Art story: the history of artists creating light and shadow.

We evaluate a person, "He (she) is really like an artist". This sentence can't tell whether it is positive or negative, which is quite similar to the attitude of ordinary people towards art. When it comes to art, ordinary people, like us, always have a sense of alienation that laymen can't see in the excitement, let alone the doorways in the experts.

Is art really profound? Are ordinary people and art really separated by Qianshan? The Story of Art by Gombrich provides an opportunity for ordinary people who are "art-blind" to step into the threshold of western art.

Gombrich believes that we can neither sanctify art nor worship it blindly. Nor should we be biased, treat it as an alternative that is unconventional and divorced from cognitive common sense, and belittle it without reservation. You know, everything that exists in the world has its original purpose, which may not be so profound at first. Only in the process of development, continuous evolution and innovation have become the existence that we dare not talk about easily now.

Understand the historical development of western art, know the representative artists in various historical periods, and understand their creative styles and characteristics. It will bring us closer to art and appreciate a thing or two in that aesthetic world. We may not be artists, but if we can enjoy a little spiritual pleasure from the world of art, it is worthwhile to experience life in the world.

According to the art story told by Gombrich, the whole road of western art goes along the history of western development. At least before the industrial revolution in the middle of18th century, it can be said that western art was a history of following religion.

Ancient Greece and Rome, this is an era of worshipping gods. From sculptures to temples, people have endowed the most idealized beauty and the most vital beauty in the art world, which is called the perfect classical period by later generations.

With the rise of Christianity, the position of the gods in ancient Greece and Rome was replaced by the church. In the long and dark Middle Ages, painting became a tool for Christianity to publicize its teachings and rule the people. Medieval art marched slowly in the darkness of 1000, looking for that glimmer of light.

Giotto lit the dawn of the Renaissance in the14th century, which made people look up to heaven and return to the secular world. The so-called god in art has swept away the unsmiling stereotype in the Middle Ages and been endowed with the expressions and actions that people should have. Artists are appreciated by the church for their exquisite skills and talents and become the mainstay of church murals.

/kloc-in the 0 th and 6 th centuries, the religious reform rose. The church has lost its power and status, so artists who serve the church must find another way out, and the art of painting has gradually turned from church murals to portraits. So in Europe, there are two camps, Catholicism and Protestantism. The most typical example is the Netherlands, which belongs to the Protestant camp. Artists infinitely expanded the categories of paintings, including traditional portraits, landscapes and still life paintings, which made great contributions to the development of painting themes by later artists.

Without the industrial revolution in the middle of18th century, western art would have moved slowly along the classical tradition initiated by the Renaissance. However, with the in-depth development of the industrial revolution, artists criticized traditional art more and more until they broke away from traditional art and embarked on the road of modernization.

Starting from the impressionism of Manet and Monet, there are more and more schools in the field of art, and "ism" is becoming more and more popular. When we knew nothing about the last school, the next theory had been put forward by critics. Art has developed in a direction that deviates more and more from the cognitive and discriminating abilities of ordinary people.

No matter whether you understand it or not, no one dares to speak easily as long as you wear the big hat of "art" I wonder if this is the sorrow of art or the misfortune of the times.

Everything is the same. Only by constantly innovating and changing can we keep moving forward. The Baihua Garden in the art kingdom is also the unremitting efforts of artists from ancient times to the present, which has led to today's brilliant atmosphere.

Ancient Greece used the painting skills of ancient Egypt for reference, giving these sculptures the most harmonious and idealized beauty in the world, from discus throwers to Hermes and Venus. It can be said that "there is no real human body in the world as symmetrical, uniform and beautiful as a Greek statue."

Ancient Rome inherited the art of ancient Greece, but it was a vast and magnificent empire. The architecture of ancient Rome was not satisfied with the relaxed and elegant Ionian temple model of ancient Greece. The ancient Romans built a grand amphitheater and a Pantheon with a dome.

They used the artistic skills and achievements of ancient Greece to develop their own art of serving politics and religion. Their statues removed the elegance of ancient Greece and pursued the truth with vigor. Through such a strong expression contained in rough and humble portraits, it seems to tell people the rise of Christianity and the end of the ancient western world.

During the long and dark medieval period of 1000, the most prominent artistic highlight was the Gothic church with magnificent buildings. No matter whether people's livelihood is depressed or not, whether wars are frequent or not, the church with power and wealth, in order to rule the ignorant people, gives the church the glory of the kingdom of heaven, and attempts to satisfy the people with the painful reality in this life and enjoy the gift of the kingdom of heaven in the next life.

The Renaissance aroused people's awakening. Artists innovated and created contemporary art by restoring the glory of ancient Greek and Roman art. brunelleschi contributed perspective to painting art, and then the artist returned the painting theme from the worship of God to people's secular life as a bystander. They have their own unique views on the treatment of light and shadow in the picture, the arrangement of picture structure and layout. With the discovery of this series of new painting techniques, a broad road has been opened up for the development of western art.

Although in front of artists, the Pope is still the biggest backer. However, at the peak of Renaissance art, the paintings of the three great artists, and even religious murals, all incorporated the artist's own will and interest.

Leonardo da vinci's The Last Supper is exquisitely laid out and full of dramatic conflicts in a seemingly relaxed and natural balanced structure. Michelangelo's ceiling painting of the Sistine Chapel, the prophet and the Holy Father are all muscular young athletes. Their bodies twist and rotate in every possible direction, but they always maintain a beautiful image. Raphael's Madonna seems to be full of life under his calm face, which makes us more convinced that the Madonna in his works is a person living in a brighter world of love and beauty.

In the Nordic countries except Italy, because of the slow influence of the Renaissance, they took a completely different road. Artists conquer art with truth. Starting with Jan Van Eyck, let the picture reflect the objective world like a mirror, and get the real illusion of nature. In Holbein, Germany, influenced by the religious reform, the painting object can only turn to the portrait painting of the royal family. In order to faithfully record the characters, Halbey can show the characters he painted without praise.

/kloc-in the 0/7th century, Rembrandt in the Netherlands created portraits of great men, just as real people stood opposite us. We seem to feel their feelings, their pain and loneliness.

Since the Renaissance, for a long time, all artists, whether in Italy or Europe, have only innovated in color, light, light and shade, theme and so on. But they didn't deviate from the road of classicism.

Until the end of18th century, artists without fixed employers had to sell their paintings in the form of exhibitions to make a living. In order to attract attention, the subject matter of painting is no longer limited. Artists are increasingly deviating from the classical artistic style. Coupled with the development of industrial revolution and the emergence of photography technology, the pursuit of imitating nature painting art has encountered an unprecedented crisis.

With the appearance of Impressionism, Monet painted colors directly on the canvas with a brush, which made people's eyes pay more attention to the overall effect of the frame and less attention to the details inherited from the academic school.

Impressionism was criticized by critics at the beginning of its birth, but it seems to blow the horn of modern art. Cezanne finally created a stable and three-dimensional picture through countless experiments in order to adjust the disordered state of impressionist pictures. Opened the road to modernism.

Why has art become more and more "incomprehensible" by ordinary people since it broke with classical art? Perhaps because modern artists are influenced by the times, their interests no longer focus on "subject matter", they just want to express "form". I tried to make art return to aestheticism through pure formal beauty, but in the pursuit of "formal" innovation, I forgot what the purpose of art was. In this way, art can only be a personalized expression of artists' self-entertainment, which has little to do with ordinary people.

Although the title of this book is The Story of Art, Gombrich gives the artist the highest status because art is the result of his creation. "In fact, there is no such thing as art, only artists. They are men and women with amazing talents who are good at balancing shapes and colors to achieve a' suitable' effect. "

The birth of any art is utilitarian, and we now think that art is aesthetic, because artists engaged in creation can find beauty from nature that we ordinary people have never found. They choose colors and lines and present them in different forms with their own feelings and interests. This kind of expression of the artist, to a certain extent, just meets the aesthetic requirements in everyone's mind, people will think that the works are beautiful, and art comes into being.

The beauty of Mona Lisa is not always available, but the result of Leonardo da Vinci's creation. Leonardo da Vinci discovered the "fading method", which made Mona Lisa's eternal mysterious smile. The fame of Starry Sky and Sunflower makes everyone like it because the pure art created by Van Gogh makes us feel happy and comforted when we look at the paintings.

Kandinsky's abstract paintings let us know that painting can be appreciated as visual music. Picasso's cubist painting method makes us feel messy and harmonious. Picasso told us through his own practice: to describe nature, it is not necessary to reproduce the way things appear in front of our eyes. As long as we can find a unique angle to express them and describe them in a "proper" way, we can still produce lasting and immortal charm.

Compared with art, artists are the most commendable people. All the simplest arts, in our opinion, contain the artist's thinking. Just like the Nicholson relief of 1934, a circle and a square make up the whole picture. But we can't say that the presentation of this work is simpler than that of the Madonna.

The painter who paints the Madonna has traditional techniques, requirements and goals as a guide, and he doesn't have to have too many choices. While trying to draw two figures, the painter may have to walk back and forth on the canvas and try countless possibilities until he feels satisfied. Although we may not be as interested as painters, we can't laugh at artists asking for trouble.

Works of art are created by different artists, so they will present various forms. There is no difference between elegant and harmonious classical beauty and exaggerated and distorted modern beauty. In addition, each artist's personality characteristics are different at each stage, which will present a colorful scene that varies from person to person.

This reminds us that to appreciate art, especially great works of art, we must abandon bad habits and prejudice and think from the artist's standpoint. Gombrich warned us:

"If we see an incorrect painting, don't forget that there are two questions we should ask ourselves: One question is whether the artist changed the shape he saw for no reason. Another problem is that unless we have proved that our views are correct and the painter is wrong, we can't accuse a painting of being incorrect. "

In addition to correcting ordinary people's orientation to art, Gombrich also changed ordinary people's mentality of appreciating art. He told us that although everyone may not become an artist, everyone will do artistic creation more or less in his life, such as inserting a bunch of flowers, matching a suit, making a cake, and measuring the proportion of cream and pudding. This kind of behavior or habit, in the eyes of some people, is considered as "poor and particular" and is not recognized.

But artists are just things that we "may be bad habits in daily life, often suppressed or covered up, but have recovered their due position in the art world." In this way, the difference between artists and us is nothing more than bringing the sense of ceremony and poverty pursued in daily life to the extreme.

Of course, appreciating art is not just abandoning prejudice, it is so easy to calm down. In the face of art without rules, only by constantly learning and improving one's aesthetic taste can we find new content and gain unexpected gains in the endless art world.

The Story of Art is a history of western art written by Gombrich. With regard to China's artistic achievements, Gombrich intercepted the period from the 2nd century to the 3rd century, and briefly emphasized that artists in China studied art through comprehension and concentration. He said that artists in China have written miracles hovering in their hearts by mastering the skills of using pen and ink and using inspiration. We know that Gombrich's exposition of China's art is biased and not comprehensive enough.

We can't criticize Gombrich, a westerner's knowledge and understanding of China's art. Recalling the introduction of this book, the old gentleman pointed out that appreciating art can't stand on one's own side and criticize artists with arrogance and prejudice. However, throughout the book, his understanding and interpretation of China's art is not as profound as that of Japanese art who studied China's skills, which makes people wonder whether this is the arrogance and prejudice of the whole western world against China's art.

As far as the whole history of human art development is concerned, we can't help but sigh, what a pity the world art history without China's art. From the 2nd century to13rd century, The Preface to Lanting Collection, known as "the best running script in the world", was born in China. Gu Kaizhi's "Painting and China People" put forward the theory of "vivid charm" in calligraphy and painting. Sculpture, Yungang Grottoes in Datong, Shanxi Province, the elegant Buddha statues of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, became the secular and cordial Buddha faces of Longmen Grottoes in the Tang Dynasty, and then became the beautiful and delicate female statues of the Song Dynasty in Jinci, Taiyuan, Shanxi Province. China's figure painting and landscape painting have matured in the middle Tang Dynasty, showing a unique aesthetic taste.

The west in this period was at the end of classical art, followed by the dark Middle Ages of 1000. When western churches spread Christian teachings through paintings, they fooled people and consolidated the dominance of the church. China people localized Buddhism introduced into China, and Zen thought provided nutrients and assistance for China art.

Westerners invented perspective, which was first used to make murals painted in churches more realistic and convincing. China's paintings have never been fixed in a single perspective, whether from a distance or from a close distance. It doesn't pursue the techniques of light and shade and shadow color like western painting art, but China's art has always been the sustenance of China people's aesthetic ideal.

Mr. Feng Youlan said that there is no religious belief in China, because China people do not lack spiritual needs beyond moral values. Confucianism's active accession to the WTO "being sage inside and king outside" and Taoism's thought of "the unity of man and nature" are all wisdom left by ancestors to future generations that can reach the truth directly. We don't have to take the detour of "religion-science-philosophy" like the West.

And such a wise existential philosophy is integrated into China's art, even Gombrich has to admit that artists in China are not regarded as a humble profession from the day of their birth, as in the West. In essence, this is the difference between Chinese and western civilizations.

When we understand western art, and compare it in retrospect, we find that China's art is great and a treasure of all mankind. We can't let ourselves forget our unique artistic pride under the admiration of western art because of the negligence and prejudice of westerners.