Zheng Ke Sculpture Art Research

The artist Zheng Ke (1905�1987) has obtained the widespread concern of scholars in the field of design in recent years because of that he was the earliest receiver and communicator of the Bauhaus design concept in China. At the same time, he was also an accomplished sculptor in our country. He opposed the naturalism and the blind worship of western realism sculpture. He created a new artistic style by the combination of the concept of western modern sculpture, modern design and the concept of Chinese traditional art. His sculpture had a significant influence to The development of Chinese sculpture. But due to the limitation of data, academia did not do the in-depth study in the field of his sculpture achievement.Zheng Ke"s sculpture art is the research object of this paper. In the process of research, I collected a large number of firsthand materials by searching historical data and the interviews with their relatives, friends and students. On the basis of these data, this paper tries to analyze Zheng Ke's sculpture style and the contributing factor integrally.Zheng Ke is in a very special place in the history of sculpture. The style of Academic sculpture and The Soviet socialist realism sculpture was the main research object of the20th century Chinese sculpture history before the reform and opening. Zheng Ke is "the other" outside the mainstream sculpture system in a sense. This "the other" identity is mainly manifested in the following respects.First of all, Zheng Ke was different from some Chinese sculptor that diverted and assimilated the western classical realism sculpture. Zheng Ke's sculptures continued the exploration of formal language of Chinese traditional sculpture and western modernist sculpture, and opened a new path in the20th century history of Chinese sculpture. He opposed the naturalistic sculpture style explicitly, pursued the aesthetic characteristics of the modernist sculpture and insisted plastic arts forms must be transferred on personal will. Although the new road was limited and bounded by the ideology at that time, but it is continued by the younger sculptor and became a trend which cannot be ignored in the process of Chinese contemporary sculpture art development after the reform and opening.Secondly, Zheng Ke's sculpture absorbed the modern design style and artistic concept of Bauhaus. Western modern art widely absorbed the Oriental art elements. The Bauhaus design concept has been deeply influenced by Chinese traditional culture, especially the Chinese philosophy. The Bauhaus combined the Chinese traditional culture and art and western modern art, in order to stimulate students' imagination and thinking ability. Therefore, Bauhaus art concept accorded with Zheng Ke's idea, and inspired him to pay more attention to their regularity of Chinese traditional art and explore the law of art.Zheng Ke's sculptures have succinct modeling and fluent line because of the absorption of the Bauhaus concise geometrical design style. Meanwhile, Zheng Ke inherited the idea of emphasizing practical function and serving the public. He put the sculpture modeling techniques involved in the mold design to promote the arts and crafts to modern mass production mode. He created a new style of sculpture according to the special requirements that the practical characteristics of commemorative COINS have put forward.More importantly. Zheng Ke created a new artistic style and form through a combination of traditional Chinese art and western modern sculpture. He extracted the rules of form from the elements of Chinese traditional art and put these rules to the sculpture creation. Especially in the relief creation, he combined the methods of Traditional folk sculpture and Western academic relief, and created the method of "Na Guang Na Yin". This method of relief was not only the supplement of traditional proportional compression method, but also an important attempt that how to absorb western sculpture system also has the characteristics of the national art.The particularity of Zheng Ke also reflected in his sculpture education concept. He inherited the Bauhaus concept of education, and combined the state building needs of specific period. Zheng Ke proposed a "generalist" education philosophy. This education concept was very forward-looking, similar to the now scholars advocated "general education", both were a kind of reflection on the "know-how" training system. Under the guidance of "generalist" education philosophy, he used modern design method of the Bauhaus to inspire the creative thinking of students.The practice made sculptures and other related areas to learn from each other, achieved mastery through a comprehensive study. Zheng Ke's education idea and teaching method has important significance for our art education so far.