A Study On Lu Xun And His Woodcut Printmaking Aesthetics

Since the 1940s, many scholars have done research on Lu Xun and Woodcut and they have also made comprehensive achievements. However, influenced by kinds of factors, there still exist problems in some ideas. With the increasingly crossover of research fields on Lu Xun, some new ideas and theories have provided new research directions and theoretical basis for the study Lu Xun and Woodcut. Especially, the research on Lu Xun's will of life makes it possible for the further research of this study. Based on this point, this paper does a comprehensive discussion of Lu Xun's woodcut and its implied aesthetic thinking and aesthetic attitudes through three parts.In the first part, from young Lu Xun's fancy for folk printing, we can find that Lu Xun seems to have a natural woodcut complex.When he was a teenager, Lu Xun devoted much time and efforts to copy and collect kinds of books or picture copybook with beautiful pictures. This experience has a very big influence on Lu Xun's forming of aesthetic standard, especially his love for pictures in Shan Hai Jing (Collection of the Mountains and Seas), Journey to the West, Er Ya Yin Tu (Elegant Phonetic Atlases), Mao Shi Pin Wu Tu Kao (Colour Prints for Objects in The Book of Songs) and other books. It also reflects Lu Xun's double artistic interests, in the combination of the rural gods and spirits culture and traditional elite culture. Reflected in Lu Xun's literary works is his nostalgia complex for rural culture which reflects his sense of closeness to the traditional folk arts with fresh vitality and expressive force as a teenager, and this sense forms his lifetime woodcut complex in his childhood.After he came back home, Lu Xun began to conduct the collection and classification of goldstone statue rubbings, and this has an inseparable relationship with his aesthetic education thought. The main colors of rubbings are black and white and they are of simple modeling and primitive simplicity. From the perspective of formal language they also belong to graphic art. Lu Xun's collections are mainly portrait of Han dynasty, epitaph of Wei and Jin dynasties and Buddha statue of Tang dynasty. It is mentioned by him many times that the new woodcut print should take example from the tradition, especially the style of Han and Tang dynasty by taking their majestic momentum and ridiculous thought. The highly praise of artistic styles of Han and Tang dynasty is actually the sublimation of his teenage aesthetic standard. At the same time, the newly developing woodcut has something in common with the arts of Han and Tang dynasty in artistic temperament such as the free-spirited and energetic attitude and state, and Lu Xun regards this as the Beauty of Strength that the contemporary China is exactly short of. If the highly praise of artistic styles of Han and Tang dynasty is a kind of aesthetic education thought attempting to remold the nationalism, and his woodcut complex has actually been changed to his graver of remolding The Soul of The Nation.In the second part, Lu Xu's acceptation of the western contemporary woodcut arts is periodic and pluralistic, and this displays the complication and contradiction in his aesthetic ideology.Lu Xun once came into touch with western artistic works and aesthetic thoughts of various Schools in different times when he was studying in Japan, and this has laid a solid foundation for his understanding and acceptation of western contemporary arts. In the earlier stage, he was influenced by Gauguin and Nietzsche, and inclined to Expressionism because of its attention to the inner world of human being, its react against real oppression and its respect to strong spiritual strength, which happens to have the same view with Lu Xun's aesthetic standards.However, what is mainly introduced by Lu Xun is the Soviet contemporary woodcut. There are many reasons for that but the most important two ones are as follows: firstly, he has a good vision of the Soviet socialist revolution, and this makes him eager to see a preferable development and change on Chinese revolution and society. Therefore, when introducing Soviet contemporary woodcut, he uses a lot of praising words, mainly on those works themed by socialist revolution as well as production and construction, which can reflect a new picture of the Soviet society. Secondly, Chinese young masters of woodcut do not have a solid foundation on drawing, and they are easy to get unsettled. Lu Xun considers the firm realistic style and simple skills of artistic expression of the Soviet contemporary woodcut to be a model for Chinese newly-developing woodcut. For these reasons, Lu Xun's introduction on Soviet contemporary woodcut is more systematic than that on German woodcut of Expressionism.In the third part, in the process of Lu Xun's promotion of woodcut there existed the aesthetic changing trend from expressionism to realism. It cannot be stated that Lu Xun is expressionist or realist from this trend. Lu Xun's aesthetic standard and artistic interests are still built in his teenage, that is, sprouted life consciousness. In other words Lu Xun supported life doctrine.Lu Xun's selection of western modern art is extremely distinct. He does not like cubism and futurism and he thought that they were odd painting. Although modeling method was mainly referred to when talking about those, in fact Lu Xun did not repel odd artistic modeling, for example, he could accept painting style of impressionist school and he highly praised Gauguin and Van Gogh's art. What he repelled was formalism, form first and lacking of people's observation and expression. The works of master of expressionism such as Munch he advocated just reflected people's anxiety in the modern society, dissimilation and distortion of the humankind by the society, just as he saw the country folk in his hometown. Critique of this phenomenon lied in pursuit of a kind of beauty of force, although the beauty is evil, and villainous. This kind of thought was reflected as early as in On the Poetic Power of the Satanical School and in his comment of Beardsley he just saw the beauty of devil of Beardsley.In fact, whether Munch, Beardsley or K?the Kollwitz, what Lu Xun chose from then was all the matter on thoughts, that is the expression of individual life struggle and the respect and yearning for individuality and freedom. In essence, Lu Xun supported life doctrine. His choice of woodcut was related to the sprouted life consciousness in his teens, related to the aesthetic education thought of remolding nationalism, related to his respect to individual life and his thoughts of life consciousness. In Lu Xun's point of view, woodcut is the artistic expression form which can express the vital force most and has the best correspondence with his inner aesthetic standards. Therefore, there is internal and inevitable relation between woodcut and Lu Xun.