A few words of praise for the bridge

Most artists like bridges, and I always look for them everywhere. How beautiful this bridge is! "Bridge Flowing Water" is of course poetic, but in fact it is more inclined to the formal beauty of painting: people's houses are blocks; Running water, it is a long line and a curve, and the line and the block form a relatively beautiful; Bridges intersect with flowing water, and their forms are more varied, which is also the medium between lines and surfaces. It is a bridge to communicate the morphological changes between lines and surfaces! If the stone bridge in Jiangnan water town or Venice is torn down, although the green water still bypasses others, it completely destroys the structural beauty and formal beauty in the eyes of the painter.

The structure of the stone arch bridge itself is very beautiful: round bridge opening, square stone, curved bridge back, square and circle get along harmoniously and appropriately, and the laws of mechanics often coincide with the laws of aesthetics. However, my love for the bridge is not focused on appreciating it as a large-scale handicraft, nor on its development since Li Chun's Zhao Zhouqiao, but on its various forms and functions in different environments.

Wuzhen, Mao Dun's hometown, has dense reeds on both sides of the river. It's really airtight. Whenever a stone bridge appears in it, the seemingly suffocating reed takes a deep breath and exhales a comfortable breath. The strong arc of arch bridge or the simple straight line of square bridge are in sharp contrast with reeds. In the early spring weather, slender willows are floating at the head of the stone bridge in the south of the Yangtze River, and slender hairsprings are blowing hard stones on the bridge. Even if you can't touch the breeze and the waning moon, the painter will be fascinated! The lake is wide and the water and sky are the same. In front of the simple and bright background, a long bridge suddenly appeared, like Wolong, with life, often hundreds of thousands of years. People cherish the beauty of this long bridge. The fake Lugou Bridge in the Summer Palace has only 17 holes, and baodai bridge in Suzhou has 53 holes. Take a slow look by boat, and you will feel as satisfied as reading an epic. Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou and other provinces and mountainous areas often encounter wind and rain bridges. The bridge deck is covered with cloisters and pavilions to shelter from the rain, which is an ideal location for embellishing characters in ancient landscape paintings. Because most of the bridges are rapids, people always stop here to enjoy waterfalls and flowing springs, and painters and photographers are bound to fight here.

Zhang Zeduan regards this bridge as the climax of the picture scroll of Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival. Because the bridge is under the bridge, pedestrians and ships are bound to present a lively scene, and the strong life sentiment of the streets on both sides of the strait is also connected by the bridge to form a concentrated picture. The development of contradiction leads to the climax of drama, and the overlapping and interlacing of images constitute a rich picture. Bridges usually serve to overlap and stagger images. No wonder bridges are often encountered in paintings and photographs. At first glance, it's a bit monotonous. At the end of the path, a small bridge suddenly appeared. The reflection of the bridge is reflected in the river under the bridge, and the reflection is often punctured by duckweed and weeds. Whether it is a wooden bridge or a stone bridge, the vertical and horizontal figure and the water waves under the bridge jointly compose a tangible and colored movement. The field is silent, and painters love to hear the songs of the bridge in the silence. They look for the bridge just as children look for excitement. Between mountains and canyons, traffic depends on iron cable bridge and bamboo cable bridge. I have painted many cable bridges in Tibet, Xishuangbanna, Sichuan and other places, which are humanitarian cable bridges. In the eyes of the painter, the cable bridge is a line, an elastic line! It's hard to say what vitality an isolated line has. It is the precipitous environment that breeds the life of the bridge, and it is the various lines of rocks, trees and rapids that make the cable bridge obtain the line effect with unique vitality.

Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge is also a straight line from a distance. Is it beautiful? Is the straight line more in line with the new aesthetic? It is not appropriate to ask questions in general, nor can you answer them in general. In the treatment of art forms, it is often a small loss. In order to draw the Yangtze River Bridge, I climbed the Lion Mountain in Nanjing, just to find the points, lines and surfaces that set off, echo and extend the straight line of the bridge! In order to draw the Qiantang River Bridge, I climbed the hillside behind Pagoda of Six Harmonies twice, but I couldn't handle the relationship between the huge Pagoda of Six Harmonies and the Long Bridge, so I couldn't draw it. Although there are many weeping willows and peach blossoms all over the mountain, how can the color of the powder affect the beauty of the structure! On Cheng Kun Road, there are many straight bridges. The train keeps crossing the bridge, entering the hole, leaving the hole and crossing the bridge, almost bridge to hole and hole to bridge. Every time we cross the circular valley, we look forward and backward. Many bridges always cut steep slopes in a straight line, sometimes they look dangerous and beautiful, and sometimes they are dangerous and unattractive. Beauty and danger are not the same thing

Photographers and painters continue to explore the beauty of bridges. Small bridges have their own beauty. Someone painted the Magpie Bridge, which is not only meaningful, but also free and lively in form. Any image that plays a key role in composition and connection actually has the beauty of a bridge!