From the definition, we should pay attention to several aspects in appreciating sculpture, such as space form, modeling style, material application and emotional expression. The sculptures in different periods also reflect the local customs, social culture and so on, which has the significance of carrying culture.
The following will mainly show you how to appreciate sculptures in different periods from three stages: classical, modern and contemporary:
Look at the classic first:
The above pictures are basically ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, such as David and Venus. This is a sculpture in the traditional sense in the public impression of China and the West. Apart from works that show religious themes, many of them are works that show the human body.
In western sculpture, both men and women are mostly half-naked or completely naked, which gives people a powerful visual impact. This is because the Greeks and Romans appreciated the burly and rounded physique of human beings, but such sculptures are rare and almost impossible to find in China. Influenced by traditional ideas, China sculptors hope to express beauty indirectly and tactfully, so that the audience can associate and feel it.
Due to the different historical and cultural backgrounds between China and the West, it is decided that western art pays attention to realism. The golden age of ancient Greek art left us a large number of human statues, which can be described as models, not only in perfect form, but also in most cases expressing the artist's thoughts and feelings.
It is essential for people to appreciate this type of sculpture and understand its background, so that they can bring it into the scene and let the audience feel the customs and national spirit of that era to the greatest extent.
The ancient Greek people were simple, but open-minded. They believed that both human body and sex were beautiful, and unadorned nature was beautiful. At the same time, they respected the health and beauty of human body. Most of the sculptures in ancient Greece that people see now reflect the natural shape of the human body, strong muscles and appreciation of their own body shape without inferiority. The political openness of ancient Greece may have created the people's openness and unique aesthetic concept. The ancient Greeks worshipped the human body, worshiped strength and nature, and their gods were idealistic people. They held sports meetings at major events, and the athletes at the sports meetings were all naked to show their strength and human beauty, which is the predecessor of the current Olympic Games. (These students who know a little about history should all know.)
As far as the sculpture itself is concerned, it has exquisite facial features, meticulous expression, perfect proportion of human body and dynamic tension. These are beautiful in terms of mass aesthetics, which is more in line with mass aesthetics, so it is relatively easier for us ordinary audiences to appreciate them.
Look at modern times again:
Alberto Giacometti (Alberto giacometti1901-kloc-0/966), a Swiss artist, is the greatest and most expressive sculptor in Europe after World War II, as well as an oil painter, a sketch artist and a poet.
Let's look at the sculpture in the above picture. The needle tip looks like a head, and the limbs are as long as silk, just like "stick figure". According to the understanding of the general public, is this work beautiful? Does it look nice? Why do so many people appreciate, admire and even bid hundreds of millions of dollars in the auction house?
Leaving aside the philosophical significance of "what is beauty", the word "beauty" is very different in works of art and real life:
The ancients liked to use "closing the moon and feeling ashamed of flowers, sinking fish and falling geese" to describe the beauty of women. From macro to micro, people saw blue sky and white clouds and said beauty; See flowers and say beauty; When you see beautiful clothes, you say beauty ... Beauty is a pleasant thing in real life.
It is said that "art comes from life, higher than life", that is, the artistic works created by artists come from life, and they also pour their feelings into it. Some of these feelings are pleasant, and of course they also include anger, sympathy, sigh and other unpleasant feelings. Therefore, art can express the beauty and ugliness of reality, and through artistic processing, even ugly things can attract people and cause the audience to think. Therefore, in artistic aesthetics, of course, we can't simply define beauty and ugliness in life, but we should have one more level to see whether the work truly and accurately reproduces the original appearance or atmosphere of things and truly and accurately expresses the author's feelings.
When we go back to the works and look at them again, we will find that people's eyes on the works have been divorced from the simple beauty and ugliness, and then we will think about why the author expressed normal people as flat, thin and broken human figures, as if they were separated from each other, like wandering ghosts, and returned to the era of giacometti's life and creation. At that time, Europe suffered from the vicissitudes of war, and people's hearts were lonely, fragile and even panic. What he showed was a feeling of the times after World War II, and it was with this very unique artistic image that he reproduced such a feeling. Specifically, what kind of psychological collision does this feeling have when facing the audience? That is the pure communication between the audience and the work.
Therefore, to understand this type of sculpture art, we should realize that its value is not only his unique creation in formal language, but also that these works are closely related to the cultural background of a specific era and cannot be understood without the artist's living environment.
In addition, unlike classical sculptures, which have the best viewing distance, many critics think that the relationship between giacometti's sculptures and space is subtle. When these "stick figure" stand in front of your eyes, you will feel that there is always a distance between you and them, and you can't get close to them. This is the relationship between artistic works and space.
Finally, look at the contemporary:
Seeing these works, do you feel that it is impossible to tell whether this is a sculpture or not?
In recent years, the forms of sculpture development have become more and more diversified, and it is even difficult to distinguish what is sculpture, what is installation and what is technology ... The styles inside are also varied, and there will be more confusion and no focus on the appreciation of the public. Compared with the more traditional expressions, all kinds of "strange" especially experimental expressions are even more confusing to the audience.
So it's hard to tell whether this is a sculpture or not. How should contemporary sculpture be defined?
Borrowing the concept of "art world" from American art critic Danto, he said, "The style revolution of art in the 1980s has basically ended, and the problem of art is no longer the problem of works but the problem of context." Sculpture gradually got rid of the limitations of the media and became a way of discourse. What is important in contemporary sculpture is the directionality of words in the scene, which is also the fundamental difference between it and traditional sculpture.
"Context" is also a complicated system now, and it has not been completely defined, so we can simply understand it as "macro environment" (including thoughts and feelings, the author's position, views, artistic accomplishment, hobbies, expression time, objects, causes and effects, expression fields and media … too many, so I won't repeat them one by one).
Let's take a look at the current environment, the era of life, the big explosion of science and technology, the changes in human areas, and everything is changing rapidly. Any kind of art form and language mode is produced and developed in the logical relationship of a specific background. Facing this complicated and changeable era, the boundaries of sculpture language are constantly expanding. For tradition, we will never abandon or stick to it, but we will always get many new possibilities in the new context. Cross-border creation is now a fashionable word. All new technologies, new materials and new information should be studied and tried if they can provide resources for artistic creation and contribute to the full expression of art. The progress of science and technology will affect the change of the whole social form, and art is certainly here.
Recognizing the diversified society in which human beings live, it is not difficult to understand the diversified development of sculpture art. Because of the differences in individual visual experience and survival experience, there will be great differences in understanding the concept of contemporary sculpture works, and even misreading exists. In fact, when watching and interpreting works, everyone starts from their own survival experience, which corresponds to personal feelings and is connected with real self-awareness. Misreading is the normal state. This is also a feature of appreciation of many contemporary works of art.