Appreciate the elegance and charm

Author: Fan Zeng / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: We urgently need solemn, grand, and deeply beautiful sketches of the human body. Because after years of misunderstanding and distortion of humanistic art, people have just been freed from the shackles of asceticism and monasticism, driven by a sense of rebellion, various works claiming to represent humanistic art have emerged. Due to historical, social, and cultural factors, the revival of humanistic art in China lacks sufficient psychological and technical preparation. Not only are the artists themselves lost, but the audience is also confused—why has nude art become fashionable? As a result, numerous poor-quality art books flooded the market, with paintings and sculptures at a low aesthetic level and poor technique, more like displaying ugliness than portraying the beauty of the human body. There was once an art book where almost every image was extremely ugly—stooped, sickly, and corpulent bodies, combined with foolish and vulgar appearances, which were nothing short of an insult to the human form. It is baffling that one critic claimed this was the artist's "imbued with bitter and profound suffering, and infinite sympathy for 'human beings'." The Venus statue, regarded by Rodin as the discovery of Greek artists' beauty, became a crude plaster replica in China, painted with flesh-like colors. Throughout history, how many art masters have sung the praises of the human body with reverence. Victor Hugo said, "A woman's skin is so holy that one cannot help but believe it when passion burns, and the beauty of a close embrace is like God." Rodin believed, "In nature, nothing is more characterful than the human body. Due to its strength or beauty, the human body can evoke various images. Sometimes it is like a flower, its graceful posture like a stem, the smile of its breasts and face, and the brilliance of its hair like the blooming of a calyx. Sometimes it is like a soft ivy or a vigorous, swaying small tree." Yes, before creating a pure nude work, we need a pure heart and pure eyes. The history of nude art in China is incomplete; we only see the flying apsaras in the Northern Wei or Western Wei murals of the Dunhuang caves, dancing freely in the paradise of joy, with their robes fluttering in the wind, accompanied by the sound of Buddhist drums. And that's all! Due to the suppression of human beings, human desires, and individuality by China's feudal laws and moral concepts for thousands of years, after the Wei and Jin dynasties, nude art in painting and sculpture almost vanished, with all depictions of the human body either being secret chamber works or esoteric happy Buddhas. I believe this is largely at odds with what is discussed today as nude art. It must be admitted that nude art, from ancient times to the present, has been somewhat linked to human sexuality. However, in ancient Greece, sexuality tended toward hedonism, while Christian culture tended toward original sin. So, in contemporary China, is nude art hedonistic or about original sin? I think neither, because we lack the cultural and historical background of Greece and Rome, making these discussions too distant. Our urgent task is to enable people to appreciate the human body, an enlightenment movement based on the social mindset that the nude is a sin or obscenity. A Miss China Fitness Contest was held in Shenzhen, and reporters from all over the country rushed there in a hurry, leaving me with a rather unpleasant impression. Compared to the rarity of swimsuits, how much more so is the human body bare? Thus, whether the models at art academies should wear thongs became a focal point of debate, and Professor Qian Shaowu, who insisted on removing them, believing that the hip joint and coccyx are crucial to the human body, became the target of public criticism. Professor Qian is a highly scholarly painter who earnestly discusses art, yet he was subjected to countless letters of abuse and insults from those with vulgar and dirty intentions! P96-98