| The relationship between "Tao" and "Art" is the key to understand the spirit of Chinese art. Based on the literature, this article investigated historically the relationship between "Tao" and "Art" of ancient Chinese music aesthetics, summed up the inherent similarities in three dimensions between "Tao" of Lao-tzu and music art, as well as the two characteristics on history of music aesthetics, explained the history of the interlinked "Tao" of Lao-tzu and music art, and thus extended to the related aesthetic method and aesthetic ideals with Chinese characteristics.The assertion of "Tao" from Lao-tzu had a major impact on the aesthetics of Chinese ancient music. It's not only embodied in ancient Taoist music aesthetics, even had important influences to the Confucian music aesthetics. Therefore, this article took Confucianism and Taoism as a whole to observe the intrinsic relationship between "Tao" and the characteristics of entire ancient Chinese music aesthetics.The auther discussed the relationship between "Tao" and "Art" from four aspects——connection of "Tao" and "Art", get "Tao" through "Art", show "Tao" in "Art", fusion of "Tao" and "Art"——to describe the influences of "Tao" to the ontology, methodology, and evaluation of art aesthetics.Firstly,"Tao" of Lao-tzu had impact on the ancient art ontology,which are from two dimensions as "Qi" and "Image".At first,as the origin of art, "Qi" had affected fundamentally the realization of ancient people about art ontology:Ancient people generally considered that the laws of movement, development and change of "Qi" reflects the movement and changes of "Tao", and it's also the regular pattern of music art at the same time, so "Tao" and "Art" are intrinsic interlinked. Second, in the history of ancient aesthetics,"Image"is an important ontology category. Lao-tzu demonstrated close relations between "Tao" and "Image" for the first time. It considered that "Image" is the appearance of "Tao", therefore "Image" had "Tao" in it, and "Image" can represent "Tao". This idea developed through Wang Bi's research, and had impact on the later artistic theory.In summary, "Image" is the perceptional expression of "Qi", and "Qi" is the internal spirit of "Image", and both constructed the noumenon theory of ancient art.Secondly, the methods of understanding and attaining Tao in Lao-tzu had a deep affection on the method of Chinese ancient artistic aesthetics.Lao-tzu suggested to understand "Tao" must be "achieving extremely emptiness, keeping utmost quiet" and "to give undivided attention to collect Qi, bring it to the utmost degree of pliancy",which means the main body went back to nature of "ignorant" and "voiding desire" by discarding all desires, and this can be interlinked with "Tao". "Zuowang" in Zhuang-zi, "continence" in Master Lu's Spring and Autumn, "Sunyucongxing" in Huainanzi,"cherish heaven laws, deny human desires" assertion from Yueji, were the represent of meathods of understanding and attaining Tao in music aesthetic idea.The author considered that the method "Quyu" made Chinese Aesthetics affected by Lao-tzu become a kind of internal and spiritual aesthetics.It paid much attention to the inner cultivation and the spiritual freedom of the aesthete.Thirdly, the idea of Lao-tzu deeply affected the theory of Chinese ancient art on "beauty". With the effect of Lao-tzu, Chinese ancient music aesthetics had two major features:the tradition taking "harmony" as "beaty",which present dialectical understanding of "beauty" by ancient people; made "unity" the highest pursuit, acting as tradition of "unity of heaven and people" and "unity of Tao and Art".This kind of view is as"Dao tong wei yi","wu wo liang wang"as the superlative aesthetic,and it became the highest ideal of Chinese ancient music aesthetics. In summary, "harmony" and "unity" spirit were two major characteristics of Chinese ancient music aesthetic evaluation.In conclusion, the author believed that the idea of Lao-tzu had an impact on the noumenon, the methodology and the esthetic appraisal of Chinese ancient art. The merge of "Tao" and "Art" in Lao-tzu always added profound meaning lingering charm and pursuit of perfection to Chinese ancient art. The unity of "Tao" and "Art" are both art of life and life of art, and it's the unity of aesthetic realm and realm of life. It has an important enlightenment to the artistic aesthetics nowadays. |
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