A Research On Taboo And Its Influence On Original Art

The taboo research having been done continuously from 19th century. Though it contains marked folk culture and embodies in people's life and regulates people's forming of consciousness, social order and artistic aesthetic system, it is still a mysterious and scared custom to ordinary people. The rearrangement and elaboration of taboo will provide us a new perspective to realize the art.Taboo refers to the things which are sacred, unclean, and dangerous and the forbidden attitude which people hold towards its characteristic. That is to say, it includes two sides: one is the special things; the other is a control model. The essence of taboo is a negative norm of psychology and behavior. Though the violation of taboo is psychological, one can not disobey its punishment.The research always focuses on origin of taboo. From the Frazer's negative sorcery to Freud's contradictory psychology and Cassill's priori dangerous theory, all of them share different ideas but has their own reasons. The origin of taboo can be divided into four categories: manna, desire, ceremony and lessons. However, from the author's point of view, taboo originates from human being's survival instinct. As a negative behavior regulation, it establish gradually from the satisfaction of living needs. Just as what Freud said, human beings have both survival instinct and mortality instinct; the survival instinct is an extension and emphasis to the mortality instinct. Our ancestors paid a much higher prize than others living beings and won a place for themselves. Just for this strong survival instinct, human beings made efforts in a long and depressing period and finally become a group of living things which full of energy. While during the process of living, the prerequisites conditions are the appetite and sexual desire which is necessary for the procreation. Taboo came about from these two conditions. As a negative behavior regulation, taboo threats human being's survival for it restrains people's behavior. It comes about spontaneously at the very beginning and becomes stable through heredity and then becomes more stable and disobeyed through people's learning.Taboo is the most ancient untouched law of human being. In primitive society, taboo is one of the most important means to control the society and it is the foundation stone of the social order. When ideology turns to be a social manifestation taboo becomes ceremony and mythology. Ceremony is the carrier of taboo behavior while mythology is the carrier of tattoo language. Ceremony is a restriction means just as habits. The regulation of taboo and restriction are being emphasized in ceremony. However, almost every taboo subject exists in a mythology and passes on from one person to another. Finally it becomes the foundation of social order. Just because of the restriction of ceremony and mythology, they become an inevitable carrier of taboo.Original art shares the same forming systems with taboo. Instead of having aesthetic motivation, original art comes from survival instinct of human beings at the beginning. Original art is an inevitable weapon for people's daily life, it serves for living. It is an extension and reveal to the life emotionally. Ceremony and mythology are the carriers of original art. Almost all kinds of original art come from ceremony, while mythology is the essential condition of any kind of art. As an ideology, taboo is the foundation and expressing way of aesthetic system. People follow its negative principle and let it become a cultural instruction of the hint and domination which will guide people's behavior. Taboo has a great impact on original art as well as the emergence, establishment and expressing of aesthetic system.The difficult point of this paper is to study the origin of taboo, to find out its impact on original art and the establishment of aesthetic system. This paper is aim to think about human being's survival problem and show concern to the civilization. To find out the genuine and harmony from the complicated society and to construct a reasonable social order will not only be a dream.