Ceramic Culture and Music, Dance and Architecture

Music, dance, architecture and the culture of ceramics, respectively, have their own unique artistic characteristics and rules, though they share common ones.

Music and dance are lyric art. The ancient Greek aesthete Plato believed that rhythms and melodies can penetrate the souls of people, and the goodness or badness in music transform the souls of the audiences into a gracious or vicious state. The Music Sage-Beethoven once concluded, "Music is a form of inspiration higher than any wisdom and philosophy." More radically, Schopenhauer considered music as the only form of art that is able to directly express human soul and spirit. Sonorous or enshrouded, hurried or easy, strong or soft, sound-the nature of music-has the power of appealing the souls of the audiences.

    Being strikingly influential, music has especially close relationship with the feelings and spiritual life of human beings. It is reasonable, in this sense, to define music as "the phonographic card", "the language of moods". In the well-known poem "Pipa Xing" by Bai Juyi, the Pipa (a traditional oriental string music instrument) music and its charm are perfectly described. In "Listening to the Music Played by Yingshi" by the famous poet Han Yu from the mid-Tang period, the author describes it as "whispering the tender young babies but suddenly becoming sonorous-the brave warriors leaving for the battle fields; floating rootless clouds and catkin-flying freely in the wide sky; chirping the flocks of birds, suddenly appearing the lonely phoenix; its climax higher than anything else, though abruptly falling thousands of meters to the ground. I sigh that with my worldly ears, I am not able to appreciate the sweetness and profoundness of the music. Listening to Yingshi playing the music, I rise up and sit around. Suddenly he stops, and (I find myself) letting loose a flood of tears. How talented Yingshi is! Can he put ice and charcoal into my heart?" "Li Ping Konghou Yin" by the mid-Tang romantic poet Li He gives an even more wonderful presentation of music performance. It reads, "string of Wu (in today's Jiangsu Province) and tung of Shu (today's Sichuan Province) make the bright and high sky of autumn. The clouds are coagulated in the empty mountains. Weeping Lady Jiang'e plays flute and Li Ping plays Konghou (a kind of barbarian string instrument) in "China". (The melodies are like) smashing the best jade of Mount Kunshan, and the singing phoenix; lotuses tearing and fragrant orchids smiling. The cold moonlight in front of the two doors is melting away, and the twenty-three-string instrument moves the deity Zihuang. Goddess Nuwa is refining the stone to patch the holed sky, and the stone is smashing, the heaven is overwhelmed by the scene and calls forth the autumn rain. Dreaming into the legendary mountain meeting the old heavenly lady, the old fish jumping high into the air and the thin dragon dancing. Sleepless Wu Gang leaning on the osmanthus tree, the dews obliquely flying and wet the cold rabbit."

Dance is also a form of romantic art, though what is different is that music is presented by the rhythms and melodies, while dance is presented by those actions of strength, intervals, rotation, tenseness and ease, swiftness and slowness, hardness and softness. T. M. Green pointed out, "Dance is the form of art in which the movements of bodies are richly, purely, and diversely presented." For instance, "Ballet is the most typical form of western dance. Its forms of space are noble and graceful, and unexpectedly diversified. Its body design and costume design are melted into the grace of simplicity. Its mist- and dream-like light postures may stimulate borderless imagination of space, and may be charming sculptures of various postures." This is not only the case of ballet, but of such dance as disco and its like. Dance, for example, folk dance, is generally a form of expressive art instead of representative art. The young Chinese dancer Ms. Yang Liping's dance is the best example for it.

Architecture, at our first sight, seems having nothing to do with the above-mentioned forms of art. However, it similarly tries to express our feelings and our need for aesthetics, though their ways of expression are different. Usefulness, solidity and beauty are the three elements of architecture. However "the aesthetic significance of architecture is developed on the premise of solidity because the aesthetic values of architecture are subject to its functional values and scientific and technological ones, which makes it possible architecture becoming a comprehensive form of art, both plastic and non-plastic in its symbol systems, and thus grandiose and extremely spiritual. Its appearance-space, dimension, lines, and other factors of form-can be directly felt by people, it therefore becomes the core of aesthetic experience." "Architecture is solid music, and music is flowing architecture" points out the common characteristics of these two forms of art. The rules for beauty of forms-proportion and size, contrast and harmony, rhythm and cadence, balance and symmetry-are fit for all kinds of art. Many interesting phenomena exist between music and architecture. "The great German poet Goethe once said he felt the rhythms of music when he was walking in the porch of the St. Peter Cathedral. The Chinese architect Liang Sicheng 'composed soundless music' for the brick walls of the Tianning Monastery of the Liao period in Beijing, and found harmonious melodies in the long corridor of the Summer Palace." Like architecture, ceramic art is extremely romantic and has to meet the requirement of aesthetics. Regarding the relationship with its surroundings, undoubtedly architecture is a typical form of environmental art, and ceramic art is a form of displaying art and requires perfect environment matching it. Music is chronological. Chirps of birds, sound of flowing water and other sorts of sound in nature, in some sense, are a form of music and sometimes please people, though they are quite primitive. Without the related atmosphere, could we never imagine "The Three Times of Gurgitation at the Yang Pass", "Billow Rolling Sand" and "The Ambuscade from Ten Directions". Accordingly, the quality of the ballet "Swan Lake" would be enormously reduced without appropriate atmosphere. As a form of art of time and space, dance especially needs stages, props, lights and other supporting settings. Dynamically represented in certain space, the dancing images require a perfect setting. The design of the stages, props and lights, even smokes are made for creating a wonderful relevant setting.

Ceramic artists are nurtured by the common traits of all these forms of art. Besides contents, the means of representation, modeling and searching for excellent artistic conception, have been borrowed from them. For example, Li Jiangkun, the master of arts and crafts of the Jiangxi province, produces several works dealing with music, for instance, "The Night of Flowers and the Moon on the Spring River", "The Three Singers", and so on.

"Four Old Men Playing Music" by the senior artist Zeng Yalin is well received by people for its novel artistic conception, vivid images, antique and simple decoration.

"The Spring Swallow Extending her Wings" by Liu Yuanchang is a leading work among those of dance themes. It is of a gracious form and skillful techniques. The miniskirt of the "Spring Swallow" is openwork, and she stands on one foot, which make it become a historic treasure. The "Ladies from the Tang Period" from the Jingdezhen Municipal Factory of Ceramic Sculpture also deals with dancing of the time. Their postures and body shapes are elegant, its colors are muted, and its taste is quite fresh. In fact there are a great number of works of music themes.

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