know each other a little. Later, I listened to a village woman's words: "Foreign devils fry children's oil there to build planes, so he has eyes and can fly." It suddenly dawned on me that it was not without reason that children painted the plane like this. After listening to this, I saw this kind of painting, and recalled the impression of something that used to fly and hover in the sky recently, just like the monster like a big bird on the wall. What an interesting theme for children's painting is to correct the village woman's ignorance and "animate" the plane into a strange bird by artistic methods, and imagine its fighting in the sky! This kind of painting has not been seen in many children's pictorial newspapers in Shanghai, but has been published on the ruined temple in a remote place in a poor village.

With proper guidance and cultivation of adults, the development of this painting heart will certainly be more impressive, so that they don't have to hide charcoal strips, yellow clay blocks and chalk heads, and they don't have to secretly smear on walls, windows and doors, but have special painting tools and public painting rights. At the same time, the future of art education will definitely make significant progress.

On March 7th, 1934, he wrote

(selected from Feng Zikai's Essays on Art, Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 1999) for Jiangsu Provincial Education Department.

Chinese painting and western painting (Feng Zikai)

Eastern and western cultures are fundamentally different. Therefore, the performance of art is also different. Probably oriental art emphasizes subjectivity, while western art emphasizes objectivity. Oriental art is poetic, while western art is dramatic. Therefore, in painting, Chinese painting emphasizes charm, while western painting emphasizes shape. Comparing the two, there are five differences as follows:

1. Chinese painting uses lines, while western painting lines are not obvious. Most lines are not the original objects, but are used by painters to represent the realm of two objects. For example, in Chinese painting, an egg-shaped line is drawn to represent a person's face. In fact, there is no such line around the person's face. This line is the boundary between the face and the background. Another example is to draw a ruler line to represent a person's nose. In fact, there is no such line on the nose. This line is the boundary between the nose and the face. Another example is landscapes, flowers, etc. There are no lines in objects, but painters use lines. The lines in the landscape are specially named "Qiaofa (Qiaofa <: cūn> Method: one of the techniques of Chinese painting, which is used to express the texture of rocks and bark. ）”。 The lines in the characters are specially named "clothes pleats". It is a difficult research effort. Western painting, on the other hand, only has the boundaries of things, and the boundaries do not draw lines. Therefore, western paintings are very much like real objects, while Chinese paintings are not like real objects, so you can tell at a glance that they are paintings. Gai China's painting and calligraphy are of the same origin, and painting, like writing, freely reveals his mind. At the end of 19, westerners saw the dancing lines in Chinese paintings, and they admired them very much, so they imitated them and became "post-impressionism" (see this book <; This book: refers to the author's book "Fundamentals of Artistic Cultivation", 1941 Guilin Edition > A Brief History of Western Painting). However, the western paintings before the post-impressionism were all inconspicuous.

2. Chinese painting does not pay attention to perspective, while western painting pays great attention to perspective. Perspective is the representation of three-dimensional objects on a plane. Western paintings strive to be as simple as the real thing, so they pay great attention to perspective. Take a look at the streets, houses, furniture, utensils and so on in western paintings. The shapes are all correct, but they are the same as the real thing. If you describe the corridor, you can show the distance of several feet in a few inches. If you draw the front of the railway (looking out from the middle of the railway), you can actually show the distance of miles in a few inches. Chinese painting, on the other hand, is not happy to draw things with obvious three-dimensional aspects, such as streets, houses, furniture and utensils, but happy to write things like clouds, mountains, trees and waterfalls that look like natural flat objects from afar. Occasional description of house objects, without paying attention to perspective, is arbitrary. For example, painting the deep scene of the courtyard, the curved corridor bridal chamber, as if it were seen when flying in mid-air; And it was not seen for a while, but it was flying around, flying up and down, and I saw it several times. Therefore, the hand scroll of Chinese painting, with mountains and rivers stretching for dozens of feet, seems to be seen in the train. The standing of Chinese paintings, with mountains and rivers overlapping, seems to be seen in the plane. Because painting in China is the same as poetry, we can paint wherever we want, and we can't be bound by perspective. Therefore, perspective is sometimes wrong in Chinese painting. But it doesn't matter if this is a mistake. We can't criticize Chinese painting with the rules of western painting.

3. Oriental figure painting does not talk about anatomy, while western figure painting attaches great importance to anatomy. Anatomy is the study of the expressive shape of human skeletal muscles. Westerners must study anatomy before they paint figures. This anatomy is called anatomy for art students, that is, artistic anatomy. Therefore, it is different from physiological anatomists. Physiological anatomy focuses on the structure and function of various parts of the human body, while artistic anatomy focuses on expressing shapes. However, it is a kind of hard learning to remember the names of bones and muscles and their various abnormal shapes. But western painters must learn. Because western painting pays attention to realism, it must be described like a real human body. But China figure painters never needed this kind of knowledge. People in China paint figures only to show the characteristics of their postures, but they don't talk about the sizes and proportions of the various parts of the figures. Therefore, the man in Chinese painting looks strange and ancient, and his head is not called. Women are moths, eyebrows, lips and shoulders. If you take off the clothes of these characters, they will look terrible. But this is not only harmless, but also the benefit of Chinese painting. Chinese painting has a strong impression of desire, so it expands the characteristics of characters, making men more majestic and women more beautiful, and fully expressing their character. Therefore, instead of realism, symbolic method is used. Seek not the likeness, but the likeness of God.

4. Chinese painting does not emphasize the background, while western painting emphasizes the background. Chinese painting does not emphasize the background, such as writing plum blossoms, hanging in the air and surrounded by white paper. Write characters, hanging in the air alone, as if riding a cloud. Therefore, the drawing paper of Chinese painting leaves a blank space.