Among all categories of fine arts, the number of sculptures is overwhelming, not only in China, but also in all countries in the world.This is first of all because the sculptures that survive to this day use some cheap and hard materials, such as stones.The second is that it has a large base and can withstand the wear and tear of time, such as pottery sculptures and grotto statues, which can easily number in the tens of thousands.And the most important of these may still be the sculpture itself.Sculpture is the art of three-dimensional space. Sculpture art is integrated with the materials that make it up. As long as the materials exist, the sculpture exists (complete or incomplete).Other works of art, such as paintings, are not the same. They are made by attaching one material to the surface of other materials.Because these carriers are either easily destroyed, such as paper, silk, and cloth; or the surface materials fall off due to years of washing, the number of preserved ones is small.After tens of thousands of years of accumulation, Chinese sculptures have a large number and a large number of categories, which really makes people feel dazzled.Just as the history of China is the only one among several ancient civilizations that has not been interrupted and the cultural traditions have been preserved intact, Chinese sculpture has always maintained its most fundamental characteristics or spirit.Leaving aside the misty ancient times, what are the characteristics and spirits of Chinese sculpture since it entered the history of civilization?It can be briefly said that it is practicality and symbolism.Of course, practicality and symbolism are not unique to Chinese sculpture, but only China has been carrying these spirits through her sculptures for thousands of years and has become its distinctive feature.

Practicality refers to the purpose of making sculptures, and always puts the function of use in the first place.Practicality is a cultural phenomenon in China. On the one hand, this cultural phenomenon is embodied as a form of expression of ethics and religion in social life, and on the other hand, it is embodied as a kind of satisfaction of people's own desire for beauty.Confucianism is the foundation of Confucianism, which pays special attention to "utility".Confucius' so-called "I don't want to pao [pao robe] melons, how can I tie them but not eat them" and the traditional academic thought of "investigating things to learn and applying them to the world" have penetrated into various fields of Chinese culture.In this cultural atmosphere where everything is for "use", sculpture is no exception, and it also serves practicality first.Zhang Yanyuan of the Tang Dynasty put forward the art functions of "cultivating education, helping people, changing the poor, and measuring the subtleties" in "Famous Paintings of Past Dynasties", which is a good summary of art serving ethics.The ritual utensils on the temples, the stone-carved memorial archways that serve as symbols, and the stone statues, Ming utensils and some portraits in the tombs are all sculptures with ritual and educational functions.Before the introduction of Buddhism, Chinese people mainly believed in heaven and earth, ghosts and gods, and immortals, and they worshiped and sacrificed these gods very seriously.Exquisite sculptures are naturally used in large quantities on these sacrificial vessels, such as bronze wares and jade wares.The Buddhism introduced into China is also called image teaching, that is, practice and worship of visible images such as Buddha are carried out at the same time.The simple and easy way to achieve Buddhahood is to create a statue to obtain supreme blessings, so statues of various sizes and materials are flooded.Regardless of etiquette and religion, purely from the perspective of people's daily needs, the decorative carvings on a large number of daily utensils are the unity of aesthetics and practicality.A practical sculpture often contains multiple meanings of the culture of this period.For example, a bronze mirror is originally a daily necessities, but the images and characters carved on the bronze mirror are not only the needs of decoration and aesthetics, but also have the purpose of education and respect for art because they are mostly ethical and religious. .It can be seen that the Chinese people's demand or utilitarian purpose for a certain object is not single but multifaceted, so the practical value of a sculpture is not limited to one aspect.

Symbolism mainly refers to the pursuit of art, that is, sculpture does not focus on the pursuit of portraits, but takes the meaning represented by a certain sculpture as the main purpose.In Chinese history, when dealing with sculpture, there are two very noteworthy places.One is that the more realistic it is, the less it has the function of appreciation; on the contrary, those deformed and abstract objects such as jade and stones with special characteristics often become objects of appreciation and appreciation.The second is to realize the concrete content in the deformation and abstract form of sculptures such as jade and stone, and further deduce the deeper spiritual connotation from the concrete connotation.This appreciation and aesthetic process from abstraction to concreteness, and then from concreteness to abstraction, shows the unique characteristics of art appreciation in Chinese tradition, and also shows that Chinese tradition prefers to use "emotion", "Rhyme", "circumstance", and "meaning" are used as the criteria to measure the success of a work of art.As for the artistic language of the artwork itself, it is only regarded as "work" and "work" and listed in the second place.Chinese art seems to pursue spiritual beauty and abstract beauty.The reason for this pursuit has to be found in China's own culture.This kind of tracing can be seen from the high and low levels of Chinese culture.The high level refers to the ideas in the writings of sages and theorists.For example, Confucius's rituals and music are not in "bells, drums, jade and silk", Laozi's "big elephants have no form", Zhuangzi's "connecting the sky with the sky" and "concentrating the spirit", Huainanzi's "monarch shape", and the "expression" and "qiyun" of the Six Dynasties. ", "The gods descended" and other theories.During the Tang and Song Dynasties, literati and bureaucrats practiced more arts, so that the brushwork and ink were more interesting than the portraits.Tang Hou (Hou Hou) in the Yuan Dynasty said: "Looking at a painting is like looking at a beautiful woman, whose wind, spirit and bones are beyond the body." An excellent summary of the beauty of the spirit and the beauty of abstraction.The lower level is the concept embodied in folklore and religion.This level is mainly manifested in the worship of heaven and earth.The first concept embodied in the worship of heaven and earth is that all things have spirituality.Under the guidance of this kind of thinking, it is believed that whenever a person creates an object, it is attached with spirituality, so when the sculpture is made, it is not the sculpture art itself that is worshiped, but the content it represents or embodies.The second concept embodied in the worship of heaven and earth is the worship of nature.Heaven and earth have a grand, magnificent, and eternal character, and it is also the place where all things are created and returned; heaven and earth are incomparably sublime, perfect and beautiful, and the worship of nature (creation) caused by this is the admiration for the natural and natural beauty. The pursuit, and the pursuit of the material and performance of the original material.This aesthetic psychology is the motivation for the creation of garden sculptures and some "Tianhetian" sculptures.The symbolism of sculpture is essentially the materialized form of human mentality.Leaving aside those non-realistic works, even those works based on images in life are not necessarily imitations of reality, but use this image to symbolize a certain meaning.Like a sculpture of a bear, it might represent power, masculinity, or a reproductive cult.In our country that emphasizes "being cautious in the end and pursuing the future, and the people's morality is strong", in our country that likes to promote good and hide evil, various commemorative sculptures should have emerged in endlessly.The strange thing is that basically (not all) from the emperors and nobles to the peddlers do not make statues for themselves, that is, they do not appear as sculptures.Chinese commemoration is mainly reflected in words, such as oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, inscriptions, stone carvings, moyan, epitaphs, tablets, etc., and sculptures are often the foreshadowing or decoration of these words.The typical ones are Chastity Archway, Leshan Archway and Longevity Archway scattered all over the place.Although these stone carvings are carved with exquisite landscape figures, flowers, birds, insects and fish, rare birds and auspicious animals, the theme of the archway is not in these carvings.The form of the archway is a symbolic and commemorative stone carving, and its symbolic and commemorative content is indicated by the symbolic structure of the archway and the words on it.Conversely, as long as you see the form of the archway, you can conclude that it was built to commemorate someone or something without looking at the content of the carvings or asking about anything else. Its symbolic meaning is extremely clear.Of course, the characteristics of Chinese sculpture are not only practical and symbolic.Regardless of the subject matter or means of expression, Chinese sculpture is rich and colorful.And these can only be understood and discovered by placing oneself in the ocean of Chinese sculptures.