On the Aesthetic Features of the Binding Art

Binding is an art and it seems that it has not become a problem. Practice has proved that a good binding work can give people a sense of beauty, or elegant dignity, or gorgeous elegant, or exquisite luxury ... .... The United States is the psychological requirement of the people; beauty is the nature of people. With the advancement of history, the development of science and technology, books as people's spiritual life needs, its aesthetic value is increasingly prominent and important.

In recent years, new scientific achievements have emerged in an endless stream, such as "cybernetics," "information theory," "semiotics," "systematic theory," and "structuralism," and so on; aesthetic research has also received increasing attention and has emerged. "Technical aesthetics", "craft aesthetics", "novel aesthetics", "TV aesthetics" and other new topics. Since the binding is an art, according to the principle of art classification in the late 1950s to the early 1960s in China's aesthetic circles (that is, 1 according to the characteristics of the materialization of aesthetic consciousness, art can be divided into performance and reproduction; 2 according to the aesthetic sense The characteristics of the form of materialization can be divided into dynamic and static.) Like all practical art (craft, architecture), it belongs to the art of expression and silence. It gives people the beauty of art and is incorporated into the aesthetics of art. This is a matter of course.

I have talked about the creation and exploration of the past several years and talked briefly about the aesthetics of binding art.

The aesthetic creation of all arts follows the common law of art beauty. At the same time, they have their own special laws. The framing art is no exception.

Today, the value of framing is not only practical, but more importantly its aesthetic. Whether or not a book can attract the attention of readers on the shelf of the store, the beauty of the binding and the beauty is not the same, and the effect is very different. The so-called “looking for a look” is the first impression of binding to people, which is called “aesthetic attention” in aesthetics. "Attention" is the initial stage of the sequence of aesthetic psychology. It is the psychological basis for discovering beauty and understanding beauty. “The beauty of each thing is because everything can be fascinated by our attention to some extent.” Santanyana, “Purity” p. 86) Of course, ugly things can also attract attention. But can't keep paying attention. In daily life, there are many things that may cause our concentration and attention, such as changes in the rhythm of music, sharp contrast of colors, thunder of thunder, reunion of the enemy, etc. All of our nerves may be invigorated and highly specialized, but High degree of specificity does not necessarily have an aesthetic meaning. Aesthetic attention is a kind of psychological phenomenon that can arouse people's aesthetic mood. It is often accompanied by other psychological phenomena (such as memory, thinking, imagination, etc.) and is a kind of advanced consciousness activity. When we are immersed in charming music, when we walk in colorful flowers... That's it. At this time, the external organs of human beings are not merely deaf to the ears, nor do they look squinted at each other. Instead, the internal psychological and aesthetic objects communicate with each other, and the aesthetic subject and object achieve corresponding resonance and harmony. The key to the success or failure of binding design is how to fully display its aesthetic function and how to mobilize people's attention in aesthetic appreciation.

Hegel pointed out in the famous "Aesthetics" (Vol. I, page 25): "The elements of beauty can be divided into two types. One is internal, that is, content, and the other is external, that is, content is Out of the implication and traits of things, the inner ones appear to be external; on the outside, talents can recognize the inner ones, because the outer ones guide itself from the inside to the inside.” The framing design is in its aesthetic creation. In the activity, the first task is how its external form creates a good first impression for the reader. Second, it guides the reader to explore the meaning and characteristics of the content of the book and form a meaningful second impression.

What is the first impression of framing art?

Santayenne wrote in "The Sense of Beauty" (p. 55): "The most significant and most aesthetically esoteric problem is the problem of formal beauty. As long as there is a sense of pleasure, such as pleasure in color, and in the impression of things, Every ingredient is gratifying, and we no longer need to find the reasons for the charm we feel.” The question of the formal beauty he refers here refers to all works of art, because form is the basis of all works of art. . Some people call "the form of art, that is, the form of life," as a picture. First of all, the spatial rhythm of form and color produces a birth machine on a rigid screen. For painters, they are not facing a blank space but a space. - The space in the real world has no shape. Even in science, space has a "logical form" and no actual shape; there is only a spatial relationship, there is no specific spatial whole. Space itself is intangible in our real life. It is entirely an abstraction of scientific thinking. - Drawing space is not only a combination of lines and colors, it is a space for creation. In the process of artist's creation, how to arbitrarily dominate the composition, color, and image, and at the same time develop this picture space that is solely a visual existence. This is the vitality of form beauty.

The reason why book binding is different from other painting creations is that it is a kind of "proposition composition." Its form is subordinate to the content of the book, and it cannot reproduce the content intuitively; it is not a simulation of real life, nor is it the content of a book. Concrete illustration. You want to explain to readers the entire contents of a white manuscript within a limited picture. This is unrealistic. The difficulty of the aesthetic creation activity of binding design is also here, it is quite passive and must be subject to certain restrictions. This also determines the special form of framing design: create the largest space with the least material, and express the profound content with the simplest language - here. What I mean by "language" is the art form of binding. It gives the reader a first impression. If you use a fashionable word, it is "symbol".

I remember a Western philosopher once said: "All human cultural phenomena and spiritual activities: language, mythology, art and science are all using symbols to express human experience. The concept is only symbolic. A special application, symbolic behavior, gives all human experience materials a certain order; science gives order to people in mind, morality gives order to people in behavior, and art gives people a feeling of phenomena and understanding. Taking order.” “An artistic crystal is often a basic symbol.” The special function of a symbol is representation, reproduction, and abstraction. A symbol always expresses its meaning in a simplified form. For example, in the natural sciences, "water" is composed of two elements: "hydrogen" and "oxygen". It is represented by a symbol (molecular formula), namely H2O. Everyone with a little chemical knowledge knows, " "H2O" stands for plant water, and its characteristics and functions are self-evident. It means that the "water" that can extinguish fire is formed by the combination of two flammable gases (hydrogen and oxygen). Again. The word of our country is a symbol of language. In calligraphy art, a word or an image does not simply represent one of its meanings or a certain thing or a certain thing, but fully uses this special The symbol not only shows its beauty, but also vividly expresses some of the emotions and ideas it implies. I think that the "symbols" in the binding design are similar to the "points, gongs, and gongs" in calligraphy and the "1, 2, 3" symbols in music. Among them are dynamic and static, rhythm, and rhythm. Quite the same thing. If a designer wants to make a difference in a small area, he must intentionally organize and govern each of the shape elements—words, lines, colors, and so on. The space he created - a form, a symbol, should be concise and clear, and it is intrinsically meaningful.

When I was designing the Zheng Banqiao Calligraphy Collection, I was trying to use “symbols” to express the calligraphy style of the Yangzhou Eight Monsters of the Qing Dynasty. Based on my full understanding of the historical figure of Zheng Banqiao and his profound understanding of his original "six-and-a-half book", after repeated reflections, he abandoned the conventional design pattern of calligraphy rubbings and did not use Zheng Banqiao's paintings. ——Blue, bamboo, and stone decoration, only on the bottom of Xuan paper-like white, repeated three superimposed “Zheng Banqiao” black, gray, light gray characters, and row of rows of dignified “calligraphy sets” "Chu-song color body word. The entire screen is black, white, gray, red, and the dripping, unrestrained "plate bridge" is clearly displayed in front of the people, giving the reader a strong first impression. There is no extra language (picture or picture) on the cover. Everything is simple. I believe readers will appreciate its charm from it. Similarly, we can see in the "Foreign Literature and Art" that Mr. Ran designed and the "Divine Comedy" designed by Comrade Tao Xuehua that the two exaggerated "W"s, the neatly arranged white stars, become the main images on the screen. It is full of special decorative beauty, and it has played a simple, clear and simple role of "symbols." The visual consciousness for people is a rich form of beauty.

Of course, the form (symbol) that is unique to the framing arts is not a single one. It can be composed of characters as the subject, or it can be composed of decorative motifs as the main body; or it can be composed of strong color contrasts, or the texture of materials. Composition... Regardless of the ever-changing nature, the designer's creative space on the screen must obey the requirements of the book title. It does not and can be “extremely digressive” and boundless. The most important thing is that it must obey the principle of aesthetics: “No sound, no material, no fruit” ((Selected in the History of Chinese Aesthetics History, vol.1, p. 9). While pursuing formal beauty, "Poor" against form factors is monotonous; it is also opposed to "miscellaneous" and the structural organization of the form is chaotic.

Basically speaking, formal beauty embodies a certain era of aesthetic thought. This requires our framing arts to meet the visual awareness needs of modern people. - The beauty of simplicity, this is precisely the integration of the times.

What is the second impression of framing art?

In ancient China, there was a theory of “Yi, God, Miao, and Energy” in ancient paintings, and it was considered that “pencils are simple, elegant, and interesting”. Some people also said: "Art is not an imitation of a particular thing, but it is an aesthetic expression of its deeper meaning." All works of art emphasize an "idea" (meaning, meaning, artistic conception...). After all, anything in any form is merely a form of appearance. It is beautiful or ugly. When people's attention is drawn, people's consciousness is only at a low level of awakening. It cannot constitute a real aesthetic relationship, just like Infant's primitive psychological response is the same. Only when our cerebral cortex enters a state of active awakening and can identify whether an object has an aesthetic feature, it will produce a corresponding aesthetic attention. And some form of beauty does not necessarily have deep inwardness, or simply meaningless. Many excellent binding works are very "grabbing" in front of readers. They are more "resistant" and their formal aesthetics can lead readers to deeper thoughts. The so-called framing design "to play the problem", my understanding is that in the creation of art will be "performance." Because, "Performance can use the things that are hinted to make the original ordinary people beautiful, or to enhance the beauty they already have."

So, how does "art" represent the art of binding?

Simply put, when an artist creates a binding work, he first has to experience the aesthetic feelings of the content of the manuscript. Through artistic conceiving, and then repeatedly scrutinizing the shape, color, composition and layout, he shows his emotions in art processing. To convey the beauty of a particular craftsman. In fact, it is what is usually said: The artist's image thinking shows an image that fully shows the personality and essence of things, that is, a typical image. This image is the aesthetic ideal of the artist. What it embodies is beyond the image itself. The so-called "borrowing and lyricism" means this. Although the artist paints a picture of a cow or a sheep in nature, it expresses the human condition. As China's Song Dynasty poet Su Dongpo said, poetry or painting should all express a kind of “meaning outside of the image”, and it should show a “beauty” that is “beyond the taste of salt” (“The diet is not free.” Yanmei, and its beauty is often outside the salt acid, "." This "beauty" is intriguing.

In fact, as early as in ancient times, some of our ancestors put forward the idea of ​​“abandonment”.