The development trend of contemporary painting art

First of all, we should see that human history is facing an unprecedented turning point. This is not only the cultural development trend caused by the new vision brought by modern science in Xinjiang, but also the inevitable result of the self-discipline development in the history of human cultural development. The new trend of thought in contemporary science, literature and art provides us with a lot of examples. For example, the new development of modern physics has sublated and sublimated the traditional ideas of classical physics about matter, time and space, causality and so on at a higher level. The avant-garde art of literary and artistic schools has destroyed the macro significance of artistic tradition, indicating that human society is beginning the biggest change since the formation of human social life, that is, the change of culture itself. Different from the influence of the material revolution on culture in the past. Therefore, it is a real cultural change, and this great change in the history of human culture will inevitably lead us to make a major revision of the traditional scientific and artistic model.

In the whole field of literature and art, the change of painting art in the past hundred years is the most obvious. Below I will talk about the characteristics and essence of painting art in this era of great change from two new trends of contemporary painting. I hope that our thinking can be integrated into the general trend of literary thoughts in this era, so as to contribute our own meager strength to the construction of human new culture.

First, painting is an independent science.

Since human social activities entered the scientific era, great changes have taken place in all fields of human life, especially in the field of plastic arts. Because of the invention of photography, painting, which has always been a tool to record history, depict portraits and decorate living environment, has undergone a fundamental revolution-gradually becoming an independent discipline to study visual schema. Because the invention of photography not only brought about a major reform in the general tools for recording the scene, but more importantly, the new visual world revealed by radio telescope photography and micrography further strengthened the painter's interest in simple visual images. Of course, in the short history when painting really began to develop according to its self-discipline, this feature only occurred at a higher cultural level, but in general social life, painting did not get rid of its status as a tool to decorate the living environment and a vassal of social ethics. Therefore, the formation of this subject is only a bud, and it needs more efforts of wise men to establish a systematic scientific framework, so that this new demand of mankind can be truly improved.

Since Cezanne started "Modernist Painting", this kind of budding has begun to take shape, especially in Deschamps and Picasso, and George? based on the romantic landscape paintings of Baukling and klinger. De? "Metaphysical Painting" founded by Gillick and Peter? Mondriaan's "New Pattern" painting shows the real formation of this discipline. At this time, revealing the value of these schemas is not to express an obvious truth, nor to make them appreciation products with the function of meeting aesthetic needs, but to reveal the intellectuality that human beings are interested in the infinite mystery of visual schemas. In this sense, painting is no longer an art category in the original sense, but an independent science to study visual culture, because the revelation of these schemas may not necessarily show sociological and ethical significance first like poetry and drama, nor may it directly show aesthetic significance like music and dance. Although it can also replace photography to reproduce a beautiful scene and an instant dance, just as the achievements of physics can develop atomic weapons, this is only a by-product, not the purpose of studying the science itself.

The reason why I want to make a major revision to the classification of traditional paintings formed in thousands of years of human civilization history is not an attempt to deny the scientific nature of the formation of traditions. Before painting really became itself, the traditional classification was reasonable, applicable and accurate in the past thousands of years. However, when the scientific era came, specifically, after the invention of photography, this classic classification principle was broken. The appearance of photography is a turning point in history. Although we didn't clearly realize the inapplicability of the original painting mode at the initial stage, with the rapid development of photography technology, painting is less and less responsible for recording history and drawing commemorative portraits, so "modern painting" has gradually embarked on the road of semi-abstraction and abstraction. Today, it is difficult to find a painting schema similar to photos (referring to the research field that specializes in this subject). The introduction of so-called "photographic realism" into "modern painting" is by no means for depicting commemorative portraits or landscapes as appreciation. Their interest only lies in the worship of science and technology and the praise of human's ability to imitate machine effects by hand. In this sense, although this kind of painting is not a pure schema science, it is also close to the research of science and technology. So we come to the conclusion that "the old social function of painting as a work of art has been replaced by photography." It is under this historical condition that the scientific factors in painting schema have been greatly exerted, and then a special visual schema science has been formed. This can be illustrated by the abstraction of representation and content in painting schema. From the history of "modern painting" for more than one hundred years, we can see this obvious abstract universal feature. The reason why this gradually independent discipline was strongly opposed by the general public and demanded to understand its contents in the early days of its birth is that these people still hold the original understanding mode of painting to examine the meaning of these schemas, which triggered a debate on whether the new painting schemas have their existence value. In fact, this error is not only caused by viewers, but also by specialized research institutions and visual schemas (painters) themselves, because these specialized institutions and experts have not consciously turned to the tendency to adapt to the images of this era like visual schemas themselves, and they are contradictory in themselves. On the one hand, they want to show the structure of visual schema according to its scientificity and self-discipline, and on the other hand, they want ordinary audiences to understand the meaning of this work. There are contradictions, just like a mathematician trying to make ordinary people who don't understand mathematics understand his mathematical formula. As a result, the experts made great efforts, but the audience still didn't understand. Since the painting schema broke away from the old artistic category (the abstraction of appearance and content), it has changed its role in society in the past thousands of years, that is, it is no longer a luxury of aesthetic needs, a political propaganda of sociology, and a moral education of social ethics. The revelation and research on it is based on stimulating the creativity of human thinking, laying a theoretical foundation and materialization method for creating beautiful environment and beautiful objects, and choosing a knowledge foundation for material materials, which is its social value. People can certainly use its achievements to make beautiful things and beautiful appreciation products, such as architecture, urban planning, daily necessities modeling, machinery, mechanical modeling, murals, interior decoration, interior painting, sculpture, clothing styles, clothing patterns and so on; It can also be used for various scientific illustrations and sci-fi visual presentation, such as murals in planetarium, natural science museum, aquarium, geological museum and history museum, as well as various book binding and illustrations. But these are different from the study of "visual schema science" itself. In addition, more importantly, these schemas can inspire and cultivate scientists' creative thinking from the perspective of visual psychology, thus becoming an indispensable basic discipline of natural science.

Through the investigation of the application of abstract composition, we find that people have different visual reactions to the same visual schema. People who are sensitive to the understanding of form and have deep professional knowledge will agree with those schemata with gestalt feeling. The appraisal level is roughly divided into nine levels according to the pyramid structure, and the three levels are combined into one layer, so it is divided into three levels: upper, middle and lower. As shown in the figure:

Each layer constitutes a * * * language feature, the upper layer is abstract, the middle layer is image, and the lower layer is concrete (or representation). Through the investigation of the application of visual schema, it shows that abstract composition can also be divided into "excellent" and "poor". Then, the order of beauty is shown in the "excellent" schema (because this is a newly born subject, the past vocabulary concepts are still being used for the time being), and these schemas can only be recognized by very few experts. This is for two reasons. First, some people are as sensitive to visual schema as others to mathematics, and they need intellectual talent in this field. Another reason is that although some experts are sensitive, they refuse to give up their old understanding of the subject of "painting art" because of years of traditional education, that is, they also demand that painting schemas should at least give people a kind of "beautiful" enjoyment, which is the fundamental reason why it is difficult for the vast majority of the public and even professionals to understand why seemingly "ugly" schemas can also become the research object of painting science. Therefore, in order to make this new science with real research value develop healthily, we must change the traditional ideas in the past, no longer require the general recognition of ordinary audiences, and there is no need to explain the "content" expressed by these schemas. Art exhibitions, like other exhibitions of scientific and technological achievements, can also follow the opinions of ordinary audiences, because these exhibits do not have the problem of beauty and ugliness in essence, but only provide the accumulation of visual experience. These experiences may be old and new, but there is no distinction between beauty and ugliness.

I think this subject is still in the primary stage from its initial formation to now. The academic achievements of western painters such as Gillick, Luo, mondriaan and Pollock have always been the highest achievement of this discipline. Although some young "painters" in China have made some achievements in recent years, such as Gu Wenda, Wang Guangyi, Zhang Peili, Li Shan, etc., they have not left Jilike, Luo, mondriaan and others. Of course, it is worth mentioning that both Gu Wenda and Ren Jian tried to explore new forms, but these attempts were not completely successful. It can be seen that the revelation of painting schema must have a strong theoretical basis. Only when the concept is completely updated and the new methodology is generally recognized by experts (including eliminating all the influences of traditional education on ourselves) can we understand a deeper visual schema, so as to reveal the materialization of new experiences in painting schemas, rather than materializing new experiences or new concepts.

To sum up, we can't help but admit the fact that "modern painting" is becoming an independent science, because the revelation of painting schema has become a constituent problem of purely abstract study of natural physical images and psychological images accumulated by human beings in the deep experience of two-dimensional plane expression. The research of this science is absolutely different from the research of artistic linguistics, because the purpose of artistic linguistics research is to serve the infrastructure of its discipline. If it leaves the needs of a certain subject in art, its research becomes meaningless. The visual schema is not the case. It can not only provide language materials for popular art as an original art category, but also provide basic knowledge for building an orderly structure in all fields of social life. More importantly, it is of great significance in stimulating creative thinking and human interest in their own metaphysics. American educator g? f？ Naylor said in his Introduction to Philosophy of Education: "Man is born to be a metaphysical existence. He has an unrestrained desire to understand the ultimate essence of things from various materials of his life experience. " (Contemporary Western Educational Philosophy) It is this nature that makes human beings interested in all unknown fields, and vision, as the most important channel to acquire all knowledge, is itself the main object of modern people's cognitive interest. It is this feature that shows that it belongs to an independent science, not to art or social science.

Second, the rise of rational spirit.

(1) The indifferent and solemn visual schema has become the mainstream of contemporary painting. "Reason is the source of knowledge, from which we can draw universally applicable and consistent judgments." (G? f？ Introduction to Naylor's Philosophy of Education)

This topic will study the problem of "modern painting" from the perspective of art sociology and art psychology. Therefore, we will once again look at the value of contemporary artistic thoughts from the perspective of taking painting as an art category. Here, I will talk about the rational spirit according to the social thoughts and "works of art" of young artists in China in recent two years. Headed by the "Northern Art Troupe" in Northeast China, they first published papers such as The Birth of New Civilization and The Initial Formation of Cold Zone-Hou Culture, which represented an image of the times that they generally recognized. In their painting patterns, this image is distinct, that is, these patterns have some characteristics of indifference, solemnity and surrealism. These works are contrary to the "warm" sentiment in traditional paintings, giving people the impression of "inhuman atmosphere". Those absolutely forbidden and inhuman images, like the "nature" in dreams, are closer to the noumenon and the inevitable truth, while those "real and natural" photography are often accidental and superficial choices. Subsequently, some young painters and theorists in Nanjing Youth Art Week shouted the slogan of "Northern Spirit" and produced a large number of works similar to the former, among which the works of Fang Ding, Qin Shen and others were more representative. Then, many works appearing in the "85 New Space" art exhibition in Hangzhou are also isomorphic to this.

Let's give two concrete examples to analyze the characteristics of these works. For example, Wang Guangyi's Frozen Arctic Region No.20 and Zhang Peili's Rest Notes, a member of the 85-level New Space Youth Creation Society, we can see that the sense of sex here is very strong, and the dull and rigid characters in the picture, the concise handling of the whole picture and the static and steady effect all give people a cold and distant feeling. The characters in the picture are specious. They are illusory and pure in spirit, but they are also eternal and real. They live in "another world", which is the shadow of that world in our hearts. I think this "world" may be Plato's "world of ideas"! In a word, these works are not trying to arouse people's life associations with beautiful scenery or characters, but to build a pure spiritual world through borrowing. Here, the characters in the picture are not specific individuals, but symbols of class, symbols and media. Through the projection of this "ideal world", we can appreciate the joy of approaching the other side of the world, which is a solemn and incomparable sacred happiness.

Fang Ding's work "City", a large-scale exhibition of modern works of art in Nanjing, reveals the images of this era in another language. Although it is consistent with the former in rational tendency, there are obvious differences in the choice of materialization means, that is, the latter adopts complex texture effects, rather than being as smooth, clean and fresh as the former. At the same time, the rigidity and heavy tone of the inorganic subject image it uses are also different from the former, which makes this work more historical and religious. None of this makes this schema irrational, but it adopts another expression when revealing this spiritual connotation. Therefore, this work is similar to the former in spirit.

The above two concrete examples are about the effect of so-called rational tendency painting on people's psychology and its aesthetic significance. This rational tendency has gradually become the mainstream consciousness in contemporary China painting circles, which indicates that this tendency will inevitably become a recognized painting development trend in contemporary painting circles. In the "Modern Painting" exhibitions organized by contemporary youth organizations, we can see the universality of this tendency, such as the 165438+ October Art Exhibition in Beijing, the 0 Art Group Art Exhibition in Hunan, and so on.

So, from the perspective of sociology of art, what is the significance of these paintings? I don't know if it can be explained reluctantly (because the painting schema itself has no direct sociological significance): the biggest feature of this rational painting schema is to construct a relatively unfamiliar visual schema with images that people are not completely unfamiliar with, so that people can see and feel in front of these works, but they can't reach them. Frankly speaking, it is like the state before seeing hope, but it has not yet become a reality, which has caused the psychological distance between the viewer and the schema. This kind of distance is visible, but it is also far away, which causes the viewer to feel a state of awe when examining the work, instead of looking at it with a relaxed mood of enjoyment and appreciation, or getting sentimental infection from it. At this time, what they experience is a passionate and crazy state of mutual infiltration between man and nature. This aesthetic experience is easy to stimulate people's vitality rhythm and make people's life closer to rationality. This kind of rationality is what Heidegger called passionate rationality, that is, complete rationality. Only under the control of this complete rationality can human beings establish a healthy lifestyle, otherwise, mental malaise and degradation of life will erode our bodies when we are lazy and numb. Therefore, if painting is regarded as an appreciation, this aesthetic experience will also become one of the important factors in building a healthy lifestyle. In a sense, perhaps this is a compliment to the humanistic spirit.

(2) Combination of theory and pattern manufacturing. At present, the trend of artistic thought is developing in the direction of paying equal attention to theory and creation. A large number of young painters and art lovers from other industries emerged in the 1980s, paying attention not only to the exhibition of works of art, but also to the new focus of theoretical debate, and the influence of new achievements in marginal disciplines such as philosophy and natural science on artistic ideas and concepts. The times have developed by leaps and bounds, and a series of theoretical articles have aroused great interest of painters and general concern of the whole art world, which is an unprecedented new trend in China art world. According to our analysis, this is an inevitable phenomenon in modern times. The reason is that old ideas have withdrawn from the historical stage with the classic laws of plastic arts, and some painters' paintings as "works of art" have become monotonous, boring and vague after losing their spiritual connotation.

Therefore, although the emerging painting schools are one after another, they are thriving early and declining late. In less than 100 years, it has far exceeded the progress of thousands of years of human history. There is no doubt that this is an improvement from the study of the image itself; However, from an artistic point of view, this phenomenon cannot but become a sign of decline. From the iconology itself, it seems that all the problems contained in the two-dimensional plane composition have been initially solved in such a short time, which can be said to be a historic leap, while from the content of works of art, the works of this period are almost meaningless (art sociology and art psychology). The process of modern art is such a contradictory and profound development, which marks the decline of old Wen Mingzhen. It is not only the obsolescence of artistic materials and materialized methods, but also the disintegration of old traditional concepts. It is for this reason that some artistic works of "modern painting" have a visual effect of "brain blank", that is, "works without content" (referring to visual schema without spirit). All these phenomena show that we are at the turning point of the disintegration of old civilization and the formation of new civilization. As an intermediary between human beings and new civilization (new concept), painting can not fully reflect its sociological significance in contemporary times. Therefore, from the perspective of the whole human culture, "modern painting" is of great significance in its own development history, but its value in art sociology is not comparable to that of murals and sculptures in the Renaissance. It is precisely for this reason that contemporary art theory is unprecedentedly important, thus forming a painting development trend that goes hand in hand with visual schema. We can also know this from the knowledge structure of contemporary outstanding young painters. For example, Gu Wenda, Wang Guangyi, Zhang Peili, Fang Ding and Ren Jian all worked hard on the theory, and they perfected their theory with their own paintings. Most people I know think that painting itself is indifferent in the sense of promoting the whole human society. The key is that this schema should and must express their ideas. Judging from this tendency, so is this kind of painting. They repeatedly stressed the need to hold high the rational spirit in order to sweep away all the weak, relaxed and morbid Rococo culture and set up a lofty and healthy cultural model. In my opinion, this so-called rational spirit is the spirit of new civilization. It is at different points that the achievements of contemporary art theory converge to the main spirit of this new civilization. Sooner or later, these differences will converge, resulting in a brand-new aesthetic view, a brand-new materialized model, and a parallel and independent theoretical system.

In today's era of parallel theory and creation, an artist should not only be interested in creating more excellent works, but also strengthen theoretical cultivation, so as to read more books (including works of other disciplines), think hard, accumulate, love to argue and establish his own conceptual system. Therefore, we can work side by side with theorists to make full preparations for the real perfection of visual iconology and visual culturology, and make visual art, which will surely become an important part of human civilization in the future, more prosperous and develop.