Friday, January 16, 2009

中国美学意象: 情与景交融 Chinese Artistic Imagination: Fusion of Emotion and Scene

意象是另一个重要的美学概念。有人说它是进入了解中国传统美学之门。
在西方,最接近中国意象概念的名词是想象。它在艺术制作与欣赏中扮演了角色。美感想象探究由联系美感经验而体验到的可能性。对康德而言,美感经验是想象与领悟的自由互动:‘美感想象能够对过去较和好时所做的艺术品之高尚美丽与真实有所知觉。’
在中国美学中,意象要求艺术品之整体性,不能遗漏主观情感与客观景物,而是要把它们连接起来。艺术品所含之意与象的关系多样化。要制造意象,艺术家要对意与象有协和的关系。
意指艺术家要借他的作品来表达的意见、意念、心意与情意。
中文字‘象’指三个概念:形象、象征与抽象。中国文化明显重象轻言。所以易经引用孔子说:书不尽言,言不尽意,故圣人设象以尽意。毕竟,易经之象是以三爻与六爻卦符号为代表。这个‘象’字就有形象或象征的意思,看它用在哪里。
抽象这个词在中文里是相当新的,虽然抽象这个概念古已有之。
所以,意象之象,是形象、象征与抽象之自由互动。.
Yi-xiang (literally imagery idea or intentional idea) or Artistic Imagination is another very important aesthetic notion. It is said to be the entrance to understanding the Chinese traditional aesthetics.
Imagination always plays a role in the production and appreciation of artworks. Aesthetic imagination explores the possibilities suggested by the connection of aesthetic experience. For Kant, aesthetic experience involves a free play of the imagination and the understanding. ‘Aesthetic imagination can perceive the ennobling beauty and truth of past art produced in more harmonious times.’
In Chinese aesthetics, Yi-xiang mandates wholeness so an art work should never leave out subjective emotion and objective scenery, but should combine them. The arts contain various relationships between emotion and scenery. To create a Yi-xiang, an artist must in a harmonious relationship between emotion and scenery.
The word Yi as an artistic subject means opinions, ideas, sentiments and emotions that the artist attempts to express through his/her works.
The word xiang in Chinese refers to three concepts: image, symbol or abstraction. The preference of images over words is well known in the Chinese culture. So Yi-jing (The Book of Change) quotes Confucius (551-479 BC) that written words cannot fully express speech while speech cannot fully express ideas. So the sages have established emblematic images to fully express their ideas. However, in Yi-jing, xiang actually is represented by the trigram and hexagram symbols. The word xiang is used to mean both images and symbols, depending on the context in which it is mentioned.
Abstraction is a new term in the Chinese vocabulary, although the concept of abstraction may have been existed in the Chinese mind since the ancient time.
So, when we say scenery in the context of Chinese Yi-xiang, it refers to the free play of images, symbols and abstract imagination.

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