Protect the cultural roots of folk art inheritance
2022-03-30
The majestic dragon head centipede kite, charming colored dolls, exquisite paper-cut window flowers... The month long "national style tangible - the Chinese art museum's Spring Festival folk art exhibition in the year of the tiger" recently came to an end. The New Year pictures, paper cuts, shadow puppets, colored sculptures, kites and other folk art works on display in this exhibition show the distinctive cultures and customs of different nationalities and regions in China. Folk art is an art form created by the working people in the long-term production and life, which reflects the most simple spiritual appeal and aesthetic expression of the working people. The bright color, simple and wild form and exquisite production of folk art tell colorful Chinese stories, form the basic content of the original culture of the Chinese nation and carry the common spiritual memory of the Chinese people. However, turning to the history of art, we can see that most people remember emperors, generals and literati artists. Those folk artists who have created rich and colorful art works are often difficult to leave their names. They can only live in the corner of history as collective identities such as "Baigong" and "craftsman". Inheriting and carrying forward the excellent traditional Chinese culture requires the participation of folk artists. Rural Revitalization and rural aesthetic education are inseparable from the empowerment of folk art. In the new era, we should not only rediscover the value of folk art, but also think about how to stimulate the vitality of folk art. Rediscover the value of folk art Folk art is an art form bred in the long folk production and life. In thousands of years of farming, it is an essential part of people's life. It has not only practical value, but also aesthetic and educational functions. For example, an Embroidered Purse not only has beautiful appearance, but also has good storage function; A carved wooden stool is not only an exquisite work of art, but also has excellent use value. The patterns and shapes on these items are mostly based on folklore, historical allusions, traditional novels and local operas, conveying the values of benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom, faith, loyalty, filial piety, honesty, fraternity and tolerance. Today, folk art forms such as paper cutting, peasant painting, embroidery, weaving, printing and dyeing and kites are still popular, decorating, beautifying and enriching people's lives and pinning their longing for a better life. In history, the creators of folk art are ordinary workers (many are native farmers). Their life is simple, their thought is simple, and their creative process is accidental. They directly express what they see in their eyes and what they think in their hearts. Due to the relatively small influence of foreign culture, folk art has been growing arbitrarily in a primitive state. It can be said that it is a living fossil of folk culture and an important "window" to study folk cultural psychology and traditional folk customs. Today, we appreciate the "folk flavor" folk art form, actually speaking with the ancestors. In recent years, with the rise of traditional culture fever, many experts and scholars have focused their research on folk art, and some even invested in collecting and sorting out a large number of folk art works. In modern society, the value of folk art lies not only in building a bridge of "dialogue" with our ancestors, but also in providing materials and inspiration for modern design. Folk art and modern art design seem to be far from each other, but they actually have something in common. The inheritance of folk art has been carried out in the form of "hand-in-hand". Almost every work is purely manual creation, which integrates the author's perception and understanding of the world and life. This pure and colorless true feeling is what modern art design pursues. At present, folk art has been widely used in many fields, such as product modeling design, environmental art design, visual communication design and so on. For example, the design inspiration of China Unicom's logo "China knot" comes from China's traditional arts and crafts. Face up to the plight of folk artists Since ancient times, most artists in professional art institutions have been supported by the state, while folk art practitioners can only "dig and eat" by themselves. Before the emergence of modern large-scale industrial production, people engaged in folk art could earn an income to support their families with their own skills. When machines liberated human hands, these people were forced to the corner of history and fell into survival difficulties. Taking shadow puppets as an example, making a 50 cm high shadow puppet character by hand usually involves eight processes: Leather selection, leather making, painting, painting, engraving, color application, sweating and ironing, binding and synthesis. It takes more than 3000 knives to carve the character shape alone, and it takes about a week to complete all processes. You can use the machine. Just input the program and start the switch. You can carve a shadow puppet in only 30 minutes. Even with coloring and binding, it takes three or four hours to complete all processes. Moreover, the shadow puppet made by the machine has smooth lines and no knife error, and the production cost is only one tenth of that made by hand. Therefore, no matter how exquisite the craft is, it is difficult for shadow puppet artists to solve the problem of survival in modern society by making and selling shadow puppet works. Similar to shadow puppet artists, there are many folk art practitioners such as paper cutting, embroidery, clay sculpture and so on. Survival always comes first. When they can't support themselves in folk art work, old artists will change careers, and young people are more reluctant to come in. Due to the lack of fresh blood, after the death of a large number of old artists, folk art will fall into the dilemma of "death of people and art". Of course, at present, there are still some folk art lovers engaged in relevant creation. But these people only regard folk art as their hobbies, while the older artists regard folk art as their lifelong career. One is interest and the other is career. Different positioning and paying must be different. Therefore, we can see that the works of many folk art lovers are mostly repeating their predecessors and fail to create a new artistic language suitable for the new era environment and modern people's life. All these have led to the development of folk art in trouble. Stimulate the endogenous power of folk art Any art form comes from life and is to meet people's needs. Therefore, to rescue and even develop folk art, the most important thing is to find the combination point between folk art and modern people's production and life, and explore how to meet the needs of modern people, so as to stimulate the endogenous power of folk art. As mentioned earlier, folk art has reference value for modern design. If we can integrate the essence of folk art into modern design, we will find a way to rebirth. There are many kinds of folk art, including painting, paper cutting, sculpture, paper binding, weaving, embroidery, dyeing and weaving, clothing cutting, etc. each major category includes several sub categories. With the development of modern design, more and more designers and artists have successfully grafted folk art with modern design. For example, some places boldly innovate the visual language of farmers' paintings, and use modern design techniques to integrate their artistic essence into local specialty packaging. The "encounter" between the two has produced novel and interesting sparks, which promotes the inheritance and innovation of farmers' paintings. For another example, some designers combined traditional tie dyeing with modern aesthetics to design household products full of artistic flavor. They not only won awards at home and abroad, but also sold their products abroad. Therefore, Millennium tie dyeing changed its old appearance. In short, the best way to activate the vitality of folk art is to deeply tap the artistic potential and commercial value of folk art, broaden the application field of folk art and create the art brand of folk art through modern design means. In practice, one of the bottlenecks restricting the application of folk art in modern society is that those who understand folk art do not understand modern design, and those who understand modern design often do not understand folk art, lacking "generalists" who successfully connect the two. Therefore, the author suggests that the major of art design in Colleges and universities should, on the one hand, set up folk art courses, on the other hand, encourage college students to go deep into the folk and learn from old folk artists. Although the practical value of folk art works has weakened in modern society, it still has high aesthetic value. In other words, in modern society, people learn to make kites not to make money by selling kites, and they don't have to be a tailor to learn to cut clothes. However, by contacting and learning these folk arts, we can understand the traditional culture, cultivate personal sentiment and improve the aesthetic level. In this sense, folk art still has broad development space. The author suggests that colleges, universities and primary schools include folk art in the aesthetic education curriculum. Schools with conditions can hire folk artists as aesthetic education teachers. In addition, cultural centers, museums, children's palaces and even private educational institutions can offer a certain number of folk art courses, especially hands-on courses such as ceramic art and paper cutting, so that children can improve their aesthetic education level and practical ability on the one hand by learning folk art. (outlook new era)
Edit：Yuanqi Tang Responsible editor：Xiao Yu
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