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 How
Do We Talk About Art Today
By Shui Tianzhong
The way in which people discuss and evaluate art changes with
the advancement of the history. Besides that the development
of people's wisdom, thinking and spirit determines people' speech,
technology and material also influence the form of expression
of people's idea.
In the old times, there was "recording things by knotting
rope", later there were animal-bones and tortoise-shell,
thus people carved words and symbol on the bones and shells,
and inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells became the medium
of exchanging and delivering information. People's language
at that time was very simple but also easy to be misread, so
the people who specially explain those words and symbols appeared
and they grasped the mysterious authority that couldn't be looked
through by ordinary people. Then there appeared inscribed wooden
slip and bamboo slip as well as Dazhuan, Xiaozhuan and Lishu,
thus people's language became systematic and complete. But the
realization cycle from language to characters and delivery time
was still very slow. The critical change was the invention and
wide spreading of printing which made it possible for people
to record and deliver simple information and thinking more conveniently.
Just in this historical stage, articles and books about art
discussion appeared and even people who engaged in discussing
art also appeared. Because not all people are able to see the
work of art that they want to see, and not all people had the
economic and social right to record their ideas about art and
deliver them to vast readers.
This kind of speech form in the old times had obvious limitations.
It not only had time and space difficulty to go beyond, but
also had a big gap between speaking and listening. Speech expressing
art discussion became a privilege endowed by wealth or political
authority. "Right of speech" was not a purely academic
privilege at all.
The appearance of computer and network is another leap of people's
wisdom and it changes our form of speech completely. Delivering
thinking and exchanging opinions is not the privilege owned
by the minority any more. The majority of the people can do
thinking and talking about art as well as delivering personal
opinions to the vast readers. Some people in the past believed
that gramophone record saved lyrics. Today, we can put the new
birth of art discussion on the Internet, because Internet can
break the small cycle of self-producing and self-appreciating
in art discussion. We can list here a lot of advantages:
The first advantages of talking about art through internet is
that it can break the faction, clique monopoly of art discussion
and establish free forum of common readers expressing their
personal artistic opinion, and this right is endowed by the
constitution to every citizen.
The second advantage is that it can firstly break the regret
of "setting the tune with one beat of the gong" of
art evaluate in the history of culture. The comment of art is
inter-act and a kind of discussion and conversation, but not
some regrettable conclusion.
The third advantage is that it will clear the way for the realization
of the cultural ideal that in the past only remained orally
(such as "letting a hundred schools of thought contend",
criticism and counter-criticism).
The fourth advantage is its efficiency. You can deliver your
opinion to the remotest and vastest space in the shortest time.
Of course, the realization of theses beautiful hopes still needs
our own endeavor. "Century Online China Art Network"
establishes "Art Forum" and this provides us a space
for discussing art. Hope we can put all misgivings aside and
discuss art freely, relaxedly and carefreely, because the motive
of people's creating art is not to add people's yoke, but to
make people live in a freely, relaxed, and carefree manner.
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