How King Lear Was Embroidered?

By Zhou Xianxian

Picture a portrait of an old man with bushy white hair and a tidy white beard.His creased face with vivid and natural expression. What’s more,a striking Chinese character of“ 王 ” (the king) is stitched on his forehead and his glaring eyes force viewers to hold him in awe.We dare not to look at him for long, completely forgetting this is just an art of embroidery.

It is King Lear, a brilliant handcraft by Yang Xiaoting, a master of Han Embroidery in Hubei Province.

Both Yang’s maternal and paternal grandmothers were good at embroidering. In fl uenced by them, Yang was interested in embroidery when she was very young. As time went by, her interest turned to a deep love for embroidery. She has devoted herself to Han Embroidery for thirty years.

Yang’s mother, who is a Christian, often brought her to the church in her childhood. Seeing the furnishings there, she gradually fell for Western art. Afterwards, she received a systemic education on traditional Chinese painting and oil painting at an art college in Hubei and mastered Eastern and Western aesthetic theories. Along with an open attitude towards pursuing art,Yang has learned a lot from both Western and Chinese cultures. As a cross between Chinese and Western art, most of her works show extraordinary beauty.

Yang Xiaoting and her talented team created King Lear in 2014.It took almost eight months to finish it. The prototype of this embroidery is a staged photo of Wu Xingguo, the Taiwanese playwright of the Peking Opera Lear Is Here, which was adapted from Shakespeare’s drama King Lear. Wu innovatively interpreted this drama in the form of Chinese Peking Opera.

At that time, Yang Xiaoting was striving to figure out how to combine Han Embroidery with fiber art. She came across the stage photo of Wu in a magazine and she was inspired to transform it into embroidery.

It took a lot of time and effort to complete the primary design of this work, including adoption of stitches and adjustments of color and brightness, according to Yang Xiaoting. In order to highlight the characteristics of King Lear, Yang used free stitching to embroider his face, so that threads can flow along his facial outline and create a visual effect of oil paint. Given the costume style of Peking Opera and avoiding his face being overshadowed by the pattern stitched by gold threads on his clothes, Yang embedded black threads into the gold ones properly to adjust the brightness of different parts. Traditional circling gold stitch and modern free stitch, a figure of western drama presented as a Peking Opera character, along withfiber art—every detail of this seemingly simple work manifests the creator’s originality.

Yang Xiaoting has created a number of embroideries on the basis of paintings by Monet and Van Gogh using different stitches, as well as a series of works based on portrayals of Western musicians, which she hopes to show the world when her daughter holds piano concerts overseas in the future.

英國首相特蕾莎·梅對“龍鳳呈祥坤包”愛不釋手Wallet embroidered by Yang Xiaoting presented to Teresa May, British Prime Minister, as a gift

楊小婷在給海外大V講解漢繡作品Yang Xiaoting explaining Han embroidery to overseas Internet celebrities

Yang likes reading Shakespeare’s dramas and she often reads with her daughter,playing different roles. Yang said the poem Nine Tunes by Chinese poet Qu Yuan is also rich in such splendid and romantic scenes,and she wants to bring more Chinese cultural elements to her embroideries to share with more people outside of China.

Yang Xiaoting insists on the idea of fusion of Chinese and Western styles during her creation, which gives Han Embroidery, with a history of over 2300 years, a new life. So far, she has received visitors from dozens of countries, and her embroideries have been presented to foreign celebrities many times,including Theresa Mary May and Bill Gates.

楊小婷作品《向日葵》Sunflower, an embroidery work by Yang Xiaoting

頭上蓬松飄逸的白發，耳邊掛著整齊的連腮長髯，中間一張略敷脂粉的臉，臉上表情生動自然，依稀可見老者的皺紋。這老者額頭上赫然寫著一個“王”字，怒目圓睜，讓人頓生敬畏，忘了眼前只是一幅繡品，竟不敢長時間與之對視……

這便是湖北省漢繡大師楊小婷的佳作《李爾王》。

楊小婷的奶奶、姥姥都會繡花，楊小婷自小受她們的影響，對刺繡很感興趣，而這份興趣慢慢演變成熱愛，一直延續至今，轉眼針耕已有三十年。

媽媽是基督徒，常帶她去教堂。看多了教堂里的陳設，她也慢慢喜歡上西方藝術。后來，她在美院系統地學習了國畫和油畫，東西方美術理論盡在掌握中。加上她追求藝術的開放態度，使她在中西文化中汲取了大量養分，她的很多作品都是中西融合，大放異彩。

《李爾王》是楊小婷和她的精英團在2014年一起創作的，前后花了七八個月時間。這幅作品以臺灣劇作家吳興國改編京劇《李爾在此》中李爾王的劇照為原型。吳興國曾大膽地將莎士比亞戲劇用京劇的方式演繹出來。

當時，楊小婷正在尋找將漢繡與纖維藝術結合在一起的方法，她偶然在雜志上看到了這張劇照，其創新理念和自己不謀而合，便決定以此作為刺繡題材。

據楊小婷介紹，這幅繡品在前期設計時花了不少心思，比如針法的選擇、顏色和亮度的調整等。為了更加突出人物特征，楊小婷在臉部采用游針繡，使繡線順著臉部線條流動，營造油彩的視覺效果。為了符合京劇服裝風格，又不讓服裝上的盤金蓋過人物的臉部，楊小婷在使用盤金繡時，在金線中編入不同密度的黑線，以協調繡品不同部位的亮度。針法的古今結合，題材上的中西融合，外加纖維藝術，一幅看似簡單的作品，每一處細節都體現了作者的獨具匠心。

楊小婷先后用不同的針法繡了莫奈、梵高等人的畫作，還繡了一系列西方音樂家的畫像，她希望這些作品日后能隨女兒去國外辦鋼琴音樂會時展出。

楊小婷喜歡讀莎士比亞戲劇，她經常和女兒一起分角色朗讀，興致高的時候還會演上幾幕，母女倆其樂融融。楊小婷說中國詩人屈原的《九歌》里，有很多場景唯美浪漫，她希望把更多中國文化元素繡入其作品中，帶到西方共賞。

楊小婷在繡品中體現的中西融合的理念，使具有2300多年歷史的漢繡非遺文化綻放出時代生機。截至目前，她已接待過來自幾十個國家的參觀者。她的繡品多次作為禮物贈送給外國友人，英國首相特蕾莎·梅和世界名人比爾·蓋茨等都在其列。