「Look at the Picture and Talk about the Painting」Artistic Expression of Chinese Aesthetic Education Practice

From the birth of a national emblem to the warmth of “Children of the Earth”, the practice of China’s century-long aesthetic education is all revealed in the exhibition “Forms of the People”.

This exhibition held at the Art Museum of Tsinghua University, with over a hundred works and documents, retraces the 69-year artistic lineage of the Academy of Arts and Design at Tsinghua University, and materializes the core pursuit of Chinese aesthetic education: “cultivating people through beauty and serving the people”. The exhibition reconstructs the core of art “form”, continuing Cai Yuanpei’s idea of “saving the country through aesthetic education”, and enabling generations of artists to integrate “decorative” beauty into the practice of national construction and daily life. From the core participation in the design of the national emblem to Zhang Guangyu’s national style design for “The Monkey King”, and then to the exploration of public aesthetics in the murals of the Capital Airport, each work is a testament to the rooting of aesthetic education in life.

Chinese aesthetic education has never remained at the level of concepts; instead, it has permeated life and nourished the people through the power of art, ultimately making beauty the backdrop of people’s lives. This is precisely the true meaning of art serving the people.

This exhibition not only combs through a cultural thread but also reveals that artistic forms rooted in the soil of the times will eventually become the spiritual nourishment that nurtures the aesthetic sense of a nation. And when we look back on this journey, the exhibition also poses a sharp question of the times – in the era of fragmented information on the Internet, how will the practice of art influence the future of aesthetic education in China?

The tea for today is all gone. Next time, I’ll brew a fresh pot and enjoy art with you again.