Read David Hockney's Hidden Knowledge (4): Why Understand and Explain Tradition?

At the end of the last article, we talked about Orientalism not only not disappearing, but more pervasive, powerful, hidden, and terrifying. With the modern highly developed commodity economy and globalization, it has been brought to the daily life of modern people with unprecedented efficiency and diffused into all aspects of life.

Even though the (poorly) academic and elite worlds are slowly advocating for reflection, the business world, especially in the mass world, is expanding and competing for business with much faster and more force than the advocacy of the academic, political, and social elites. More and more extensive methods promote the spread and solidification of Orientalism. The Orient that is acceptable to the commercial and public world is completely the Orient that is "approved" by mainstream concepts, and has nothing to do with whether it is the real Orient today. It is a more exaggerated enlargement, solidification or even extremeization of the Orientalist view of China. Look at the words they use - "diversity," "equality," "minority" - when these are the only words left to describe your national identity, even when we describe ourselves. Do you feel a cultural crisis when you have a few more words?

At the same time, on the other side of the world, it does seem that we are doing some sort of confrontation with Orientalism. But if we take a closer look and see what the "traditional culture" that has been promoted in recent years means, what behaviors are included in the so-called "revival", and what are its intentions and results, we will find that a lot of uproar The so-called revival of traditional culture, the propaganda of national cultural self-confidence, is nothing but a reverse (mirror) Orientalism; even a worse Orientalism because it is heavily politicized.

There are many such examples, and everyone is familiar with them. For example, in the past two years, the so-called "national style" songs and dances have been popular on many TV stations and media. Not only are there many so-called "ancient style" songs that are half-written and improvised, but there are also a lot of Dunhuang murals or Tang and Song Dynasty names. The painting was changed into dance, and the cool sound and light effects with the help of various new technologies, including virtual reality, animation projection and electronic music, attracted the applause of many people, especially the younger generation, and even brought a craze for imitation. Typical examples are the most popular dance this year "So Green", such as "Tang Palace Night Banquet" launched by a provincial TV station, and so on.

These "national style" performances have some very obvious commonalities. It can even be said that except for the title, they are similar in content, and it is no coincidence. The first is the blessing of various high-tech questions. The stage backdrop enables a variety of "realistic" 4D projections as well as cool and expensive sound and lighting effects. From the painting itself, to the introduction of the author, the introduction of the work, and the excerpts of famous sentences, they appear one after another on the 360-degree spherical screen, and various colorful "ancient landscapes" are transformed on the ground, such as small bridges, flowing water, grass cottages, green bamboo, peach blossoms, and mandarin ducks. , Chiyu, sometimes Liang Zhu or Xu Xianbai can also come up to make friends and cheer up... There is a posture full of high-end language courseware everywhere. Surrounded by these dazzling backgrounds, there are a group of dancing women, dancing modern dances choreographed in "ancient style". For example, in "So Green", a group of women dressed in green poses a variety of meaningful or difficult For example, in "Tang Palace Night Banquet", all kinds of women with highly restored Tang Dynasty makeup pretending to embrace ancient musical instruments dance a cheerful group dance, with no delicacies, no guests, no performances, and no The smallest hints related to the "banquet" are only the "Tang Dynasty singer-songwriters" revived on the spot that make modern people can't help laughing - although they are actually more like the naughty girls of modern schools, and the projections of the original paintings that make people overwhelmed (with The stage was packed to the brim with artefacts exhibitions and light shows. Overall, the performers are neither traditional arts nor dancers, but more like computer technology. So the final effect is exactly the same content, and it is no coincidence.

This comes to the second commonality between the two: the dance itself and the purported blueprint of the painting are really irrelevant. If it weren't for the high-tech courseware that scrolled on the screen and the ground, no one would know what the actors were dancing. Dances may be beautiful, and paintings are inherently beautiful, but they are each beautiful and irrelevant. As viewers, if we casually ask questions like, why do we adapt a static painting into a moving dance? Is this necessary? Can dance be better than painting for what is in the painting? How did we choose, and why did we choose them out of all the paintings? Two paintings from different eras, different backgrounds, different painters, and different materials were "acted out", did you feel any different? Or is this just a quick recipe, in fact, all paintings can be "live-streamed" to attract fans? And how was the music and choreography selected and created, and did they add anything new to these past paintings? After appreciating them, did you feel any change in how you feel about life? —How many can you answer? How many of these questions have even crossed your mind?

Not only that, although these performances are marked with the art of the Tang and Song dynasties, in fact, they are just constantly concocting "ancient style", concocting an "ancient China" that has never existed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that ancient China didn't exist, but that "ancient China" as a unified concept and image system didn't exist at all. You must know that there is no "ancient art" in this world, and no "poetry of the prosperous Tang Dynasty" or "prose of the Republic of China". These terms, once restored to history, are actually formed by the confluence, collision, and separation of thousands of different voices from different directions. They are just collected by literary history, labeled and put into the same arrangement. in the box. Talking about "ancient art", ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and ancient China are completely different from each other. Even if we just talk about "ancient Chinese art", how many different or even opposing eras, styles, forms, and how many imaginations have gone through? The transformations achieved and unimaginable, not to mention, how many unclassifiable people and events are involved in these styles and forms? Talking about "poetry in the prosperous Tang Dynasty", not to mention thousands of little poets, just take the three poets Li Bai, Du Fu, and Wang Wei as examples. Of the three, which one can represent the style of the other two? Which one can represent the "prosperous Tang style"? Talking about "Republic of China prose", not to mention how many different styles are mixed in it, let's just list a few writers - Lu Xun, Hu Shi, Zhang Ailing, who can represent who and who can represent "Republic of China prose"?

We scraped the years from the archives, randomly found a Tang painting, dressed according to the painting, painted the color according to the painting, combed the hair according to the painting, and bought musical instruments according to the painting. Is this prosperous? If this is the case, does it mean that there is only a "Hanfu" distance between us and the people of the Han Dynasty? This is obviously ridiculous. As a foreigner looking at oriental mirrors, this may be enough. But as a Chinese, especially a Chinese who aspires to revive traditional culture, to consume Chinese art and culture "out of context" instead of understanding and interpreting it will only end up losing them forever.

Those who have read Nietzsche's "The Use and Abuse of History" in the first season of Li Ri should still be deeply impressed. We have spent a considerable amount of time talking about the fact that history serves life, not the other way around. He has learned how young people should give full play to their individual energy, refuse to turn history into science and instill power to themselves, but insist on creating, living, criticizing and transforming history in order to strive to grow into a complete person. Obviously, as a concept that is constantly used and abused by various powers, the "history" here is exactly the same as the "tradition" we talked about above. A young man, who wants to be his own master, has to deal with his relationship with history and tradition, he must clarify a series of questions, such as what is the goal of understanding, interpreting and even revival of traditional culture? In what sense is tradition relevant to me? In what sense does the revival of traditional culture help me? What do I hope to get out of this?

One of the prerequisites for addressing these issues is that we have a thorough understanding of what tradition is, or at least in terms of what we are discussing in this article, what is tradition in art and culture.

Please move to the official website of "Reading the Sun" to continue reading this article for free.

The last discussion of this book will be published in two days, thank you for reading and discussing with us during this time. Happy Readependence Day!