Relationship Between Literature And Art From The Perspective Of Laocoon

"Paintings are the soundless poems, while poems are the paintings with sound."Such sayings, which promote the integration of literature and plastic arts, have a long history in both Western countries and China and serve as the firm foundations for our understanding. However, Lessing, a German representative of Enlightenment in 17th century, in his book Laocoon.the Bouldery of Poem and Painting, raised a new idea from his unique understanding, clarified the boundary and principles of the two unique art forms, cast doubt on the integration of the two. This new idea caused the hottest argument and promoted the development of the art academe.Laocoon, a flamen in Troy, is a figure in Greek legends. The death of him has become the preferred theme of literatures and sculptures of ancient Rome. Statue group is the best work. The story of Laocoon is thoroughly depicted in Virqil's Aeneis. The sculptures and the poets treated the death of the three differently. Such difference has become the live theme for the argument of the boundary between literature and plastic art. Lessing has written this famous aesthetics work based on the comparison of the poems of Virqil and the different images of Laocoon in ancient Greek sculptures.In spite of the domination of New Classicalism in German with its integration theory of paintings and poems, Lessing founded an art theory for the rising Capitalism, which echoed through literature, aesthetics and art fields. As to the issue of the relation between poem and paintings, the ancient West and China were surprisingly same in the integration of poems and drawings. Lessing, however, thought that in the theme Laocoon, bodies were the essence of eternal wisdom, while the beauty of clothes can not be similarly important as that of bodies. For the sake of beauty, artists can abandon the tradition and custom sompletely. In the poem of Virqil, the giant snake tangled across the body of Laocoon around his body and neck. But he was naked in the sculpture, and the snake could not cover his body, since poem could use the scene to intensify the horror and pain. If the sculpture displayed the same scene, it could not illustrate the pain of the figure through tense and twisting muscle, and it might appear fat and annoying and the"pyramid peak"picture pattern might also be ruined. Thus the art of sculpture will show the scene in a different way. Using sufficient proof, Lessing opposed to the dominant"integration of poems and paintings"view. Laocoon set free the German youth and thus complimented by many academicians.Lessing's theory serves as the drive of the German, even the world's history, and remains influential even nowadays.Nevertheless, this work, which supported the founding of German national literature and the development of the European Realism literature, has been confronted with controversies and doubts. The boundary between paintings and poems, though, is clarified in this work, Lessing ignores the connection and common nature of different art forms, thus exposing his aesthetic dialectics. For example, he appreciates the classic art theory blindly, excludes unlovely theme in art and dissever the relation between expression and beauty. All of these have reflected his limitation and unilateralism of aesthetics. Form the perspective of plastic art, with a conservative view, Laocoon absolutizes the difference between plastic art and literature, overstates the superiority of poems and limitation of paintings, or in another way, uses the limitation of paintings to stress the superiority of poems. His exaggeration was shown as following: first, Lessing raised out"beauty is the superior law of art", but in fact a lot of ugly but full of thoughts work of art were provided in the art history, e.g. Last Supper by Da Vinchi, Boat Tracker on Volga River by Ilya Yafimovich Repin; these works were object to Lessing's view.Secondly, he thought that the creation of art was easier than the expression, which equaled artists to the craftsmen and ignored the inner world and creativity of the art. Third, Lessing argued that paintings could show stable objects, while the poets portrayed continuous movements. In fact, now matter in West or Russia, a number of works could prove he was wrong. Western paintings could show the continuity in the form of painting groups, while Chinese paintings overcame the limitation of space and time by cutting long volumes into pieces. Fourth, Lessing's using paintings to refer to art, or the combination of the two appeared many times in his book, although he ignore the great difference of sculptures and paintings"ancient sculptures could only show the ideal and general objects, while paintings could show not unique feature but abstract and typical objects; they could portray"humanized abstraction". Such a view was unfair for the art. The portray of figures were a lot in the history of art. In 17th century, the famous Spain artist's Pope X Enosis was the best example of this kind. The cunning and hypocritical face was vividly portrayed. We can draw a conclusion that as the ideologist and litterateur in the Enlightenment, Lessing's motive in writing Laocoon is literary. Given that the boundary has shown a new road to the poetry or the literature of the whole Europe, such differentiation also has a negative influence on the plastic art.Nowadays, the change of media and transmission has brought more space for the cooperation of art disciplines. While insisting on their own unique feature, all disciplines also make great effort in inspecting and absorbing the advantages of other art disciplines. Lessing's view of art also indirectly influences the division of art and the setting of categories, providing the theoretical references for the integration of different art forms.