Ten years ago, General Secretary Xi Jinping presided over a symposium on literary and artistic work and delivered an important speech, expounding and answering a series of major questions on how to prosper and develop socialist literature and art under the new historical conditions. Over the past 10 years, our literary and artistic creation has not only made outstanding achievements in the direction pointed out by the general secretary, but more importantly, it has explored a road that integrates socialist literary and artistic construction with the historical conditions of the new era, resolved a series of contradictions restricting the development of literature and art, and found solutions to a series of principled problems in literary and artistic creation, and clearly defined the direction of development.
Ten years of literary and artistic construction goals
In 1938, Comrade Mao Zedong proposed the construction of a "new culture of the Chinese nation" and a culture with "a fresh and lively Chinese style and style that the Chinese people like to see", which is the general purpose of the cultural construction that the Communist Party of China has consistently carried out for more than 80 years. This general purpose requires that when the Communist Party of China carries out cultural construction, the construction of new literature and art cannot completely inherit the traditional culture or the old culture, and must eliminate the feudal part of the traditional culture; Western literature and art cannot be transplanted, but should reflect the new democratic revolution and the socialist revolution on the basis of inheriting the achievements of the May Fourth New Culture Movement; We should not simply repeat the traditional national folk literature and art, but should let it have revolutionary content.
In order to achieve this general goal, the Communist Party of China has adhered to the revolutionary and socialist nature of literature and art, and in the practice of literature and art for more than 80 years, it has concretized the general purpose of this "new culture of the Chinese nation" into a "national", "scientific", "popular" and "socialist" new culture.
Xi Jinping's cultural thought and the general secretary's many expositions on literature and art, run through with "better undertaking the new cultural mission", are the latest achievements of the Sinicization and modernization of Marxist cultural theory, and put forward the promotion of the coordinated development of material civilization and spiritual civilization, adhere to the "two combinations", strengthen cultural self-confidence, cultivate and practice the core values of socialism, adhere to the people-centered work orientation, promote the creative transformation and innovative development of China's excellent traditional culture, and build a Chinese discourse and Chinese narrative system. A series of major innovative viewpoints, such as promoting exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations, have profoundly revealed the inherent requirements and objective laws of the construction of socialist culture with Chinese characteristics.
Over the past 10 years, the construction of literature and art has adhered to and implemented the general goals and specific goals, and the achievements in literature and art over the past 10 years have also come closer to achieving this general goal. Some basic contradictions in literary and artistic production have been resolved.
Ten years of literary and artistic creative achievements
From the perspective of the national character of literature and art, under the special historical conditions in the early days of reform and opening up, Western literature and art came in, and Western aesthetics, artistic outlook, and the values behind literature and art came in together to participate in the literary and artistic production of the mainland. This has had an impact on the cultural self-confidence of the nation, and it is necessary to create literary and artistic works with national form and conform to the national folk tradition, on the one hand, emphasizing the cultural identity of literary and artistic appreciators, and on the other hand, creating literary and artistic works with Chinese style and embodying the spirit of Chinese aesthetics, so that literature and art can participate in the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, participate in the realization of the Chinese dream, and contribute to the national construction project of enhancing cultural self-confidence, which is the new goal of Xi Jinping's cultural thought on literary and artistic creation.
To this end, creating more literary and artistic works with national style, Chinese style and Chinese aesthetic spirit is one of the most eye-catching achievements in the development of literature and art in the past ten years. A large number of artists in the fields of drama, dance, film and television, fine arts, etc., under the guidance of Xi Jinping's cultural thought, have focused on the basis of traditional national arts, not only absorbing the century-old accumulation of new literature and art produced in the New Culture Movement since the May Fourth Movement, but also reversing the trend of "thick and thin and thin" in the style of literary and artistic creation in the past 100 years. Dance painting "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains", ballet music "Dream of Red Mansions", movie "Thirty Thousand Miles of Chang'an" and TV series "Langya Bang", etc., the symphonic chorus "Jiangchengzi" in music, Kunqu opera "Four Dreams of Linchuan", etc., have formed a spectacular literary and artistic "Chinese style" and "Chinese style".
In the past ten years of literary and artistic development, literature and art with the character of the masses - the people have achieved tremendous development, and excellent masterpieces have emerged in various art categories. For example, the TV series "Chicken Feathers Fly to the Sky", "Loading the Stage", "Mountains and Seas", the drama "Ordinary World", the main award-winning works of oil painting and Chinese painting in two national art exhibitions, the national dance drama "Awakening Lion", and the cello concerto "Muqam Impression". The popular or popular nature of literature and art is the basic principle that the Communist Party of China has always adhered to, and it is also the basic value orientation and style of socialist literature and art in practice. On the other hand, the people's nature of literature and art is emphasized as the core content of the socialist nature of literature and art, and the practice of Xi Jinping's cultural thought has promoted the creation of literature and art with people's character.
Therefore, some forms of national folklore have received more attention in the past ten years, such as folk opera, folk songs, shadow puppetry, folk art, folk dance, national music, national folk traditional arts and crafts, etc., whether from the perspective of research and preservation, or from the perspective of intangible cultural heritage activation and industrialization, have been effectively maintained and inherited, and great development has been achieved. He has created a large number of new works with the new style of the times, such as Peking Opera "Xi'an Incident", Yue Opera "New Dragon Gate Inn", "Mountains and Seas Love", Cantonese Opera "Wedding on the Execution Ground", Shanghai Opera "Dunhuang Daughter", Longju "Dayu Controls the Water", Pingju "Revolutionary Family", Lantern Opera "Moonlight Fenglindu" and so on.
At the same time, the popular nature of literature and art, the people's nature, requires artists to go deep into life, observe and study reality, reflect the lives of ordinary laborers, create ordinary and vivid artistic images, and focus the perspective of literature and art on the ordinary lives of small people, as well as their progress and development in ordinary lives. Therefore, realism has been the main theme in literature and art in the past ten years, and it has also achieved new achievements.
The revolutionary nature of literature and art is the consistent concept of literature and art of the Communist Party of China, and in contemporary times, it is embodied in the socialist nature of literature and art. Over the past 10 years, literary and artistic creation has made achievements worthy of high affirmation in fully undertaking the promotion of socialist construction and carrying forward the core socialist values, and a large number of outstanding works of film, television, drama, art, and music are socialist in content, and at the same time they are vivid and concrete, and can withstand aesthetic criticism. For example, the dance "The Eternal Wave", "Heavenly Road", "Cavalry", the movie "Changjin Lake", the TV series "Great River", "The Awakening Age", and the large-scale symphonic suite "My Motherland" can be called a three-dimensional presentation of all aspects of socialist construction, both in terms of the depth of historical expression and the breadth of reality.
Ten years of innovative development of literature and art
It is the consistent proposition of the Communist Party of China to put a hundred flowers blooming, bringing forth the new, and creating a new culture of the Chinese nation. Therefore, how to ensure the national and popular character of literature and art, to create works with Chinese style and demeanor that the masses like to see, and to create "new" socialist literature and art has been one of the tremendous historical missions shouldered by mainland literary and art workers in the past 10 years.
It should be said that this is also a decade of continuous innovation in the development of Chinese literature and art, and literary and artistic workers have created a rich and colorful new media literature and art and new forms of literature and art under the conditions of new media environment and new technologies. Many modern digital technologies and artificial intelligence technologies have been applied to the field of literary and artistic creation, which has strongly promoted the creative transformation and innovative development of traditional Chinese literature and art, and created art with a sense of novelty in animation, video, stage art and music, variety shows, acrobatics, public art, etc. At the same time, in the process of literary and artistic creation, literary and artistic workers make full use of modern technological means to carry out cross-media creation, integrated media creation, carry out conversion and dialogue between media, and gradually replace the traditional art concept with the big art concept, and carry out innovative development in all aspects.
Among them, the most outstanding achievement is that a number of audio-visual works of art have emerged in the field of literature and art that are both traditional and modern, with a sense of novelty and national significance, and both imagination and reality, thus achieving the unity of nationality and modernity, and the integration of science and technology and art. For example, the immersive drama "Xinhua Newsboy" and "Three Lives and Three Worlds", the acrobatic drama "Tianshan Snow" and "Battle of Shanghai", the fantasy movie "The Wandering Earth", Xu Bing's art video work "Dragonfly Eye", Cai Guoqiang's gunpowder series of artworks, Hu Jieming and Hu Weiyi's installation art, the game work "Black Myth: Wukong", the animated film "Big Fish and Begonia", etc.
The prosperity and achievements of literary and artistic creation over the past ten years are also reflected in the construction of a set of socialist cultural systems with Chinese characteristics in the new era. The development of contemporary Chinese literature and art, under the guidance of putting social benefits in the first place and unifying social benefits and economic benefits, has built a set of effective literary and artistic production mechanisms with the goal of creating works that can stand the evaluation of the people, experts, and the market. This mechanism guides "project-based" creation through the competent department and cultural management mechanism to lead literary and artistic creation, and provides initial capital investment for literary and artistic creation, so as to prevent artistic creation from being completely influenced by the market and capital; Through the relevant industry associations of literature and art, the Federation of Literary and Art Circles, the Writers' Association and other leading institutions, the implementation of the party's literary and artistic policies, the implementation of creative tasks, in addition to market-oriented individual creation and enterprise production to provide a kind of collective creation system guarantee; Realize the aesthetic education and publicity value of the works through the organized social performance of the works; Through a series of award mechanisms and strengthening literary and artistic criticism, the value guidance of literary and artistic creation is realized; Through market-oriented marketing and the combination of cinemas, venues, cultural tourism, festivals, and local cultural industry construction, the marketization of literary and artistic products has been completed. This set of mechanisms truly puts social benefits in the first place, establishes the unity between the market-oriented production of literature and art and the socialist nature of literature and art, provides an institutional guarantee for the socialist nature of literature and art, and also provides an institutionalized guarantee for the realization of the value of literary and artistic aesthetic education.
At the same time, based on the reality of the development of the cultural industry in the new era, many new literary and artistic organizations and new literary and artistic groups have emerged in the past ten years, and new literary and artistic organizations such as private cultural studios, private cultural brokerage institutions, and online literary and artistic communities have sprung up, and new literary and artistic groups such as online writers, contracted writers, freelance writers, independent producers, independent actors and singers, and freelance art workers are very active. The emergence of the "two new" in literary and artistic activities is the characteristic of cultural production in the new era. Under the guidance of the party's and the state's literary and artistic policies, the "two new" have provided a new impetus for the creation and development of contemporary literature and art, and are a new force in literary and artistic production, as well as some new forms of literature and art.
It should be said that the construction of the socialist cultural system with Chinese characteristics in the new era and the vigorous development of new forces and new forms of literary and artistic production are the fundamental reasons why we have been able to create a number of excellent works that have achieved ideological and artistic success in the past ten years, not only adhered to the aesthetic ideals of literature and art, maintained the social benefits of literature and art, but also were welcomed in the market.
Throughout the development of Chinese literature and art in the past ten years, some major issues that have affected the development of Chinese literature and art for nearly a hundred years have been solved by the times: the relationship between national literature and art and Western literature and art, the relationship between traditional literature and art and modern literature and art, the relationship between the socialist nature of literature and art and the free creation of literature and art, the relationship between the socialist nature of literature and art and the market-oriented production of literature and art, the relationship between the traditional technical means of literature and art and modern science and technology and modern means, the people's nature of literature and art and the commoditization of literature and art... … These problems are the general, basic, and directional issues in the process of China's literary and artistic modernization in the past 100 years. Under the guidance of Xi Jinping's cultural thought, based on the overall strategic situation of realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and the great changes in the world unseen in a century, literary and artistic workers have made new explorations in the practice of literary and artistic creation in the new era, and have made new achievements and new experiences, thus giving birth to a number of excellent literary and artistic works that are "like the sunshine in the blue sky and the breeze in spring", responding to the needs of the times.
Text: Liu Xuguang (Professor, Dean of the School of Liberal Arts, Shanghai University)
Editor: Fan Xin