Aesthetic education and intellectual education complement each other in order to cultivate more comprehensive talents. Art galleries and other public art spaces, as open art learning places, have rich cross-border exhibit resources and diversified educational activities, which can provide students with immersive, experiential and autonomous learning experiences, and comprehensively improve students’ The perception of beauty and artistic accomplishment. For School of Creativity and Art in ShanghaiTech University, aesthetic education is not only deeply integrated into the college's curriculum system, but also plays an indispensable second classroom role in the training process of its industrial design students. This fall, the first batch of industrial design freshmen in the School of Creativity and Art, under the leadership of the teachers, completed three exhibition viewing activities and experienced the charm of art works of different eras, styles and forms. The students felt the artists' unremitting exploration of diverse themes of the present and the future.
"Pioneer of Abstract Art: Kandinsky " Exhibition
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"The Voice of All Things" Collection Exhibition of Centre Pompidou
As a pioneer of abstract art, Kandinsky deeply promoted the development of art in the 20th and 21st centuries. This year coincides with the 155th anniversary of Kandinsky’s birth, so the West Bund Art Museum and the Pompidou Center jointly presented the "Pioneer of Abstract Art-Kandinsky" exhibition. This is Kandinsky's first large-scale retrospective in China, which brings together the blockbuster collections of the Pompidou Center, covering paintings, manuscripts, and prints. On September 19th, the first 20 undergraduates of the School of Creative Arts gathered at the West Bund Art Museum by the Huangpu River. Under the detailed explanations of the college teachers and art museum instructors, they learned about the master’s experience and works at various stages of his life. , Fully appreciate his milestone career.
Afterwards, the students visited the second permanent exhibition jointly presented by the West Bund Art Museum and the Pompidou Center five-year exhibition-"The Voice of All Things". The exhibition uses "things" throughout the narrative, tracing the development and evolution of the history of modern and contemporaryism. The exhibition brings together more than 160 masterpieces from the Pompidou Centre's collection, and uses 18 exhibition chapters to lead the audience into the hinterland of the art avant-garde movement in the context of globalization from the beginning of the 20th century to recent years. The exhibition allowed students to fully appreciate the diversity of artworks and artists. The works created by painters, writers, sculptors, directors, photographers, designers, architects, etc. relying on rich media also subverted the students’ solidification of art. Understanding has inspired everyone to think about how art develops step by step so far.
"Xiaodong Liu: Your friend"
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"Pingyuan Lu: The First Artist"
On September 25, the students of Chuangyi came to the Waibaidu Bridge, strolled along the Suzhou River, visited the Four Lines Warehouse, and searched for treasures in the second-hand bookstore to feel the cultural atmosphere of Shanghai. Under the leadership of the teachers of the college, the students visited the first solo exhibition of the artist after the opening of UCCA Edge-"Xiaodong Liu: Your Friend", and followed the artist's brushwork to feel the changes of the times. In the evening, the students came to MadeIn Gallery to visit the solo exhibition "The First Artist" by Pingyuan Lu, and had a face-to-face dialogue with the artist and experience the creative imagination of young artists.
As the contemporary inheritor of the Chinese realist painting tradition, Xiaodong Liu’s major works created in the 1990s clearly show the changes in China’s new era. His keen perception of images and photography in his works was curated by the curator Jerome Sanz calls it painting as a camera. This solo exhibition is divided into three chapters: "Anonymous Walker", "Back to Hometown", and "Your Friend". The works not only show the artist's life track and creative ideas at different stages, but also reflect ordinary people in reality. His real life and mental state calmly and objectively record the changes of our time.
"The First Artist" is Lu Pingyuan's fourth solo exhibition at MadeIn Gallery. The exhibition revolves around the character "Barbabeau", an artist in the French cartoon "Baba Papa". Lu Pingyuan created three relatively independent series inspired by Bababo's physical characteristics: "Shadows of Shadows", "Language Toys" and "Black Nature". His creative media include paintings on paper, paintings on mixed materials, and sculpture installations. For Pingyuan Lu, Bababo is "the most beautiful combination between the intangible and the tangible, but at the same time it is full of the contradictions of creative art: while his body represents the unknown and infinite possibilities, he is imitating humans to create conventional artworks." This exhibition also stimulated students' interest and thinking about the diverse possibilities between the cartoon world and the creative art itself.
Prix Pictet Exhibition: Hope
On October 23, under the leadership of the teachers of the college, the students came to the Shanghai Photographic Art Center to visit the first exhibition Hope of the Baida Photography Award in China. Through the different interpretation perspectives of 12 photographers, the students came up with A brand new thinking about humans and the world.
The Prix Pictet is an international cutting-edge award on photography and sustainability. Since its establishment in 2008, the award has been held once every half year, with the aim of attracting global attention to the issues faced by mankind—especially environmental issues with the power of photography. The theme of the eighth edition of the Patek Photography Awards is Hope, which provides artists with a wide range of creative possibilities and is closely linked to the sustainable issues that the award is most concerned about. Through the lens, the photographers discussed a wealth of topics such as recycling of resources, reforestation, the development of science and medicine, and the use of cutting-edge technologies to solve global environmental problems. At a time when mankind is facing multiple adversities, we can still see the positive actions emerging in various sustainable development fields and feel the hope hidden in them.
Student perception
Yutong Liu:
The Kandinsky Works Exhibition and the Sound Art Exhibition of All Things are two heavyweight exhibitions held at the West Bund Art Museum. On the last day of the dismantling, we followed the teacher to visit and learn, stepping into the most important chapter in the history of modern art.
The disintegration of the picture and the abstract distortion are the common characteristics of the paintings in the exhibition. The use of geometric symbols and rich colors greatly reduces the interference of specific objects on the viewer, allowing the viewer to get closer to the world behind the picture and appreciate it. The artist's inner expression and spiritual shock. The use of ready-made products and the influence of new creative thoughts opened up new directions for the works of this period.
All in all, it was really an experience of seeing exhibitions that benefited a lot~~
Chenxi Deng:
I had the honor to visit Xiaodong Liu's solo exhibition "My Friend". Strolling in the exhibition hall, passing by the author’s records of farmers in his hometown, emigration at the US-Mexico border, and old friends who have returned to Beijing to record after a half-life drifting, and use a photography-like painting method to draw eye-catching and clear depictions. China has entered a new era of changes in the times, using brushes to record the various social realities unfolded. The second floor exhibition hall displays portraits of the author's friends, not only friends, but also relatives. At the end of the exhibition, I watched a movie that recorded the creative process. After decades of life, I returned to my hometown and painted portraits. The author's affection is integrated in the realistic brushstrokes. Time is not forgiving, and time is like a song. The second-person narrative title "Your Friend" shows the author's friends. However, at the end, you will find that together with the author, they are also friends of the viewer.
Fan Yichen:
"Many hopes must be set off by despair". This is my most intuitive impression after watching the "Hope" exhibition. The photographer captures the lives of people in poverty-stricken areas or war zones: the hand-made prostheses show their personal style, the violin artist in the desert shares the vicissitudes of life with his violin, and the oppressed woman transforms her misfortune into love. Take care of those orphans who also have misfortunes... For me, the most impressive is the woman sitting in the dust, behind her home that is being leveled by a forklift and the cemetery where her relatives are sleeping. She was determined to watch it all disappear-sitting on the wooden chair with a smile on her face. I don't understand why she can still face the brokenness of her past with a smile, and even guessed whether the photographer deliberately misinterpreted it as hope, while the old woman herself is really desperate. Later, I realized that hope is the obsession of living, and it is a spark that becomes more and more bright with the occurrence of hardships. This is the precious quality of these people and their most stubborn "hope" for life.
