”The bridge I have traveled is longer than the road you have traveled”, probably very few people use this tone to teach young children a lesson now! Naturally, one has to pass through countless bridges in one’s life. Apart from the engineers who build the bridges, painters are probably the ones who have seen the most bridges.
Most art workers like bridges, and I always look for bridges wherever I go. Bridge, how beautiful! “Small Bridges and Flowing Waters”, although it has the beauty of poetry, is actually more partial to the formal beauty of painting: people—houses, are blocks; Intersecting with flowing water, it is richer in form changes, and it is also a medium between lines and surfaces, it is a bridge for communication between lines and surfaces! If the scenery is ruined, the water towns in the south of the Yangtze River or the stone bridges in Venice will be demolished. Although the green water still surrounds people’s houses, it will completely destroy the structural beauty in the painter’s eyes and destroy the formal beauty.
The structure of the stone arch bridge itself is very beautiful: the round bridge hole, the square stones, and the arc bridge back, the square and the circle are harmonious and decent, and the laws of mechanics often match the laws of aesthetics. However, my love for bridges does not focus on appreciating bridges as large handicrafts, nor does it focus on the development of bridges since Li Chun’s Zhaozhou Bridge, but because of the various forms of bridges in different environments effect.
Both sides of the small river in Wuzhen, Mao Dun’s hometown, are densely populated with reeds. The strong arc of the arch bridge, or the simple straight line of the square bridge, just form a sharp contrast with the reeds. In the early spring weather, the willows at the head of the Jiangnan countryside stone bridge are slender and silky, and the slender silk is blowing against the hard stones of the bridge body. People cherish the beauty of the long bridge. The imitated Marco Polo Bridge in the Summer Palace only has 17 holes, and the Baodai Bridge in Suzhou has as many as 53 holes. If you take a boat and walk along the bridge slowly, you will feel as satisfied as if you read an epic. The mountainous areas of Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou and other provinces often come across Fengyu Bridges, on which corridors and pavilions are built to shelter from the rain, which are ideal locations for embellishing figures in ancient landscape paintings. Because most of the rapids are under the bridge, people always stop here to enjoy the waterfalls and springs. Painters and photographers must fight here.
Zhang Zeduan used the bridge as the climax of the painting in “A Picture of Rising the River during the Qingming Festival”. Because of the lively scenes of pedestrians going up and down the bridge, and various boats, the strong life sentiment of the streets on both sides of the strait is also connected by the bridge to form a condensed picture. drawing. The development of contradictions leads to the climax of the drama. The overlapping and interlacing of images constitutes a rich picture. Bridges often play the role of connecting the overlapping and interlacing of images. No wonder bridges are often encountered in paintings and photographs. They look for bridges as children look for excitement. Among the mountains and valleys, the traffic is by iron cable bridges and bamboo cable bridges. I have painted many cable bridges in Tibet, Xishuangbanna, Sichuan and other places. The cable bridges are dangerous for human beings, but the cable bridges in the eyes of painters are a line, an elastic line! It is hard to say that an isolated line has any vitality. It is the steep environment that gave birth to the life of the bridge, and it is the backdrop of various lines of rocks, bushes and rapids that make the cable bridge obtain the effect of a line with unique vitality.
The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge is also a straight line from a distance. Isn’t the straight line beautiful? Are straight lines more in line with the new aesthetic? It is not appropriate to ask questions in general, and it is impossible to answer in general. In the treatment of art forms, there are often slight mistakes and thousands of miles. In order to draw the Yangtze River Bridge, I once climbed up the Lion Rock in Nanjing, just to find points, lines, and planes that complement, echo, and extend the straight lines of the bridge! In order to paint the Qiantang River Bridge, I climbed to the hillside behind the Liuhe Pagoda twice, but I couldn’t handle the relationship between the huge Liuhe Pagoda and the long bridge, so I couldn’t compose the picture. Although there are many weeping willows in Binjiang, and peach blossoms bloom all over the mountain, how can the color of makeup affect the beauty of the structure? On Chengkun Road, there are many straight bridges, and the trains are constantly crossing bridges, entering holes, exiting holes, and crossing bridges, almost bridges connecting holes and holes connecting bridges. Every time you pass through the circular valley, looking forward and backward, the straight lines of many bridges cut off the steep slopes from time to time, sometimes appearing dangerous and beautiful, sometimes dangerous but not beautiful, beauty and danger are not the same thing.
Photographers and painters continue to explore the beauty of bridges. Both large and small bridges have their own beauty. Some people draw magpie bridges. The bridge formed by magpies not only has good meaning, but also has a free and lively form. Any image that plays a key role in composition and connection actually possesses the beauty of a bridge!
