5 essays on the course of beauty after reading
Reflections on the course of beauty
Close the book, it seems a little difficult to write. "The course of beauty?" What is beauty? And beauty, how to say its course?
Suddenly I remembered the first art class in high school and the teacher asked, "What do you think is good?" At that time, I thought about it, raised my hand and replied, "I think the Mona Lisa is beautiful, with a mysterious smile and gentle eyes? These all give people a good feeling. " Do you still remember that some students said some lovely things, magnificent scenery and kind people?
"In the eyes of a thousand people, there are a thousand villages." When we think: What is beauty? Obviously, no one can really define it. But as the philosopher Wittgenstein said, "If you can't say it, you will be speechless." Beauty has no ultimate explanation. Then I think it is human nature to love beauty. "Human nature should not be the divinity dominated by a priori, nor can it be the animal nature of sensory satisfaction. It is rational in sensibility, social in individual and emotional in perceptual imagination. "
Since beauty has a "course", it is not difficult to think that beauty is alive and developing.
From the ancient totem of dragon and phoenix dance to the bronze decoration of enchanting images; From the rational spirit of pre-Qin dynasty to the romantic Chu and Han dynasties; From Wei and Jin demeanor to the voice of the prosperous Tang Dynasty; From the artistic conception of mountains and rivers in Song and Yuan Dynasties to the ideological trend of literature and art in Ming and Qing Dynasties. I can clearly feel the beautiful history of China from Mr. Li Zehou's description.
Personally, I like the Tang Dynasty best, and I think it is the best representative of China's beauty. Pre-prosperity and post-prosperity all have their irreplaceable beauty. As far as poetry is concerned, in the early Tang Dynasty, the decadent voice of the Six Dynasties turned to fresh and clear. I still remember that when I first learned "Moonlit Night on a Spring River", the meaning of "I don't know each other at this time, and I hope that the moon will shine on you" directly hit people's hearts. No wonder Mr. Wen Yiduo called it "the poem in the poem, the peak on the peak", while Wang Bo's "harmony but difference, China is friendship, and heaven is neighborhood" made me feel the vigorous spirit of entering the prosperous Tang Dynasty. In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, both the magnificent frontier poems of "lonely smoke in the desert, the long river setting the yen" and the beautiful pastoral poems of "birds singing in the moon and spring water gurgling" made people linger.
In the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, Li Bai, a gifted scholar known as "Poet Fairy", was the first to be promoted. "One day I will ride the wind and waves, and set my cloudy sail straight and bridge the deep, deep sea" confidence, "God-given talent, let it be used" domineering! , spin one thousand silver, all come back! The transparency of "the husband of heaven and earth, the traveler of one hundred generations", "Oh, how can I bow and scrape to those high-ranking and high-ranking people who will never be shown an honest face!" Hero? These are the weather in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. After reading it? In the late Tang Dynasty, Mu Zhi, who pondered that "the east wind doesn't agree with Zhou Lang, and the bronze sparrow terrace locks Er Qiao in spring", and Du Fu, who wrote "A vast expanse of buildings makes the world poor"? Everyone has a sad beauty.
All this beauty is related to the soul and the beauty of human nature. It is because of emotion, thought, love and pain that beauty can be created and perceived. So in a word, it is human nature to love beauty.
I recalled a passage I had read before: "The mountain road I walked was the place where Xu Xiake once stayed, and the pass I walked was the place where the six countries once wandered and dared not move forward. The tower I stopped at was firmly guarded by Yu Qian. Now I can ride the northwest grassland where Huo Qubing once fought, I can also eat the braised pork that Su Shi has always insisted on, and I can also drink the wine in the till. I raise my glass and ask Taibai Mingyue. " China's beauty lasted for thousands of years, never ending, and as the book concludes, "the course of beauty points to the future." I believe that we will continue to advance on the beautiful road.
Reflections on the course of beauty
The first time I watched The Course of Beauty, my political teacher recommended it to us when I was a freshman. My experience at that time was that this book was very interesting, unlike the boring aesthetic book I had read before. Moreover, I have learned some historical knowledge of China art, so when I go to the museum again, I won't be ignorant of those historical deposits, and I will be infected by their greatness.
This book links China's beautiful art history with China's social integration, and gives many typical examples to illustrate my point of view. The author's language is beautiful and fluent, and it contains vivid and intense emotions. Reading this book reminds me of "Notes on Mountain Residence" which I read at home a few years ago. The author marveled not only at the works of art produced in those times, but also at the people who lived in those times. The beauty of historical accumulation. It has always inspired us to live in today's society. Perhaps from a work of art, we can get a glimpse of the course and soul of the whole ancient civilization.
China has a history of thousands of years, but there are few special art museums. Perhaps China's artworks are closely connected with the political society. In October, I was lucky enough to visit the National Museum of China. When I read the original works in art books and history books, the inner shock is a wonderful thing. Those countless antiques and works of art also show the spark of the spirit of the times, concise and accumulated. They spread and infect people's thoughts, feelings, ideas and moods, which makes people sigh and marvel.
The History of Beauty introduces the works of art that best represent the beauty of that era and the authors who created them in chronological order. But after reading a book, I was most shocked and impressed by the simple and beautiful decorative patterns created by the ancestors of primitive society.
Primitive society is a slow and long development process. It has gone through or crossed different stages, including different periods of relative peace and fierce war. The matriarchal clan society in the Neolithic Age was relatively peaceful and stable, as were its witchcraft etiquette, primitive totem and its graphic symbols. It can be seen from some painted pottery patterns. Those fish patterns, frog patterns and water ripples are closely related to life and reproduction. The patterns on these pottery are gradually becoming abstract and symbolic from the realism of animal images. It is also the initial formation process of beauty as a "meaningful form". A sentence in the book impressed me deeply. The reason why beauty is not a general form, but a so-called "meaningful form" is because it is a natural form with the accumulation of social content. These rotating and repetitive patterns of beautiful painted pottery also laid the foundation for the fierce beauty of the Bronze Age. At that time, all the people who saw the bronze gluttony in the National Museum were impressed by its complicated and exquisite craftsmanship at that time, with its large volume and gorgeous decoration. I can't help admiring the wisdom of the ancients.
After that, I read the masterpieces of beauty in the past dynasties, and some of them still don't understand. I will learn it later. Moreover, I also found that China's artistic and cultural achievements and political society are unbalanced. When people's livelihood is depressed and society is suffering, there can be a peak of literature and art, for example, a large number of artists emerged during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. Why can classical literature and art, which has been forgotten for so long, still infect and inspire today and future generations? However, each era has its own new works. Even Shakespeare cannot replace today's works. Only in this way can art become a colorful river.
As the unity of sensibility and rationality, form and content, truth and goodness, regularity and purpose, beauty is a great achievement of human history. However, the beautiful course points to the future.
Reflections on the course of beauty
Perhaps the earliest ancient culture in China can be represented by Nvwa 、 Fuxi, whose images are all "human-faced snakes", which are the totems of many ancient clans. It is speculated that the ancient Chinese clan, which was dominated by the snake totem, has been constantly merging with other clans and tribes in the way of fighting, and the snake totem has gradually evolved into a "dragon", with the dragon representing the Yellow Emperor and the phoenix representing foreign nationalities. The dragon and phoenix dance totem may represent the prehistoric civilization of China. It is a spiritual activity different from material production, which is directly related to the rise and fall of clans and tribes. Songs, dances, plays, paintings, myths and spells of later generations can be said to have evolved from this chaotic unity: the beating of the body has become "dancing", and mumbling or shouting has become "songs", "poems" and "spells".
Archaeological findings show that the dance patterns in the Neolithic painted pottery basin ornaments were not only singing and dancing, but also serious and important witchcraft rituals at that time. With the changes of the times, totem images are gradually simplified and abstracted into geometric patterns, which change according to the background of the times. There were many animal patterns in Yangshao period, showing a naive and lively simplicity. During the period of Huangdi and Yaoshun, under the historical background of war and killing, pottery patterns began to show horror and mystery, and later evolved into bronzes.
Reflections on the course of beauty
The peak period of bronzes is from the late Shang Dynasty to the Zhao Mu era of Zhou Chengkang (refer to Guo Moruo's Four Stages of Bronzes in Yin and Zhou Dynasties). Bronze gluttony in this period presents a ferocious and mysterious sublime beauty, which is the spiritual symbol and artistic symbol of the slavery era. In the Spring and Autumn Period, with the ancient tradition of witchcraft religion fading since the Yin and Zhou Dynasties, the shape and ornamentation of bronzes became more and more life-oriented, and the social ideology of the same period also entered the first rationalism period in China.
Another thing worth mentioning in the Yin and Shang Dynasties is the appearance of Oracle Bone Inscriptions. Chinese characters originated in Oracle Bone Inscriptions are both symbols and paintings. This feature of painting has left great imagination space for calligraphy artists to express their feelings by shaping lines.
Reflections on the course of beauty
Pre-Qin refers to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. The primitive religious concept of witchcraft began to disintegrate, and the complementarity between Confucianism and Taoism became the basic spirit of China's aesthetics for two thousand years. Confucianism is a kind of spiritual strength, comparable to the influence of religion on some countries to some extent, and Confucius became the founder of the cultural and psychological structure of the Han nationality. After him, Mencius and Xunzi further developed Confucianism. Its essence is to dispel emotions, ideas and rituals (three elements of religion) in the secular life based on parent-child blood relationship, attach importance to sociality and ethics, or call it practical reason, and stay away from pure reason and theology.
China's literary works are also different from the religious emotion purification function of ancient Greek art, but focus on lyricism. The earliest literary works can be traced back to the book of songs and the national style in the essays of pre-Qin philosophers, thus laying the basic aesthetic principles: Fu, Bi and Xing. Fu is a stick figure, and Bi Xing is a ambition. Therefore, China's philosophical exposition is also different from western logical reasoning and argumentation, but has a certain imagination, such as Zhuangzi's "Happy Travel": "There is a fish in the north called Kun. Kunda, thousands of miles away. Become a bird. Its name is Peng. Peng's back is thousands of miles away. Fly away angrily, if its wings hang in the clouds? " , is an imaginative philosophical theory.
China's architecture is also influenced by the spirit of practical rationality, which pays attention to the connection with secular life, which is very different from the religious architecture in western countries. The former is spread out on the surface to facilitate life, while the latter wins with single buildings and is highly built under the influence of religious consciousness, such as Gothic churches. Unfortunately, China's architecture is based on wood, and later generations can only imagine the grandeur and exquisiteness at that time by looking at tiles.
Related articles:
1. Reflections on the course of reading beauty
2. After reading the fifth grade Chinese composition "The Course of Beauty".
3. After reading the seventh grade Chinese composition "The Course of Beauty".
4. Notes on the fifth grade Chinese composition "The Course of Beauty"
5. Reading "The Course of Beauty" in the seventh grade Chinese composition
6. Three aesthetic walks after reading.