On January 22, contemporary artist Xu Lei, director and professor of the French Department of the School of Foreign Chinese of Peking University, translator Dong Qiang, writer, founder and editor-in-chief of "Reading Library" Zhang Lixian visited Beijing SKP RENDEZ-VOUS, and launched a dialogue on "beauty" with the editor-in-chief of "Aesthetic Beauty" magazine and artist Leng Glacier, and the guests talked about their views on "what is beauty", and also talked about the loneliness, anxiety, and the relationship between beauty and life of artists at present.
On January 22, several guests discussed and shared the theme of "talking about beauty, is talking about our lives" theme activity.
"When we talk about 'beauty,' we're really talking about our lives." This sentence was born twenty years ago in a magazine called Aesthetics. The magazine ends in one issue. Twenty years later, the "continued fire" of cold glaciers reborn "Aesthetic". Huang Yongyu, Xia Yang, Lang Jinghe, Shang Yang, Wang Huaiqing, He Duoling, Jin Yucheng and other more than 70 contemporary writers and artists gathered on paper, poetry, painting, music, architecture... Writers paint, painters write poems, cross time and space, break boundaries, "cross boundaries" and "inheritance", and make this magazine book born in a special year.
"Aesthetic"
An important criterion for "beauty" is "accuracy"
The reason why the magazine book was named "Aesthetic", Leng Glacier said, is precisely because the name is beautiful and lyrical enough. What is "beauty"? In the view of Cold Glacier, what is naturally sung from the heart is "beauty", and it must be said. In Xu Lei's view, "beauty" is the blind person touching the elephant, and everyone touches what is what it is. Xu Lei said that "beauty" has a very important standard, that is, "accuracy". And the word "accurate" is a bit like the will of God in artistic creation. All the sense of balance of nature, the beauty of the spiral of a shell, is not something that man can create. People often refer to artists as creators, believing that they are god-like beings, but Xu Lei feels that this is not the case, "All good works have 'god's hand' in it." What does this mean? There are some things that can't be said, so this is a very delicate thing. Some people say that ugliness is also another kind of beauty, and the things around beauty are very complicated. ”
Dong Qiang once edited a book called "The Beauty of All", which is very similar to "Aesthetic Beauty", in his view, "Aesthetic Beauty" itself is a cross-border thing, which has a variety of different people engaged in "beauty" related (creation). Is it a bit out of place for us to talk about the word "beauty" today? This is the question raised by Dong Qiang at the scene. In his view, our time was changing too fast, and the word "beauty" had, in a way, fallen from the temple. In the 1980s, when Dong Qiang was studying, there was a very famous book called "The Course of Beauty", at that time, aesthetics was a prominent science. But in today's daily life, we see things of beauty, often expressed in other words, as if the word "beauty" belongs to another era. Therefore, Dong Qiang believes that the name "Aesthetic Beauty" itself represents a gesture — it is calling for something, "even if it is a call for a debate." ”
Why don't people talk about "beauty" anymore? Dong Qiang said that the concept of "beauty" is not very clear in China, but the West does have a clear concept from the perspective of art history and the history of philosophy, at different stages. For example, Plato expounded the relationship between beauty and ideas, and in the Middle Ages, there was the famous "truth, goodness and beauty", and Hugo's most famous "Cromwell Preface". Why is there such a work as "Notre Dame de Paris"? "Notre Dame de Paris" has an extremely beautiful person- Esmiranda, and an extremely ugly person - the bell tower freak. Hugo proposed that the writer is the expressor, that we can face reality, and that if there is ugliness in reality, I must express it.
Dong Qiang further said that the most important step in the philosophical interpretation of "beauty" is Kant, and Kant has two major contributions to "beauty", first of all, "beauty" is universal; second, Kant put forward the concept of "sublime" or "magnificent". Beginning with Kant, the beauty of nature can be compared with the beauty of art, even higher than the beauty of art. Then to Baudelaire in the nineteenth century, it was an artificial paradise, once again emphasizing "art for art's sake". By the twentieth century, the concept of "beauty" had been greatly undermined, and various contemporary art practices, such as Duchamp's urinal, were clearly impacting and subverting the so-called traditional classical beauty. So the West (a change in the concept of "beauty") has traces to follow.
The French painter Jean Dubuffe said that "beauty is uncapable, and as soon as you say the word, 'beauty' disappears". But Dong Qiang pointed out that even today, people still have a standard for judging the beauty and ugliness of a thing in their minds, which is human nature. Returning to China's state, Dong Qiang said that Chinese it is difficult to distinguish "beauty" from "ugliness" and "truth" and "goodness", and it is difficult to look at "beauty" purely from the perspective of form or art. How to understand this sentence? That is, when we judge the "beauty" and "ugliness" of a thing, we are actually making moral judgments or ethical judgments, and it is difficult for Chinese to cross such limitations, "The people of the Song Dynasty pursued 'beauty' that was detached from utilitarianism, but when we judged, it was difficult to break through this functionality or utilitarianism, so the three were connected." ”
In the information age, everyone is very happy to discover special talents
"There is no longer a situation in this era where people are not in a good position." In Xu Lei's view, every once in a while art is trendy and contemporary, and if you don't call for this matter together on a channel, you become an outsider, because it is different from the things that the times say. But on the other hand, things like "great painters are poor and destitute" will happen much less likely than in the past. In the information age, everyone is very happy to discover special talents and talents. Now the success and fame of artists are very fast, and they will not be buried for many years or even after they die before they are discovered.
In his view, this is actually a huge change in the concept of art. The word "fine arts" comes from the French language, and in the past, what was purely a craftsman was not considered art. So for a long time art was above the temple. Dong Qiang said that when people tell the story of Van Gogh, they actually contain a kind of sacredness in it, but contemporary art breaks this sacredness and integrates many things together.
Here, Dong Qiang mentions another word, "taste." Beauty and taste are closely linked, when people look down on some people, they often feel that they have no taste, and when they think that something is beautiful, they will feel that this thing is very tasteful. Dong Qiang said that beauty can always argue whether there is objective beauty or subjective beauty, but the taste is definitely subjective, and even the times. People in an era think that this is tasteful, that it is beautiful, and that after that era they feel that it is not beautiful. It is precisely because of this that the world today has become more of a circle, and people in a certain circle have common interests and common tastes, and people who are not at one level cannot talk about a piece at all.
Inside page of "Aesthetic Beauty"
"It's also dangerous stuff in a way, why?" Dong Qiang said that the beauty proposed by Kant is of universal significance, and we have not accepted this kind of beauty in the universal sense in contemporary times, which is both good and bad, and the good thing is to emphasize the individual and liberate the individual, but the bad thing is that it is difficult for us to calmly discuss beauty and talk about beauty on the same platform. And this is the root cause of more and more conflicts in today's world – because we are constantly denying what is universal, or what is universal is no longer valued, and overemphasizing the feelings of the individual. Returning to the level of art, Dong Qiang said, "Modern art has basic criteria for judging, and it is difficult to be in the future. Contemporary (art) becomes a kind of person, a group of people defending their tastes. Dong Qiang took Picasso, Miró, and Van Gogh as examples, pointing out that modern art is an aesthetic accepted by the whole world, a modern art aesthetic, but now we no longer have the same system of thinking.
"Will artists cater to the Internet in order to pursue traffic, to pursue 100,000+?" In the face of Zhang Lixian's question, Xu Lei's answer was "unlikely." He believes that "if an artist makes a work, he needs to have a certain amount of time, to convince others, and what is the logical relationship between making one work and the next work is to move forward." Rather than saying that there is a sensational statement today, there must be a relative standard of recognition. ”
Dong Qiang said that 100,000+ articles look carefully, many of them are very empty, the public is attracted by this 100,000+, superficial, very kitsch thing, and this may be the enemy that art faces at present, "Every era of art will encounter its own enemies, the enemy is not the same, including capital, including politics, including various ideologies, every era exists." Dong Qiang said that the biggest problem now is that there are too many platforms for voice, and all kinds of levels have been eliminated, and everyone thinks they are artists. From this point of view, Dong Qiang believes that this may not be so optimistic for art.
Author 丨He An'an
Editor 丨 Zhang Jin
Proofreading 丨 Zhang Yanjun