Mr. Ma Weidu said the Chinese people's aesthetics have specific which four realms

The four levels, in descending order, are:

Elementary - gaudy: for example, big flowery cloth sheets in the countryside, pop songs, etc.

Intermediate - subtle: for example, Tang poems and Song lyrics, etc.

Advanced - pretentious: for example, Picasso paintings;

Top - morbid: such as foot-binding, goldfish, Taihu Lake stones, sick plums, pugs;

The first level of "vulgarity". Like Zhang Yimou's "Hero", Feng Xiaogang's "Night Banquet", the large flower cloth sheets in the countryside, and pop songs, all of them are gaudy, which is simple and clear, has the broadest mass base, and is the first level of aesthetics.

The second level is "subtle". Tang poetry and Song lyrics are the most typical representatives, we need to slowly experience its beauty, but not directly understand. For example, Li Bai's "Sending a Friend Away" says: "This place is a farewell, and the lone flag travels ten thousand miles."

It's very simple to say: as soon as we parted from each other, I left in a boat. It doesn't sound like much, but from a poetic point of view, it's a famous running water pair. It is called a running water couplet, in which the first line and the next line are neatly paired, and the meanings follow each other back and forth. Its beauty is very subtle, the second level of aesthetics.

The third level is "artifice". Contemporary art is trapped in this state. For example, a typical Picasso painting is sometimes difficult to understand. The Queen of England is said to have said, "I just can't tell which way the faces of the people he painted are facing."

The fourth layer of "pathology". When aesthetics goes to the tip of the pyramid, as soon as it enters the level of "morbid", it will be inverted pyramid, suddenly released, and then it becomes the most popular thing.

Pathological aesthetics first foot-binding, today's people on the foot-binding difficult to accept, but before the Qing Dynasty people to foot-binding for beauty. Li Yu, a Qing dynasty scholar, also specialized in teaching people how to appreciate foot-binding in his "Occasional Posts of Idle Affair". Most of the men in Dream of the Red Chamber have feminine beauty, while most of the women have morbid beauty. Jia Baoyu is like a girl, and Lin Daiyu is like a sick person, which is an aesthetic interest that the Chinese pursue in their culture.

Expanded:

Ma Wei Du said that he had a strong sense of beauty. p>Ma Weidu said their own collection of road:

In Ma Weidu decades of collection career, with knowledge and luck and the times naturally accounted for some of the cheap, but such cheap accounted for and not much, not all the wild collection of the convergence of most of the time Ma Weidu also have to "out of a little bit of blood".

Early years a dealer sold to Ma Weidu a pair of huanghuali circle chair, the dealer is 1000 dollars, ready to 4000 dollars. Ma Weidu judgment of this pair of chairs at that time in the Hong Kong market is about 8000 to 10,000 yuan, so immediately and the dealer deal. Ma Weidu believes that the money that others earn you have to let him earn. His point of view is that the bad thing about giving more money is that the order looks like a loss, but the good thing is the longevity of the business.

and the peddler to make a good relationship, let him earn a satisfactory amount of money, so that Ma Widu's channel is open. After all, the dealer is not a senior connoisseur, there is always a leak, such as a cup he bought 10 dollars, Ma Weidu gave him 20 dollars, he thought the profit doubled, if only give him 12 dollars he also earned, but long-term this is short-sighted. Because antique dealers receive antiques when the first thought must be able to pay a big price for that person, to maximize the value, so the beginning of playing dumb to eat a little bit of loss to give a little bit more money is no harm.

The reason why Ma Weidu received so many good things, is that at first do not care about that little money, often deal with the dealers feel Ma Weidu good, so at any time to Ma Weidu to provide valuable information, something is the first notification to Ma Weidu. There are times when the peddlers see something good but don't have enough money to collect it, so they directly find Ma Weidu and introduce the things to him, and the peddlers take a little bit of benefit fee from it, which saves a sum of money for Ma Weidu instead.

In the early years of the collection, especially in the era of poor information, Ma Weidu felt that the value of all the things are not worth the value of information, things are more expensive and cheaper is not important, the important thing is the information, you can always know who has a good thing in their hands.

Often see people constantly ask, Ma Weidu where so much money to buy antiques? In fact, this question as early as 10 years ago, in March 2008, Ma Weidu accepted the "Sanlian Life Weekly" senior chief writer Wang Xiaofeng interview said, just that many people did not notice or forget, that issue is to "flat earth rising generation" as the title, Mr. Ma Weidu holding a black cat for the cover.

Ma Weidu said he started in the herb business when he was an editor at a publishing house, and selling Chinese herbs was a profitable business back then. In the mid-to-late 1980s, Ma Weidu was able to earn 70,000 to 80,000 yuan a month, and he bought antiques with all the money he earned from selling herbs. At that time in the publishing house, Ma Weidu did not dare to tell people that he was in the herb business, and the impression of the onlookers was that Ma Weidu had special money, but he just did not understand where it came from.

Now Ma Weidu misses the time in the 1980s when he was buying cultural relics everywhere, often going to Hebei and Shanxi, someone to lead the way, there are treasures everywhere, a stoop to pick. Now not, every step is a mine. Like when I went to the time is a virgin, the forest are fresh mushrooms, randomly pick, now the situation is that the mushrooms are still everywhere, but they are poisonous mushrooms.

There is another thing that many people don't know, Ma Weidu revealed for the first time in this interview that he was the first person to buy artifacts back from abroad in containers.

Ma Widu talks about Chinese aesthetics in the original video - CCTV.com