Chapter 5 Part III Education-2

dazhi: The atmosphere in many colleges in China is very oppressive, what do you think? Chen Danqing: The problem in the United States is that the academic atmosphere is too free. What should we do?Many American teenagers commit suicide. tomfeitomfei: Change yourself to adapt to society?What do you think freedom is?Is freedom rebellious or adaptive? Chen Danqing: Some things have to be rebellious, and some things have to be adapted.For example, betray yourself and adapt to yourself.Everyone can do this, and society has quality. Clay: Can you explain the meaning of silly x? Chen Danqing: I am stupid when I sit here and talk.

Liu Dema: What do you think of the academic school? Chen Danqing: There must be an academy, no matter what, there are still many people out of the academy.Don't take college too seriously. Angel's melancholy: I am a normal student, but I want to be a fucking art student, but I find that there is no way out without taking the postgraduate entrance examination, but my English is very poor. If I fail the entrance examination, how do you think I should continue?Is it possible to revoke the English checkpoint?Some people squeeze into the art circle by English instead of painting, but don't do translation, do you think they are shameless?Engaging in art is very painful, and some people spend their whole life in pain, how do you feel?Do you think you have pain too, or do you feel lucky!

Chen Danqing: If you only want to engage in fucking art, then just focus on art. You have to be prepared to spend your whole life in pain. This is your choice. To "spend your life in pain"—in my experience, art pays for the pain. Youzi: Do you think America is an art paradise? Chen Danqing: Yes, because in that paradise, artists can say that it is hell. lf: Some articles say that you are a "paradoxical heteromany", what do you think? Chen Danqing: I think I am not contradictory enough, not complex enough. guest7477547: Mr. Chen, what we are doing now is ridiculous.

Chen Danqing: Life is absurd.Knowing this, it's probably a little less ridiculous. Youzi: Do you think art is real? Chen Danqing: Art is fake, it is deceiving you, but it is more real than life. Mr. Confused: I want to set up a famous modern art academy in China, but I don't know where to start. I really want to take this opportunity to ask Mr. Chen for advice.Thanks! Chen Danqing: Can we just call it "Confused Academy of Fine Arts"? Youzi: Do you say you are making fake things every day? Chen Danqing: Yes, I used oil paint to paint a book, but it was just oil paint.

Douzi: Do you like women?Artists love it. Chen Danqing: I like it, of course I like it. 555: Chinese contemporary female painters, do you admire Xu Lele the most? Chen Danqing: I admire her, she is very straightforward.When she went to an exhibition, she immediately bent down and counted "one, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand" on the price tag.Count carefully.She would scream when she saw a good painting, as if someone had hit her. tomfeitomfei: What do you think of homosexuality?Why don't you like men? Chen Danqing: Of course I like it, I have a lot of male buddies.I still have many gay friends in the United States. I helped them design gay bars and participated in their parades.

liuchun: Why don't you become a professional artist? Chen Danqing: I was a professional artist 20 years ago, and I have more experience than my buddies in the Old Summer Palace. Zhe: Do you like Giacometti's paintings? Chen Danqing: His sculptures are good.I don't like his sketches too much.It is easy to learn, and the principles of that kind of sketching are also easy to explain.He came from Cézanne. Cezanne was very attractive and very "raw". 555: I remember that in the early 1990s, some students of NUFA were expelled for painting Mao Zedong themes. Why are you not afraid?

Chen Danqing: It is now the 21st century. su: what do you think of Zhong Biao Chen Danqing: I like it, I liked it very much from the very beginning. cat: What do you think of Shen Ling? Chen Danqing: Shen Ling is fun.I've seen her quarrel with her man, cry and laugh again. liuchun: Danqing, you should move to Songzhuang, drink and pick up girls with those young men, I think you will undergo substantial changes. Chen Danqing: I can't drink enough, but some wine is fine.New York is the huge Songzhuang. su: Did you think you were talented in art, for example, when you were young?

Chen Danqing: Yes, I think I want to be a painter, I think so since I was very young.My father always praised me for my good drawing.This is very important. We should praise a child and not blame him all the time.Many children have been scolded as stupid since they were young. guest7477547: Which philosopher of the 20th century do you like? Chen Danqing: Benjamin, Roland Barthes, neither of them considered themselves philosophers. 11: What's your opinion on the enrollment expansion of the Academy of Fine Arts? Chen Danqing: There will be retribution. omfeitomfei: Which one is your most satisfying work?

Chen Danqing: I can't say, the paintings I am most satisfied with now are all drawn when I was a teenager.But if I didn't draw so many pictures later, the pictures I made when I was a child would be worthless. su: When we hear that learning fine arts is like committing suicide. Chen Danqing: To engage in pure art is to seek death.Survive. Douzi: Is a diploma important for art? Why do employers choose diplomas first? Chen Danqing: A diploma is for earning a living. What does it have to do with art?Employers in units require diplomas, because the first essence of a unit is mediocrity.A diploma is a guarantee of mediocrity.They definitely don't want Van Gogh.

dazhi: What do you think is the basic measurement standard? Chen Danqing: You need sound common sense, and sound common sense is the foundation.Sketching is not the foundation, and the current teaching of sketching is against common sense. tomfeitomfei: You said that the paintings you are most satisfied with were drawn when you were a child. Don't you think the connotation of the paintings at that time was not enough? Chen Danqing: It has another connotation. 555: Are you full of confidence in your future? Chen Danqing: It's good to be able to survive. Hehe: If I let you become an official, would you like it?

Chen Danqing: No!too tired. "hehe!" Dazhi: "Common sense" refers to...?Can you be more specific? Chen Danqing: For example, to do something requires determination, patience, and perseverance... su: Do you think sketching is not important? Chen Danqing: Everything is very important, but if you want to say that sketching is the most important, it is wrong.A tree, can you say which branch, which leaf is the most important? Guest: Did you ever try to fail before becoming famous? Chen Danqing: I am always trying to feel the taste of failure.When I criticize the education system, I am doomed to fail.It's okay, failure is good, as long as you can handle it. Speech at the 2002 Teaching Conference of Academy of Fine Arts, Tsinghua University I am not concerned about the so-called "forward-looking" or "academic frontier" in this issue, but to review and reflect first: now and in the past, what are we teaching?What is the test?What are our "positions" and "equipment"? (The so-called teaching "team" is a military term, which is very unprofessional. Everyone is used to it, so we have to continue to use it.) My point of view is: without retrospect and introspection, "forward-looking" has no historical dimension, and the establishment of "academic frontier" , is empty talk. There are three dead rules and three deadly diseases in Chinese art education.1. Sketch teaching.2. Foreign language test.Three, political examination.Today we want to be in line with the world, catch up with the best, look forward, and find the frontier of academics. The first and most important thing is to re-evaluate these three dead bars.If these three dead rules are not broken, the rest will not be discussed. Sketch test——Let me first talk about the so-called "oil painting major" I am engaged in.I say "so-called" because this is also very unprofessional, why?Because oil painting is just a kind of painting, not a profession.Now it is divided into professional departments, which can only be called "oil painting major".China's "oil painting major" has many problems in concept and practice, and the problems are very serious, covering almost all aspects of painting teaching in colleges. "Realism" means "shape", "shape" means "basic", and "basic" means "sketch" - the introduction of sketch is synchronized with oil painting, and the sketch teaching system is established by realistic oil painters.Historically, the introduction of sketches from Europe and the Soviet Union laid the foundation for the westernization and modernization of Chinese art education and cultivated several generations of new artists.However, the technical level and the cultural level of this process are always disconnected, and the concept is confused. Over time, the technical level of sketching replaces the cultural level, resulting in immeasurable negative consequences. Since 1949, the so-called "basics of sketching" has become the single law of Chinese art education, as well as all types of painting—Chinese painting, printmaking, mural painting, sculpture, and even arts and crafts, applied art, and various design majors—and embodied in administrative mechanisms .All candidates of the Academy of Fine Arts must pass the uniform sketch test, and the uniformity of sketch has become an unshakable dogma through the intensified examination system. "Basic sketching" is the biggest myth of Chinese art education, the strongest hegemony, the most effective administrative power, the most inert and the biggest academic burden. The formulation of "basics of sketching" makes art education itself lose its foundation, because it hinders and limits every aspect and every function of art education in advance.If this myth and hegemony cannot be cracked, Chinese art education can only stand still. But no one can weaken this hegemony, because it is no longer a "sketch", no longer an academic, but a tool, which effectively maintains the inertia of teaching and makes the educational machine of the academy turn.Therefore, it is too difficult to reverse the misunderstanding of "sketch foundation", and it is completely impossible to operate at the realistic level.Before coming to the meeting today, the exam started again. If there is no sketch exam, how can so many children be screened?Of course it is safest to use the old method, but don't talk about "forward-looking", and even "retrospective", because the teaching of sketching is far from the level it once reached in the past. If our college has the courage to do a pilot project, abolish the sketch test in some departments, and study a set of feasible new methods, it will make a historical contribution to Chinese art education.Our school is suitable for this bold attempt, because the disciplines of our school are relatively diverse, and there are relatively few troubles. I have long wanted to write a "Criticism of Sketch Teaching in China". Does the academy support it?If supported, I have a so-called "forward-looking" work. Do you want "basic"?Absolutely.The question is what is the "base"?The current "basic" teaching is not "basic" at all, but the same plaster sketch and gouache still life, which is an out-and-out "examination method". opposition. The so-called "basic" should be changed to "common sense".What frustrates me the most in teaching is that students seriously lack common sense and their thinking is confused.In "basic" teaching, all I can do personally is to impart as much common sense and judgment as possible.What I teach students is "how to watch", about the differences and comparisons between China and the West in the concept and tradition of "watching" (but not art history).The important thing is to teach students how to "see", how to "know", how to judge, how to choose, and how to use knowledge. Foreign language examinations - Foreign language examinations have already formed a cruel system of "elimination of the best" in the test-taking culture. The most serious consequence is that the Chinese proficiency of college students has been greatly degraded.After I returned to China, I received hundreds of letters and talked with a large number of students. I found that the Chinese expression and Chinese thinking of today’s college students are surprisingly chaotic and low, not to mention the Chinese proficiency of students majoring in history and theory, or even the Chinese level of Chinese majors. It is particularly worrisome—the deep faults of the "Cultural Revolution" have received comprehensive retribution without exception in the past two decades of kindergarten, primary, middle school, and even university education. Therefore, far from improving the humanities standard, the foreign language examination system in the humanities and arts is effectively weakening Chinese education and corroding the humanities tradition.What is the reason for blaming today's art students for "emphasizing skills and ignoring culture"?The foreign language examination system has an inescapable responsibility for this - "foreign language" is by no means equal to "culture".The humanities and arts foreign language examination system itself is reflected in the absence of culture, which is a large-scale "layman" thinking, but when this thinking is implemented by a powerful administrative force, its brutality and catastrophe are even more serious than the political dogma during the "Cultural Revolution" period However, it is still difficult to reverse. The legacy of the "Cultural Revolution" is the "political movement", which indirectly harms humanities, while the foreign language examination system for humanities and arts subjects is covered with knowledge and academic cloaks, and is reflected in the "education system", which directly destroys humanities education.If this system is not abolished, it will be impossible to "rectify the name" and "position" humanities and arts education. Do you want to learn a foreign language?want.The problem is controlling foreign language tests.What is the purpose of mastering foreign language tools?Relying on foreign languages ​​to connect with the "world"?To "communicate" with the advanced culture of the "world"?For the humanities and arts, it is pure myth.I have a special article statement on this, so I won't talk much about it. Political Examination - Mr. Marx will be the first to oppose it.Which university in an advanced country must take "politics" like ours?In his inaugural speech, a certain president of Harvard University publicly warned the government not to be the "ideological nanny" of the people and intellectuals.Universities are think tanks, places where humanistic traditions and spirits are preserved. If the "political examination system" is not abolished, there will be no hope for humanities and art education, it is just a decoration, and it is impossible to become a world-class university. Do you want to learn "politics"?want.But what is "politics"? What is the relationship between "politics" and "education"?What is the relationship with "moral character"?China is a big country of education. China has more than 2,000 years of education tradition. In a word, it is moral education, which is to teach you how to "be a human being".Tsinghua University produced a talented student who attacked a bear with chemical potions. Although it is an exception and a case, it is undoubtedly a shame for today's education and a warning: it is no longer a "moral" issue.There must have been many students with bad morals in Tsinghua University, but such exceptions and cases have never happened in the 90 years since the founding of Tsinghua University.The student must have passed the "political exam," but he can't even be a human being.As far as education is concerned, what else is there to say? ! It is said that Tsinghua Garden actually teaches political economics, which is very good, but it is still "utilitarian education", not "humanities education".The real "political education" should be literature, history and philosophy, as well as moral and ethical education.Pre-Qin thought and Song and Ming philosophy should not be "professional courses" in the Department of Literature, History and Philosophy, but compulsory courses for all students, and teachers should also learn, because all educators today are culturally "lost" generations People, educators must first improve "self-education." If we really respect Marxism and really think that is "politics", then Well, the Western Frankfurt School, existentialism, structuralism, cultural anthropology, semiotics, and linguistics should all be taught, and it should be known that the source of these schools is Marxism, and the most dynamic and influential European and American thought systems are all Is 20th century neo-Marxism: Marcuse, Adorno, Horkheimer, Sartre, Heidegger, Benjamin, Berlin, Strauss, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, James, Susan Sontag...all these characters critique capitalism and stick to an intellectual conscience.The translations of their works existed in the 1980s, and now they are filled with bookstores in Beijing, but our students don’t know about them and don’t care about them. They only know about foreign language and “politics” exams. How ridiculous and dangerous this is!Isn't it to "revitalize the humanistic tradition", "explore the knowledge structure", and "connect with the world"?Revitalize what?What to develop?What track? Including the ideological achievements of China over the past century.Liang Qichao, Qian Mu, Chen Yinke, Wang Guowei, Mou Zongsan, Huang Renyu, etc. have all published complete works. These precious theories and thoughts are all thinking about the humanities situation in China over the past century, but our humanities and arts students do not read them, and the college does not teach them. .The irony is that our "humanities education", to put it bluntly, is anti-humanities and anti-education. There are many scholars at Peking University and Tsinghua University who have studied the translation of the above works.You can invite lectures, political exams, and general knowledge and outlines of the above theories, so that our college students can have the new contemporary knowledge structure, brains, and culture. But you can't force it again, and don't create a new "test-taking" vicious circle. Regarding the quality of teaching—the current art education is full of schedules, hard indicators, marks, and elective courses, but there is no humanistic spirit at the top, and no common sense at the bottom. Regarding the creation phenomenon of today's complex and diverse creative resources, I don't know how to use them for reference, and I don't know how to remain critical and selective.The graduate student of the Department of Decoration showed me the design of text variants, which is still the concept of "painting", and the concept of deformation, I can't talk about it (Note: The emblem pattern of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is the idea of ​​"painting", not the design idea), the student Can't figure out the setting The difference and connection between design and painting, symbol and image, not to mention "semiotics", what is "signified" and "signifier", this is lack of common sense, this is unprofessional.But after graduating in the future, they will be "experts". It is said that there is too little "information" (or too much information), but we do not have the basis of common sense to digest the information, and our receiving system and digestive system have serious problems. Why?Because students lack common sense, foresight, historical knowledge and contemporary awareness, personal will, in a word, humanistic qualities, and only know how to get a degree and earn a job. The only "strength" of students is how to deal with dogma. The spiritual consequences of strengths are passivity, inertia, opportunism, egoism.The reason for this result is the above three obsessions: sketching, foreign languages, and politics.These three barriers will inevitably cause students to seriously lack spirituality, imagination, flexible and diverse skills and expression techniques, single and rigid creative thinking, superficial and utilitarian knowledge, and chaotic and poor ways of thinking. The so-called "reorganization of resources" and "reorganization of teaching forces", in the school, we have long had old seniors such as Zhang Ding, who were cutting-edge and avant-garde back then.Everyone admits that the cultural atmosphere and teaching atmosphere in the 1990s were not as good as those in the 1980s.Where are the cutting-edge ideas today?To promote teaching and creation, where are the cultural and spiritual resources? The avant-garde art and contemporary art in the past fifteen years is an unstoppable trend. Although there are too many problems in the process, their propositions and what they do are cutting-edge, and they are in direct dialogue with the latest cultural issues in the contemporary world. Its vitality is definitely better than that of art colleges, and they have gone a long way.If resources outside the school, including some artists who have graduated from our school, are included in the teaching, the situation will be different. It depends on whether we have the courage and whether we can spread them out.The situation waits for no one. Today’s college education has lagged behind the general trend of society, not just a little bit – culture and art have laws, if you don’t follow the rules, the rules will retaliate against you, and you will be passive everywhere. Our science and engineering teaching talks about "science" and "laws" everywhere, so why ignore the laws of humanities and art education?All art school forms are called "Research Projects", what does that sound like? What right does "science" have to say this to "humanities"?This is naked state utilitarianism.In our country, "science" has dignity, but art has no dignity. It is just a vassal, a foil, a decoration, a dried flower made of paper. The idea of ​​setting up a new discipline - among the existing so-called "disciplines", pure art is the most embarrassing.It is out of touch with the times, and out of touch with the teaching of pure art itself. Before 2005, our school wanted to form new disciplines and interdisciplinary disciplines. The most urgent thing at the moment was to put "multimedia teaching" on the agenda, form a feasibility report, determine the number of years, and start as soon as possible, or establish a department, or establish a major.Relevant professors and lecturers are hired from outside and do not need to be transferred.Taiwan’s Tsinghua University has a very professional professor who has studied in France for seventeen years and has personally attended Derrida’s and Barthes’s classes. If you can invite him, he is willing to come.There are more experts like this in New York, all available. The China Academy of Art has established a multimedia major.The New York School of Visual Arts has a cooperative relationship with our school, and the school's film and television teaching is well-known in Europe and the United States.All over the world, multimedia art and teaching have long been indispensable majors. If a college or art gallery does not have a video major and a video library, it will lack an organ, which is tantamount to disability. Contemporary art does not need so many "painters". Contemporary "fine arts" refers to all plane works, not easel paintings.Photography is no longer the concept of "photographing". Abstract photography, minimalist photography, installation photography, cartoon photography, virtual reality photography, etc., so-called pure art, commercial, design, the boundaries are becoming more and more blurred, and the functions are becoming more and more crossed. , the status quo and prospects of contemporary photography are completely beyond our existing cognition. China's video culture and its education are too backward, almost blank.However, in the space outside the school, the most dynamic and quickest responders are the photography talents, but they are completely insulated from the college education, and they are also excluded in the traditional photography field. don't know. Video culture does not refer to traditional photography, film, and advertising design as we call it, but a whole set of viewing culture, a whole set of new methods and new equipment.The above-mentioned philosophers and thinkers attached great importance to the cultural issues behind video art as early as the 1930s. Today, most frontier artists in Europe and the United States play with video.China does not introduce today's video and related trends in the world, only avant-garde artists are doing it, or simply commercial art is aware of its importance. On the other hand, Chinese contemporary painting, especially figurative painting, has long been intruded by images and images. No painter paints without photographs. Photographs have usurped the essence of painting, and painters do not know it.To change this negative influence, the best way is to teach video culture.In Europe and the United States, video culture in turn brings inspiration and opportunities to traditional easel painting. The establishment of a video major in the China Academy of Art will only benefit painting, otherwise painting will not be able to continue. It is suggested that our painting teaching should be consciously limited, only do individual case training and produce works, but we should not continue to enroll students on a large scale, let alone use it as the overall training direction of the college to add "waste talents" to the society.Multimedia majors recruit a large number of students, naturally avoiding sketch exams.Conceptually teaching "viewing aesthetics", technically teaching new production methods, gradually adding related equipment and materials, introducing exhibitions, the Department of History and Theory must appoint special personnel, talk about video culture, and guide the practice of art students.In this way, some high-quality students-but the examination system will reject them-become "artists", and most of them will become designers or practical artists serving the new century. But I see no sign or possibility of change.Let's all try to maintain the status quo. Little girls love beauty. Apart from dressing up in the mirror, they also like to draw beauties.If we pay attention to the "paintings" of the little girl's private room, nine out of ten the paintings are the faces of beauties.There is a saying that "people have the same heart and the same reason": when my daughter was a child, she painted fairies in ancient costumes all day long. As for her mother, her activities when she was a child were nothing more than painting beauties. When a little girl grows up to be a big girl, if she aspires to paint and still draws beauties tirelessly, it is rare.When I got to know Wu Wen, a classmate from the arts and crafts department of our college, she had already graduated from the fourth grade. She painted all beauties, and showed them to me, and solemnly declared: the beauties were not imagined out of thin air, but made by classmates in the class. The prototype, Baihua has been drawing for several years. So I watched solemnly and saw how Botticelli, Raphael, Picasso, and Matisse transformed into the melancholy and beautiful female classmate she admired under the pencil and charcoal of a Qingdao girl: Line 12 Very sensitive, 80-90% simple in shape, 50-60% similar in appearance, and the author's heart is 100% loyal: loyal to her beauty, her beauty painting. I like to look at beauties, but I can't draw.Unexpectedly, classmate Wu Wen solemnly wanted to come to take the postgraduate examination in my studio. I don't ask students to draw roads.It doesn’t matter whether you paint beautiful women or ugly ones, realistic or abstract paintings, oil paintings or anything else, or nothing at all, just want to make installations, concepts, and performances—as long as you like it.You have to be 100% faithful to what you like like Wu Wen, for example.Whether you like it or not, I can tell at a glance, which child doesn't learn this or that, but wants to learn to draw. Why, he likes it. So I said to Wu Wen, come and try. The ordeal began. In 2002, Wu Wen failed the foreign language and political exams by one point each.This is an old trick common to tens of millions of art candidates in China every year. She naturally cried, although not in front of my face.For the next year, she rented a house in Beijing, spent money on classes, and spent 365 days focusing on foreign languages ​​and politics.Three hundred and sixty-five days later, she took the exam again and failed again: she passed the political score, and she was too nervous in the foreign language exam, so she still failed.Did you cry, I don’t know, I just remember that she took a stack of beauties paintings afterwards and came to show me. I gave classmate Wu Wen very high marks for her painting assignments, with 90 points both times.She can't draw the bright and dark blocks of the college sketches, and can't draw the uniform cold and warm colors in the examination room, but she is sensitive to the beautiful bridge of the nose, eyebrows, neck and lips, and cares about the curved lines of Botticelli or Matisse And hovering—of course she still has to learn, practice hard, gain knowledge, and open up ideas. She still has a long way to go. Don't all young people who want to enter the art academy just want to study hard and practice hard?No, wait a minute, foreign languages ​​and politics are one point away before learning to bend and circle lines beautifully on paper. I can't persuade her with my self-study experience as an educated youth, because all the art colleges were closed back then.Nor can I say that Botticelli and Raphael never went to an art academy, since they lived in Renaissance Italy.I don’t want to encourage Wu Wen to try again for the third time. With my temper, I am absolutely unwilling to accept the absurdity and insult of the current examination system—yes, for a young man who wants to be an artist, today’s examination is out-and-out The absurdity and insult of the artist——I can’t tell her from what I’ve seen in the West. In the West, people respect or ignore an artist, and they only look at the merits of their works, never caring about degrees and academic qualifications.I don't even sympathize with Wu Wen, half of it is because of numbness: there are too many failed candidates, and I can't sympathize; You can't avoid exams, and you have to learn to exploit all kinds of interpersonal relationships. With Wu Wen's dullness and simplicity, will she be able to exploit?How to drill camp?She should know that in China, interpersonal relationships are more important and more difficult than exams. The huge reality has made me numb. I hope that all the losers will be numb as soon as possible. Numbness is a good medicine for Chinese people.Are there any other beautiful words, for example, keep striving and strive for self-improvement, these are all beautiful words for the losers.Those who fail to take the exam again and again are already struggling and self-improving, but art is not about struggling or self-improvement, art is just about liking. Love art, what a useless gift!Wu Wen's high-scoring pictures are like waste paper in the examination room, but she likes to draw, and she likes to draw beauties.For this hopeless liking, I don’t know if there is any useful advice for artists in power and opposition today. June 4, 2003