Angel's "Great Palace Maid", oil painting on canvas, 88.9×162.56cm, 81
Recently, an article "Chinese Girls Don't Have Freedom of Dressing" was flooded in 's circle of friends , which has attracted many different opinions. In fact, "freedom of dressing" reflects the aesthetic values and moral orientation of society. So, does have standards for beauty in art? Does the value of beauty conveyed by art have absolute freedom?
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" Reclining Venus: Beauty Fixed Program "
Art creation has always been a pure and fun adventure. How many artists spend their entire lives just to pursue the ideal beauty in their hearts? The image of "Venus" is synonymous with ideal beauty and has shined brightly in the writings of countless people for thousands of years.
Botticelli's "H The Birth of Venus ", tempera painting, 172.5×278.9cm, 48-186 years
The statue of "Venus of Milos" that emerged from ancient Greece, with its harmonious proportions and smooth body, shows the world the beauty of "noble simplicity" and "quiet greatness". The broken arms actually create the overall harmony.
"Venus of Milos", marble statue, 202cm, 30-100 BC
From the humanistic spirit, it spreads in Italy, a paradise that inherited the mantle of ancient Greece and Romans, and Venus has also transformed into a woman leaning on the bed.
Giorgione " Sleeping Venus ", oil painting on canvas, 108×75cm, 51 years
If Giorgione's "Sleeping Venus" is an untouchable goddess, then Titant's " Venus " is a representative of the secular public lovers. Grand Duke Urbino must have been addicted to the latter's charming eyes countless times, wishing to seal the beauty of this mistress in the painting forever, right?
Titian's "Venus of Urbino", oil painting on canvas, 119×165cm, 538
"Reclining Venus" schema has since become a template for artists' creation. Although Velazquez only leaves the audience with a woman's back in "Venus in front of the mirror", the blurred outline of the mirror is as if it is a metaphor for the fate of this face to be destroyed. A hundred years later, the radical feminist Mary Richardson used an axe to cut seven times at the painting, trying to break the myth of Venus.
Verasquez's "Venus in the Mirror", oil painting on canvas, 122×77cm, 1656
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9-80 years, Spanish painter Francisco José de Goya created two paintings, "The Clothing Maha" and "The Nude Maha", using classic reclining schemas to present the beauty of women under the gaze of men. Goya's "Nude Maha", oil painting on canvas, 98×191cm, 19-80-
Goya's "Maha in clothes", oil painting on canvas, 98×191cm, 80-80
Delacroix "The Death of Sadana Pales", oil painting on canvas, 392×296cm, 82
Because of this, Sadana Pales in Eugène Delacroix will destroy her treasures and women during the riots; Manet's infamous "Olympia" caused a stir-up - the prostitute in his works refused to cater to and please, and looked out of the painting with a provocative look, creating the illusion that the audience was absent.
Manet's "Olympia", oil painting on canvas, 30×190cm, 86
From form to content, Manet's works are undoubtedly the embodiment of painting's modernity. "Olympia" breaks the barriers of traditional schemas and reflects the social changes in the early 20th century. So, who should define the beauty of women? Can this beauty be completely free in art?
===============" Palace Beauty: Slim bones or plump breasts and fat buttocks? "
Compared with the West, in China, where landscape painting is the main body, female-themed paintings belong to relatively secondary fields, but "lady's paintings" and "beauty paintings" continue to reflect the aesthetic standards of different historical stages through new content and media. From myths and legends, moral preaching, palace scenes to historical stories, what reflects the changes in China's society, culture and art.
Gu Kaizhi " Luo God Fu Picture " partially (Song copy), color on silk, 24.2×310.9cm, Eastern Jin
In ancient China with strict feudal hierarchy, the standard of women's beauty is determined by the interests of the royal family and social trends. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, ideals were beautified into the god of Luoshui, who was "like a stunning geese, like a dragon" in Gu Kaizhi's painting. She was the sweetheart Cao Zhi met on the way back to the fiefdom. Her light figure and the beauty of her clothes and patterns were cleverly integrated into the natural environment by the painter.
Xu Xianxiu's tomb "Portrait of the Tomb owner tent ", mural, Northern Qi
Turns his eyes to tomb art. Although the portrait of the hostess in the tomb of Xu Xianxiu in Northern Qi tent is not lacking in vivid charm, it cannot get rid of the fixed facial program: oval face, high eyebrows, small eyes, all of which are the characteristics of thin bones and clear images.
Zhou Fang " Lady's Pictures of Flowers in Hairpin " (Song copy), color on silk, 46×80cm, Tang
In the Tang Dynasty, when the second unification was completed, women's living conditions showed an unprecedented openness and freedom. The gorgeous woman with plump breasts and fat buttocks became the ideal image pursued by many painters.
Zhang Xuan "Lady Guo's Spring Outing" Part (Song copy), colored on silk, 46×80cm, Tang
Whether it is the woman who is idle in the deep palace in "Lady with Flowers in the Hairpin" written by Zhang Xuan, or the "Hidden Lady with Chess" unearthed from Astana tomb in Turpan, Xinjiang, the women in the Tang Dynasty all have faces like a full moon, their muscles are better than bones, and they wear wine and make-up or flying clouds, fully showing their own beauty.
Xinjiang Astana Tomb "Picture of Lady of Chess", screen and silk painting, Tang
is different from the plump women in the Tang Dynasty's Qiluo figure paintings. Since the Song Dynasty, the "pathological beauty" of the weak willow and the wind has gradually begun to be at the upper hand of social aesthetics.
Tang Yin's "Autumn Wind Holding Fan Picture", color on paper, 77.1×39.3cm, Ming
Take Tang Yin's "Autumn Wind Holding Fan Picture" as an example. The woman in the painting has a lower shoulder, a small cherry mouth, and under her thin eyebrows and small eyes, revealing the female's urbanization, weakness and bookish spirit. Although "the fan of autumn wind" refers to the allusion of the beauty of Ban Jieyu, the concubine of Emperor Cheng of Han, was weak and graceful, the literati was keen to use this to express the resentment of depression and unsuccessfulness.
Revised Qi's "Dream of Red Mansions" is engraved and photocopy. Qing
In the complexity of the transition from the Ming and Qing dynasties, the beauty of women is internalized in the art of desire and memory. They were either the fair women written by Gai Qi and Fei Danxu, or the concubines imprisoned in Emperor Yongzheng's fantasy harem in "The Screen Picture of the Twelve Beauties". The weak beauties in the painter often convey an invitation to potential male viewers with direct eyes and seductive postures.
"Twelve Beauties Screen Picture: Fur Clothes in Mirror", color on silk, 98×84cm, Qing
It can be seen that the aesthetic standards of any era are the result of the multiple roles of ideology, morality and tradition. "Beauty" has no absolute right or wrong, but it always keeps pace with the times and is constantly reconstructed in the torrent of history.
============== " Break the barriers: The destruction of ideal beauty "
Since modern times, artists no longer believe in the "aesthetics" that deceives the eyes. They regard art as a weapon to criticize backward ideas. "Beauty" no longer has the standard of programming, and women have moved from behind the canvas to the public and become creators with free will.
Hannah Hirsch "The Beautiful Girl", collage, 1920Hannah Höch, a marginal figure in Dada, Berlin, once created a photo collage called "Beautiful Girl", which provides us with ways to break the stereotypes in the art world. By deconstructing existing materials, she denies the "unique creativity" that master-level male artists have when facing female subjects, and at the same time refuses to regard the beauty of women as a complete eye betting object.
Guerrilla girl "Does women need to take off their clothes to enter the metropolis? 》 (Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?), poster poster, 989
In the 1980s, Guerrilla Girls took to the streets with posters and glue, and carried the banner of rebellion against "ideal beauty". As their poster, “Does women need to take off their clothes to enter the metropolis? 》, parody of Angel's "The Great Palace Maid", subverting the definition of the standard beauty of women by the "reclining Venus" schema.
Jenny Saville "Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face), oil painting on canvas, 274×4cm, 99-99
As one of the representative artists of YBA, most of the women written by Jenny Saville are huge and obese, and often face the audience in strange postures. She focused on the increasingly popular phenomenon of plastic surgery and had personally observed the process of the surgery. In the work "Plan", the artist focuses on 's requirements for "perfection" and "normality", and recreates aesthetic subjectivity by emphasizing that the strong body of women runs contrary to tradition.
Jenny Savile's "Plan" partially, oil painting on canvas, 274×213.5cm, 99
The public's doubts about "standard beauty" have never been related to gender. American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (Robert Mapplethorpe) homogenizes the bodies of men and women in his works, actively confusing the meaning of gender.
Robert Maplethorp "Lisa Lyon", 98
9, Maplethorp met female bodybuilder Lisa Lyon, and has started many years of cooperation since then. Lyon under his camera seems to be a sculpture of Michelangelo during the Renaissance, dramatically occupying the entire painting with a toned and feminine image, bursting out huge tension. This is undoubtedly a subversion of tradition - beauty has nothing to do with gender, race or class, and there is no need to care about other people's judgment. Robert Maplethorp's Lisa Lyon, 38.4×38.4cm, 98
Unlike most artists' direct depiction of the body, Iranian photographer Shirin Neshat chose to tell the beauty beyond appearance through comparison. In her dual-screen black and white video work "Turbulent", a pair of male and female singers sang at the same time: When the male singer on the left was full of seats and won the applause, the female singer on the side faced an empty theater.
Shiling Naisha's "Turbulent", 9-minute dual-screen digital image, 998
Although it does not receive public recognition, the female singer still sings without hesitation, proclaiming to the world through a firm voice - only by fully affirming the value of "women" themselves can this group gain complete freedom. The same is true for women’s beauty, and self-identity is always greater than others’ judgments.
Shiling Naisha's "Turbelent", 9-minute dual-screen digital image, 998
With the progress of the times, the barriers of ideal beauty have gradually been broken, and "beauty" has thus become a polysemous word.The emphasis on the freedom of dressing in contemporary women is actually a single view of beauty as a trap and superficial appearance of the eyes. Beauty is a way to touch the soul. From the "reclining Venus" to the interweaving of beauty and ugliness in contemporary art, art constantly tells the public the spiritual connotation of beauty - art has never been boring, so how can beauty be single?
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[edit, text/Cai Yutong]
[This article is original by the Art Department of "Harling Bazaar" and may not be reproduced without permission]
