Wu Shan's academic overview

After Mr. Wu Shan entered the Art Department of NTU from 65438-0949, he was exposed to the ancient patterns of China in Mr. Chen Zhifo. The beautiful patterns, gorgeous colors and unique styles are unparalleled, and he was deeply attracted. That is, from then on, under the careful guidance of Mr. Chen Zhifo, Mr. Wu Shan gradually got to know the patterns of ancient China, and became interested, and then studied hard, laying the foundation for his lifelong arts and crafts career.

At that time, Mr. Wang told Mr. Wu that he was the first China student to study patterns in Japan. The Japanese teacher was surprised and said to him, "There are so many good models of China's history. Why do you want to study in Japan?" The same sentence inspired the two gentlemen to make up their minds to dig and arrange the excellent traditional patterns in China. Mr. Chen Zhifo had collected many ancient China patterns before War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, but unfortunately they were lost during his stay in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, so Mr. Wu Shan proposed to collect them again. So Mr. Chen Zhifo is responsible for borrowing materials from Nanjing University Library and Nanjing Cultural Management Committee, and Mr. Wu Shan is responsible for describing them. Because Mr. Wu Shan has many years of basic skills in Chinese painting and is young, the painting is progressing smoothly. At that time, there were many valuable good books on the market, but unfortunately they didn't have the strength to buy them, so both teachers and students developed a book that met the needs of the situation and earned some remuneration as capital first. So Mr Chen Zhifo also borrowed books from the school library. Mr Wu Shan described these books. Sometimes, with the basic skills of western painting laid in Suzhou Academy of Fine Arts, he improvised a book "Applied Art Figures", which was published by Ye Wan Bookstore and was very popular. It was printed seven times in a row, and the remuneration was very high. Mr Wu Shan remembers that he only got 200 yuan once. With this economic strength, I can buy a lot of precious materials and books, especially the bronze decorative materials of Shang and Zhou Dynasties, which were selected by Mr. Chen Zhifo and painted by Mr. Wu Shan. According to the data collected during this period, the book "Reference Materials of China Patterns" edited by teachers and students was published by People's Fine Arts Publishing House on 1953. From this perspective, Mr. Wu Shan gradually learned from Mr. Chen Zhifo how to conduct research and study in the field of traditional decorative patterns in China.

Mr. Wu Shan 195 1 graduated from Nanjing University and was assigned to the Northeast Luxun College of Literature and Art for postgraduate study, majoring in basic patterns. During this period, Mr. Wu Shan collected and drew many excellent ancient patterns there. A year later, Mr. Wu Shan was transferred back to Nanjing to work in the Nanjing Library, which was the original Central Library. There are a large number of ancient rare books in the library, including rich ancient decorative materials. Mr. Wu Shan took advantage of this convenient condition, seized every minute and drew many precious materials. After that, most of these books were transferred to Beijing Library. Mr. Wu Shan sighed decades later: "Fortunately, the collection was timely, otherwise there would be no such good opportunity in the future!"

Wu Shan's research on China's decorative patterns, vessel modeling and arts and crafts is based on a large number of materials collected through these three channels, which will be continuously supplemented in the next few decades, and then sorted out and studied. In order to compare and analyze the evolution and characteristics of vessels and decorative patterns in the past dynasties, Mr. Wu Shan often posted drawings on the wall at home according to the times and classification, and studied them day and night, and finally gained something. Published four volumes of Decorative Patterns of China in Past Dynasties, Ware Modeling of China in 8,000 Years and China in 2009. As a companion, these three books comprehensively and systematically discuss the emergence, evolution, characteristics and styles of China's decorative arts and container modeling. So far, they are three masterpieces that comprehensively introduce the ancient decorative patterns and utensils in China.

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1954, Mr. Chen Zhifo is also the honorary leader of the newly established Nanjing Yunjin Research Working Group. Mr. Wu Shan accompanies Mr. Chen Zhifo in the pattern class of Yunjin Working Group every week. Since then, Mr. Wu Shan has formed an indissoluble bond with Nanjing Yunjin, and has become bosom friends with old directors such as Wang, Zhu Feng and Xu Zhongjie. From 65438 to 0956, Mr. Wu Shan was transferred to the Jiangsu Provincial Art Museum to take charge of the Jiangsu folk arts and crafts showroom, and began to have more contacts with the arts and crafts industry in Jiangsu. 65438-0959, Mr. Wu Shan participated in the renovation of Jiangsu Hall of the Great Hall of the People. During this period, I visited many arts and crafts factories in Jiangsu, such as lacquerware, mahogany, carpets and ceramics, and got a better understanding of Jiangsu's arts and crafts. Since then, he has made many friends in Jiangsu arts and crafts circles, such as Gu, Li Eying, Lu Hansheng, a master of mahogany carving, and Ruijin, a master of paper carving. 1960 Teacher Wu was transferred to Nanjing Art College as a pattern teacher of arts and crafts major. Teacher Wu Shan is earnest, humble and courteous, and is highly respected by students. Many students in those days later became masters of arts and crafts and professional leaders all over Jiangsu, and have maintained a deep friendship with Mr. Wu Shan until today. Since then, Mr. Wu Shan has been engaged in arts and crafts teaching and research in Nanjing Art Institute.

Mr Wu Shan attended the Canton Fair in the early 1960s. Foreign businessmen often ask about the history, skills and characteristics of China's arts and crafts, but we can only give a few satisfactory answers, so the transaction is often damaged. In the future, due to the lack of understanding of the patterns of past dynasties, some common craft factories painted the dragon patterns of the Ming Dynasty on the robes of Qin Shihuang and carved the patterns of the Ming and Qing Dynasties on the chariots of the Han Dynasty, which made many jokes. Seeing this scene, Mr. Wu Shan made up his mind that in order to revitalize the arts and crafts of the motherland, he must do his best to dig up and sort out the patterns of past dynasties into books, and compile the ancient and modern crafts into a dictionary of arts and crafts for the society. From then on, he scrimped and saved, bought a lot of information and went to many places in the country for research. There is no holiday, no hard work day and night, and decades are like one day. It is worth mentioning that in the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution, the collection of ancient materials can only be carried out in secret, and publishing is a dream. But Mr. Wu Shan dared to take risks and still wrote and painted behind closed doors. He believes that thousands of years of arts and crafts in China have been created by the people, and these ancient materials will be of great use to the development and revitalization of China's cultural and economic undertakings in the future. We should put it in order and send it out when the motherland needs it, not wait until the country needs it. Then it's too late. This is his attitude towards arts and crafts and the source of his perseverance in his work. His 20 monographs were inspired by this spirit and compiled under such difficult conditions. Especially the Dictionary of China Arts and Crafts, edited by him and published by Jiangsu Fine Arts Publishing House 1989, is divided into 32 categories, with 1 1875 entries and more than 3 100 illustrations, totaling more than 2.5 million words. Among them, Mr. Wu Shan completed more than 70% of the words and illustrations in the book. This paper comprehensively and historically introduces the research achievements in various fields of arts and crafts in China. Each category is a microcosm of the ancient and modern varieties and skills of this industry, and each category can be written as a special history. It is a practical, scientific, academic and knowledgeable large-scale reference book, which fills the gap in this academic field in China and has a great influence throughout the country. More than 30,000 copies were published before and after, and won five awards, including the China Book Award and the Silver Award. In 2004, Mr. Guo Tailai, then the chairman of Beijing Arts and Crafts Group, said that at that time, only his company purchased more than 100 China Dictionary of Arts and Crafts, which was a necessary reference book for the company's business, design and leadership, and was of great help to daily work. 199 1 Taiwan Province province published the traditional Chinese dictionary of China arts and crafts, and 1992 won the "golden tripod award" for mainland works of the Information Bureau of the Executive Yuan of Taiwan Province province. Mr. Na Zhiliang, a famous scholar of the older generation in the field of cultural relics in China and a consultant of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, thinks that "this dictionary provides infinite answers for arts and crafts in China", and scholars in Taiwan Province Province have written articles to evaluate that such a voluminous dictionary cannot be completed without in-depth study of various branches and decades of hard theoretical research. 2065438+01June, Ms. Lin Xiujuan from Taiwan Province Arts and Crafts Development Research Center said that up to now, China Arts and Crafts Dictionary is the most important professional reference book on their desk, and all her books are "rotten". These achievements made by Mr. Wu Shan are inseparable from the care and help of his wife, Mr. Lu Cheng. Mr. Lu Cheng graduated from the History Department of East China Normal University in his early years and worked in Nanjing Normal University. Besides taking care of Mr. Wu Shan in life, she is also his assistant in career. Mr. Lu Cheng participated in the collection, collation and compilation of many works by Mr. Wu Shan, so Mr. Wu Shan often said, "Half of my success is due to Mr. Lu Cheng."

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/kloc-After the end of the 1990s, with the cancellation of the position of arts and crafts in the list of disciplines by the State Education Commission, the once-splendid academic research field of arts and crafts quickly fell into a cold place. Arts and crafts departments all over the country have been renamed as art design, and many scholars have changed their research direction. At this time, Mr. Wu Shan has also retired, but his retirement is endless. He insists on the original intention of choosing fifty years ago, always adheres to the academic field of arts and crafts, is willing to endure loneliness, collects information extensively and is diligent in learning. In recent ten years, several influential masterpieces have been published one after another, such as China Zisha Dictionary, China Pattern Collection and China Costume Dyeing, Weaving and Embroidery Dictionary. He believes that no matter how the subject name of China arts and crafts changes, its essence as an important part of the excellent traditional culture of the motherland will not change; The development of contemporary cultural undertakings in China is inseparable from arts and crafts.

Mr Wu Shan lives a quiet life, indifferent to fame and fortune. He thinks fame and fortune are laborious, time-consuming and wasteful, so he doesn't care about fame and fortune all his life. He has very low requirements for material life and doesn't care about trivial things in life. He doesn't pay attention to clothes at all, and even looks "out of line" He just devoted himself wholeheartedly to the academic career of arts and crafts. Now, Mr. Wu Shan is over eighty years old, but he is alert, healthy and quick-thinking, and often even the younger generation around him sighs. His ambition for an academic career in arts and crafts has not diminished. In that small study, the bookshelves are filled with all kinds of materials and drawings, 365 days a year, except for necessary outdoor activities, it can be said that he insists on writing there every day. After finishing the compilation of China Beauty Salon and Beauty Decoration Dictionary (Fujian Education Press 20 13 will be published soon), and Mr. Wu Shan has been paying attention to the production development of arts and crafts industry and the improvement of creative design level, he still likes to make friends with artists. Until today, there are still some masters and artists from Yixing, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou and other places who come to ask for advice. He doesn't talk much if he has nothing to do with his career, but he doesn't feel tired even if he talks about arts and crafts for a long time. In 2006, Mr. Wu Shan went to Beijing to participate in the 5th China Arts and Crafts Masters Awards, and carefully reviewed the submitted works, which was deeply touched. He believes that the works of some masters of arts and crafts in the 2000s have reached a fairly high level in technical performance, but they are somewhat unsatisfactory in momentum and aesthetics, and artists need to make more efforts in cultural and artistic literacy; In the field of arts and crafts, the number of works with distinctive personality is decreasing day by day, and the phenomenon of homogenization is very serious, which must be paid attention to and changed.

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For more than 60 years, Mr. Wu Shan has paid great attention to the accumulation of materials in arts and crafts teaching and research, and often went deep into production and creation to collect them. There are few historical materials of arts and crafts recorded in writing, which makes the task of collecting information extremely arduous. Mr. Wu Shan started from the grass roots and approached artists from all walks of life to understand their artistic experience and care about their creation. The artists were moved by Mr. Wu Shan's sincerity, so they spoke everything that Mr. Wu Shan wanted to know without reservation. Many old artists all over the country, especially in Jiangsu, are his old friends for many years. In communication, he always humbly asks the artist first, then learns skills and helps each other. In the late 1950s, he collaborated with Zhang Jigen, a famous paper-cut artist in Nanjing, on Hundred Flowers Paper-cut. He first learned his own skills and experience, and then learned from each other to create together, from which he learned a lot of valuable knowledge about Nanjing paper-cutting. At the same time, Mr. Wu Shan took every opportunity to go out for investigation and visited hundreds of craft factories and research institutes in 18 provinces and cities. If you can't go because of conditions, you can communicate. There are more than 1000 units and individuals. Through the above channels, I have mastered a large number of first-hand information of various industries that are not available in history books.

Mr. Wu Shan is good at finding information, drawing and extracting from various catalogues, official history, unofficial history and local chronicles. Among them, it can be divided into ornamentation and writing. Especially the former is more difficult. Before 1980, there was no copying equipment, and many ancient patterns had to be hand-painted. It takes seven or eight hours to finish a beautiful painting, and some even finish one in a few days. Mr Wu Shan spent countless hours and energy tracing these drawings. The collection of words is also to use a little time to collect them anytime and anywhere. Besides reading all kinds of historical materials carefully, I have to read more than a dozen national newspapers and magazines every day, and there are always small cards in my pocket, so that I can remember where I went and when I went on a business trip. A lot of materials compiled by China Dictionary of Arts and Crafts come from decades of uninterrupted accumulation. Mr. Wu Shan's demand for "entering Japan" is really the accumulation of this long-term knowledge and one of the elements of his academic success.

He is good at sorting out research and using parallelism and analysis. Based on the unearthed cultural relics handed down from ancient times and combined with the literature, this paper compares, combs and excavates them carefully and interprets them accurately. Because the collected data is fragmentary and messy, the authenticity coexists, and the viewpoints are different, it is impossible to study. In this regard, Mr. Wu Shan adopted the following method: 1. When documents and cultural relics are given shields, they are based on unearthed cultural relics; Second, when various viewpoints are controversial and uncertain, they are juxtaposed or temporarily shelved until reliable new materials are obtained; Third, classify, arrange, classify, identify and summarize the data, so that the organization is gradually clear and the right and wrong are clearly distinguished.

On the basis of textual research on cultural relics, Mr. Wu Shan germinated many new ideas and put forward many new viewpoints through horizontal and vertical parallel textual research. Many new ideas put forward by Mr. Wu Shan in the field of arts and crafts are all concluded in this way. For example, in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, mysterious patterns were popular, but in the Qin Dynasty, they were replaced by realistic decorative patterns, and in later dynasties, realistic patterns also dominated. This clearly shows that the Qin Dynasty is a period of great transformation and great change, and it is a crucial era for the development of arts and crafts in China. These arguments once aroused great concern in the academic circles at that time.

He also attaches great importance to the excavation and research of scientific and technological materials of historical arts and crafts. Mr. Wu Shan believes that China's arts and crafts have high artistic taste, which is closely related to science and technology. The firing of ceramics, the casting of bronze and the weaving of brocade are all products of the harmonious unity of art and technology. Mr. Wu Shan has a deep research on the stitch of embroidery, the embroidery of brocade, the forming and firing of purple sand. At the beginning of 1960, he led five students majoring in arts and crafts to study Jiangsu lace stitch, and compiled two volumes of Changshu lace stitch, which was welcomed by the flower border. The Dictionary of China Arts and Crafts edited by him is a concentrated reflection of China's ancient and modern arts and crafts materials.

Mr. Wu Shan attaches great importance to theoretical research and serves the society and production. Since the end of 1950, he has been giving lectures and counseling in nearly 100 craft factories and research institutes in more than ten cities and counties, including Nanjing, Suzhou, Yangzhou, Wuxi, Nantong, Changshu, Jiangyin, Yixing, Hanjiang, Jiangning, Zhangjiagang and Changxing, Zhejiang. It involves more than ten industries such as embroidery, silk reeling, brocade, ceramics, lacquerware, embroidery, jade carving, tooth carving, jewelry, fan, velvet flower, clay sculpture and paper cutting. His lectures can be tailored to the characteristics of various industries. At the same time, many improvement suggestions are put forward for product innovation in various places. These are provided free of charge, which embodies Mr. Wang's noble character and is respected by the arts and crafts circles.