Examination-oriented art is a kind of abnormal education method with the purpose of accelerating art and opportunistically reaching the exam. His essence is quick success and instant benefit. However, when everyone does this, it becomes the norm.
For example, just like the teacher asked us to recite Chinese exam questions and recited a lot of articles and poems that didn't understand their meaning at all; These things can make us pass the exam by copying the path, but make our study more and more mechanized and lose interest in literature. Painting is easier to cheat, so the development of "exam-oriented art" has completely reached the grand occasion of "letting a hundred flowers blossom" today.
A friend from the Academy of Fine Arts told me that on their first day of college, the teacher said to them, "Now we learn to forget everything you have learned before. 」
Like this "exam-oriented sketch" (pictured): the cheekbones, depressions between the eyebrows and eyes, orbicularis oris muscles and so on of the characters in the picture are extremely exaggerated. It looks like drawing structures, but there is nothing wrong with it, because these structures are different under different light and angles, otherwise there is someone around you who looks like this? Need to understand the structure is for aesthetic service, not to show that you understand (seemingly understand).
This is like a chef shaking the pot "clang, clang" in order to make the food heated evenly; After reading it, you imitated him and shook the pot even bigger. It doesn't matter if the plate is finally shaken to the ground. Anyway, as long as others think "you seem to be good at it", no one will eat those dishes (maybe the marking teacher will enjoy looking at those paintings? Or will someone hang those ugly test-taking sketches at home as decorations? )。
Obviously, it is a waste of time to spend a lot of time drawing lines that are not helpful to your shape (it is better to spend more time observing them) and form a wrong habit. If someone insists on arguing that "at least he has learned some structural knowledge", I am afraid that "the time to learn that knowledge" is shorter than "the time to correct bad habits after you form them".
I remember once, I passed a gallery in Hangzhou with my friends who studied painting in China and saw some test-oriented sketches and colors on display. A friend said, "Our aesthetics has been distorted by exam-oriented education. 」
Yes, I remember more than once that someone said on the Internet, "Why do those people paint beautiful women as aunts?" "I am ugly to death, but tell me that it is beautiful. Is it because my aesthetic ability is not enough? Questions like this. "
I sometimes feel that many people who have received art education in China have far less aesthetic ability than those netizens who update every day and teach themselves to paint by interest in 《 At least I feel beautiful when I look at their paintings, and I appreciate and enjoy their growth. Just like I saw the paintings of great European painters when they were young, although they were not mature in technique, you could feel that they saw beauty and tried to show it (pictured). The process of learning art is not to find a grandstanding theme and express some so-called expressions after you have learned some techniques. The methods and purposes of learning art should be unified.
It may completely ruin your talent and interest. Tell me about my own experience: "I used to be an art teacher at the Confucius Institute, a local Chinese school in Barcelona. In order to avoid using the exam-oriented textbooks they brought from China, I spent a lot of time writing my own textbooks, and prepared different materials such as sketches and cartoons for different interests in the same class. There are few children who don't like painting. Later, the number of my students kept increasing. Before each class, I didn't arrive, and the door was crowded with children panting from other classrooms waiting for class. After three months, the classroom could hardly sit down. 」
"I have been teaching in Hangzhou xx Online Children's Art Training School for several months. For children who don't need the college entrance examination, there is still room for teaching non-exams (but they also need to take the so-called "exams", the meaning of which is purely to make money and to make their parents face). So I have to go through some difficulties before I have the opportunity to teach non-exams. Because of that teaching, the number of their students increased by no less than half from the time I got there to the time I left. I remember when I asked the old oil slick who had been in the studio for a long time why he didn't like painting, and they said; I don't like it if I stay for a long time. No wonder a student once discussed me there, "This teacher really likes painting." . All this is not brought by exam-oriented education. What is this?
(pictured) When I was in xx online studio, I drew pictures for them whenever I had time. I'm sorry to say, because I often draw them, and then they began to avoid me ~)
We say "contemporary" and "China" here because this phenomenon did not exist in China decades ago, and it does not exist in Europe and America now.
Some people say that exam-oriented sketch pays attention to color tone and European masters pay attention to lines, which may lead to the emergence of exam-oriented sketch focusing on lines in recent years. In my opinion, it's just a change of medicine. European painters also paint tunes and pay attention to long-term sketches, such as the works of great painters like Piazzetta and Prudhon (pictured). This is especially true in the early stage of training modeling ability. The long-term sketching by great painters such as Klimt and Fortuny in the early days is completely different from that in the later period.
Some people blame this phenomenon on the painters who first developed western art education in China, especially in Russian. However, we went to see Xu Beihong's homework at Repin Academy of Fine Arts, which can be found online. We don't paint everything black, emphasize the boundary between light and shade, and stubbornly draw structures that we can't see or understand. Even though Russian painting pays more attention to skills and structure than pure European art, it lacks the concept of art, which may have a certain impact on our country, but their art education is completely different from ours, which can be seen from the results. I think this situation should be caused by our own ingenuity in transforming (distorting) their teaching experience.
In fact, the method of learning to draw is not that different. In China, geometric paintings and plaster paintings are also made in Europe. The biggest difference is mentality.
During the 10 years when I studied painting in Spain, or in my short teaching career, there were not many ways to learn painting. I have only one simple purpose. I don't think too many methods are needed, nor should there be too many purposes. If it wasn't because the fortress gave children a so-called purpose (grade examination, college entrance examination) and then created a lot of methods for this purpose, how could they draw with a sad face? Most children may have never worked in art, but they have to spend a boring time painting. Is this a stupid thing?
In my opinion, the emergence of "Chinese art education" is only the embodiment of the social atmosphere of "quick success and instant benefit" in the art field. Similarly, similar performance can be seen in many fields. For example, at present, the production technology of film cartoons is more exquisite, but no such excellent works as Cucumber Baby and Lotus Lantern can be produced any more. No wonder Miyazaki Hayao, who admired China animation at that time, finally got a chance to visit the Shanghai Film Studio, the birthplace of many excellent animations, and expressed disappointment that he would never come to China again. Because when Miyazaki Hayao went to the "once animation holy land" with passion for animation, he found that it had changed, and people there only knew how to make money with him.
But how to change it? My own experience and views are as follows:
I received a little exam-oriented education in China and later immigrated to Spain. Once, for some reason, I wanted to try to go back to China to do art for a while before the exam. The result is: I applied for many studios in Hangzhou, and almost all of them ended in failure. Finally, after several months of children's art training, I completely gave up this industry. Giving up is not a question of money, because this industry seems to be more popular. The main reason for giving up is that I feel very sad after knowing the status quo. I don't want to spend my life on such things, and I don't want to try to distort the art I love.
It is easy to complain, however, if we really want to change something, we can start from ourselves instead of having no choice at all. A pre-school teacher who can't give up his job can choose to go with the flow, or he can choose not to give up his job and spend time improving his aesthetic cultivation. Otherwise, even if you have the opportunity to engage in real artistic career, what are your preparations? Just like foreign Chinese schools use domestic art textbooks before exams, it is naturally because the teachers they are looking for are domestic art, even if they don't need them abroad (because they can't do anything else).
A parent can choose to care only about the grade paper, whether he can go to school, or not to give up those and pay attention to his children's interests, whether his children really like what he is learning, and whether he is learning those things happily.
And those friends who taught themselves to paint. Aren't they part of "China Art Education"?
Hmm ~ so I'm writing these ~
I don't like writing this article, but I know I can't avoid it. Because the idea of "art knowledge" is to provide necessary art knowledge and common sense. And this is the current poor actual situation, so this piece of content must have something.
After pessimism, talk about reality. In fact, the exam-oriented art we are talking about is just a big concept. Specifically, although some people received exam-oriented education, they later corrected it in universities or other places, or corrected part of it. For example, when I was training in X Eagle Studio, the teacher there told me, "You can draw like this, but not before teaching. The teacher knows about western art in his spare time.
People who don't need exams look for teachers. How to judge? I think the easiest way is to see whether the teacher loves art or not, and whether he loves art more and more clearly after studying. If the answer to both questions is yes, then you don't have to worry about going the wrong way.