Xu Wei's artistic characteristics

The Artistic Features of Xu Wei's Paintings

An artist's personality tendency is always expressed in one way or another through his internal and external behaviors, and externalized into works of art through the intermediary of aesthetic attitude and emotional state. Different from the static of natural personality and the dynamic of ethical personality, personality as a social rebel is in a crazy state. This is a strong and erupting passion with great influence. Xu Wei, who is "supercilious and solitary throughout the ages", can be described as a real madman who surprises and hates the world. He flew into a rage, or accidentally killed his wife in a rage, or "smashed his head with his own axe, and his face was covered with blood", or "wanted to attack his ears and go deep into his inch", and most of his artistic masterpieces were also produced in a crazy state of mind.

Xu Wei's creative state is an uncontrollable and uncontrollable passion generate, as Li Zhi said: "There are so many strange things in my chest, so many things in my throat that I want to vomit, and there are always so many things I want to say but can't say." Over time, it is unstoppable. Once you see that scene, you will be shocked, sigh, take other people's glasses, pour your own pieces, and complain about the grievances in your heart. It's been amazing for thousands of years. "So Xu Wei's paintings are the materialization and crystallization of his crazy feelings, and they are the manifestation of personality in art.

His madness is manifested in his great contempt for the previous generation. It advocates that teachers should reinterpret tradition on the basis of choosing and inheriting tradition, and then construct their own unique artistic characteristics. His composition is "a teacher's mind is vertical and horizontal, not close to the door", and his painting is "I have never seen the plum blossom spectrum, so I believe it comes from my heart". He called his paintings "forged paintings". He could not draw them at will, and there was no fixed method for starting, running, turning and collecting them. Starting from the need of expressing one's own subjective feelings, on the basis of summarizing the previous experience of pen and ink, combined with one's own experience, this paper expounds one's brand-new view of pen and ink.

As far as his personal pen and ink style and personal preference are concerned, there is no doubt that he tends to be eccentric and extensive. But in theory, he insisted on the process of "fine" and "coarse", and insisted on the process from "work" to "release", and never opposed extensive and fine work. Xu Wei said in Shu Zhongshen's Zhou Hua: "Shen's paintings are freehand, but those who are careless are twice as good." However, Xu Wei said that he had seen his "The Map of Bombing against the Guest in Yuan and Ming Dynasties", in which the characters in the ancient wood were all line drawings, "exquisite and meticulous", and he thought that "only the works are so wonderful." Take "work" as the basis of "grass" He also believes that pen and ink are subordinate to content, and that painting is "not sick, neither heavy nor light, but vivid and not vivid." In Xu Wei's view, at that time, many people followed the trend and blindly praised the concept of cherishing ink, just like a dwarf watching a play and echoing other people's nonsense. Therefore, Xu Wei's brush has both large splashing ink (mostly used for painting flowers) and reducing brush strokes (mostly used for figure painting). As long as he can vividly pour out his passion of "opening the heart of the times", no matter whether the pen and ink are heavy or simple, dry or wet, he can be used by me. In order to give full play to the effect of ink painting, Xu Wei was the first creative and conscious painter to paint on "base paper". In the Tang and Song Dynasties, China's traditional scroll paintings were mostly painted on silk, that is, paper, which is also smooth and compact "heart-bearing hall" paper. These silks and papers are impervious to ink and can be reused. After the Yuan Dynasty, paper became thicker and thicker, and painting became more ink-eating. It feels spicy and slippery, but it's still not too porous. At that time, some soft and porous paper, commonly known as "base paper", was not used for painting, but for pasting enough paper, or "cooked paper" with glue alum to make it impervious, and then used for painting and calligraphy. Xu Wei made full use of the characteristics of "base paper" and consciously used the base paper as the main medium of his calligraphy and painting creation. By dipping the ink lightly, heavily, quickly, dry, wet, thick and light, and sometimes using alum water to adjust the ink, the peculiar effect of ink spot flooding and dripping changes is created, which greatly enriches the expression methods of traditional ink painting. There is a folk story that Xu Wei once painted a picture for a poor old lady. In order to save time, he folded enough paper, poured ink all over the inkstone, and then opened it one by one, drawing a reminder and turning it into a banana, lotus, grape or peony. In an instant, he finished more than a dozen works, which made the old lady pay off her debts. This legend just shows that Xu Wei has a high degree of freedom in controlling the water permeability of "base paper". The use of base paper has brought a vast world to Xu Wei's pen and ink galloping. He swept the pen with fiery feelings, without restraint, as if he were dancing and grasping the halberd without carving. "The ink pours down like a torrent, the images are colorful, the flowers and leaves hook into the music, and they jump and make sounds", forming a coherent, changing and shocking ink symphony melody. As far as his paintings are concerned, without learning, dharma is impossible. He completely transcended techniques and forms and entered a free and pure aesthetic realm.

His madness is manifested in painting "not focusing on the rhyme of existence", not focusing on the reproduction of spirit, advocating "secrets are automatic" and "flowing out of people's hearts", getting rid of the fetters of consciousness and throwing away passion like crazy waves. This is the overall atmosphere symbol that a high-grade painter must pursue, and it is the inevitable result that strong spiritual energy requirements are fully reflected in the painting image. The plum blossom and bamboo in his works are no longer lofty and plain in the previous schema. Elegant and quiet style, but entrusted with the feelings and grievances of extremely painful life experience. In his "Flower Miscellaneous Picture Scroll" (collected in Tokyo Museum, Japan), there is a drooping plum blossom with a section immersed in a stream. There are two lines on the inscription beside the painting: "Although you can avoid pressing snow, you may be swallowed by fish." Even if plum blossoms are not oppressed by snow, they will be swallowed up by fish, which means that people with high quality and excellent talents can't escape the sinister fate in the dark society at that time. Another example is the middle section of "Ink Flower Atlas" (collected by Shanghai Museum). He sketched several plum blossoms and wrote a poem: "I heard that Wang Yuanzhang was hungry, and rice was exchanged for plum blossoms." Although the flower ink is poor, the amount of silk is long. "Wang Mian, a painter famous for painting plums in Yuan Dynasty, had to sell paintings for a living because of his poor family. The size of the paintings was determined by the number of meters. Now it is Xu Wei's turn to satirize the unfair social world. He painted bamboo, or compared himself with bamboo, or with upright people, showing stubborn personality and resistance to the dark society. For example, when he painted snow bamboo, the poem was: "Painting snow bamboo is too small, covering the knot and burying the broken tip." There is only one difference like me, and it is hard to get rid of it. ".His masterpiece" The Axis of Ink Grapes "(collected in the Palace Museum) runs through the middle of the whole picture. It is dipped in ink with a wet pen and dripped along the branches. Only the vines are scattered, the fruit is crystal clear, and the vertical meaning seems to splash a pear flower rain. Coupled with the imbalance of the array, the whole picture presents an optical illusion effect of rotating and dancing, giving people the impression that" there is no objective distinction between branches and leaves and fruits, but the author's blood, sadness and indignation hang on these. "Pomegranate is usually considered as a mascot for having many children and grandchildren or a bumper harvest. However, in Xu Wei's "Pomegranate Map Axis" (collected by Shanghai Museum), the traditional symbolic meaning of pomegranate has been completely changed. "Few people gather in the deep mountains, and pearls go", expressing the sadness and loneliness of an intellectual who has never met talents in feudal society.

His madness is that he dares to change the face of the object from his own aesthetic ideal. Due to the change of psychological structure caused by traumatic experience, strange cognition often appears in the painter's actual cognitive activities, which is called abnormal cognition. Xu Wei once painted peonies with ink again and again. As an ordinary person, Xu Wei knows very well that "Peony is the king of wealth and dazzling, so many people used to be good at hooking up." Today, it was splashed with ink. Although there is business, it is not the true face of this flower. "And I think I am a' poor man' (meaning poverty)." Sex is like plum, to be prosperous, the wind is like a horse. "However, as an artist, when he projects his personality on the aesthetic object, he reflects the object with the abstract psychological image of Geng Jie's pride and anger, and the peony as the schema of the object image is completely opposite to the psychological schema of the subject's personality tendency. At this time, due to the abnormal understanding of the painter, the icon of the object image has been deformed to a certain extent, thus transforming the peony in the eyes into the peony in the heart. " Otherwise, there will be less rouge, and wealth and ink will write immortals. "The painter swept away the lead and white makeup with a hearty pen and ink. Although the peony on the paper is" not the true face of this flower ",it makes people feel superb. It shows the anger and sadness of the painter. From its graceful charm, it conveys a unique charm that despises cheap praise and does not bow its head to resist the dark storm of society, thus deeply infecting and touching the hearts of countless audiences.

While Xu Wei initiated the method of freehand brushwork painting, he also pushed the trinity of poetry, painting and calligraphy to a more perfect realm. The ideological connotation of flower-and-bird painting is obscure and tortuous. As the authors of literati paintings, they are generally literati who are good at poetry and books. Naturally, they are also deeper than poetics, painting with poetry. It is argued that the "scene" and "image" described by art should not be limited to the direct "scene" and "image" of concrete sensibility, but should have a deeper and more vivid artistic conception or realm than the scene itself. Xu Wei regards painting as a carrier to show his personality. In order to express the difficulty of his painting, he must pay special attention to the role of painting money, that is, the so-called "high emotion and easy thinking, lack of painting, and the work of the title." For example, in the above-mentioned "Ink Peony Axis", a poem is mentioned at the top left of the picture: "Half-life fate has become an Weng, and the evening breeze is whistling in self-study; The pearls at the bottom of the pen have nowhere to sell, but they are thrown into wild vines. " The scholar is old, and his ambition is not paid, and he only ends up with a bleak ending of "an independent study in the evening breeze", which vividly expresses the loneliness of an intellectual who has never met a talented person in feudal society. This poem guides readers to understand the painting, talk about the breeze, and connect the limited images in the painting with broader and deeper meanings. Similar to a brilliant poem, Xu Wei bowed his head in the painting. Such as the title "Ink Peony": "Forty-nine years of poverty, how can we miss Luoyang Spring. Otherwise, there will be less rouge, and wealth will be written in ink. " Peony, known as the "king of flowers", is a top flower. If flowers symbolize people's talent, then peony is one of the best among talents. Although Xu Wei is brilliant and full of economic articles, he has no way to help the world. He has been poor all his life and has never been rich.

He didn't want to go along with the dark and filthy forces, demanding wealth at the expense of abandoning his upright and noble personality, and didn't "dream" the floating wealth, which also expressed the painter's arrogant and stubborn personality. He also strongly criticized the unreasonable social reality at that time with poems, and often compared crabs to those tyrannical dignitaries and officials. For example, the Palace Museum has Xu Wei's "Yellow Family Tuzhou", which draws two lotus leaves like umbrellas and a fat crab below. The poem above is: "There is a rich and flourishing thing, and there are no pearls in Mo Wen in recent years. If you raise it, you will be ignorant. If you come to the Huang family, you will pass it alone. " The word "Huang Jia" is a pun. In ancient imperial examinations, people who entered the imperial examinations were called "Huang Jia", and "Chuan" also meant that when the imperial examinees and their successors announced the roll call, the second and third place only sang the first place, so the second and third places became Chuan. In this painting, Xu Wei refers to crabs, and also refers to the imperial examination, satirizing these people who have only appearance, but actually have no pearls in their bellies and have no talent, and making a bitter satire on them. Another example is that he mentioned the poem "Ink Flower Roll": "Jiangcun crabs are cooked and fat, and crab green is like a halberd. Turn it over on the paper and you should be able to see the navel of Tuan Tuan Dong Zhuo. " This means that the rice in Jiangcun is ripe, and the fruits of farmers' hard work have made powerful people like Huang Jia rich and tyrannical. Dong Zhuo, who was extremely obese, was a famous traitor in the late Han Dynasty and was hated by the world. Paintings and poems reveal the painter's great hatred and resentment against corrupt rulers, and predict that they will never escape the fate of eternal shame. In Xu Wei's works, books, poems and paintings are an inseparable whole. Without poetry, we can't appreciate painting at all; Without painting, you can't really understand poetry. As Mr. Zong Baihua pointed out: "The perfect combination of poetry and painting (poetry does not overwhelm painting, painting does not overwhelm poetry, but communicates with each other) is the perfect combination of emotion and scenery, which is the so-called artistic conception." Xu Wei's painting deepened and sublimated the artistic conception of the picture with his beautiful poems, enriched the interest of the picture with the expansion of the word potential of his calligraphy, adjusted the layout of the picture with the proper position of the title, and finally opened up a new world of literati painting in Ming and Qing Dynasties and even modern times with richer aesthetic implications.

Xu Wei is an all-around painter who is good at figures, landscapes and flowers and birds. Among them, the highest achievement is flower-and-bird painting, followed by figure painting. Although Xu Wei's paintings have distinct creativity and strong personality, they are not trees without roots and water without sources, but have deep roots. From the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhejiang and Fujian both inherited the tradition of the Song Dynasty. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, with the painters from the two places entering the palace to paint, the courtyard paintings of the Ming Dynasty showed the appearance of learning from the Southern Song Dynasty and learning from the famous artists of the Northern Song Dynasty. This is the famous "Zhejiang School" represented by Dai Jin in the history of painting. After entering the middle period, Zhejiang painting flourished and declined. Taking Suzhou, which is known as the Wumen in history, as the center, a thriving wu school led by Shen Zhou and gradually replaced the Zhejiang School and became a master painter. Xu Wei attaches great importance to the four schools of Shen, Wen, Tang and Qiu, especially Shen Zhou, and thinks that his art is "hiding the old and not hiding the young", "showing the childish" and "plain and inexhaustible". Therefore, Xu Wei's flowers, fruits and vegetables are mostly influenced by Wu Pai's fashion, while people's landscapes are basically not divorced from the tradition of Zhejiang painting style. Different from freehand brushwork flowers in ink and wash, Xu Wei's figure paintings mostly adopt the technique of reducing strokes and simplifying paintings. His painting Poem on the Back of a Donkey (collected in the Palace Museum) is particularly eye-catching. The painter and his concise brushwork sketch characters and donkeys, especially the four legs of donkeys, which are written in cursive brushwork. They vividly describe the sense of movement when traveling, and the vivid state is vividly displayed, which makes the viewers marvel.

Another book, Landscape Characters Flower Book, 16 pages of ink and wash paper, has comprehensive techniques and can well reflect Xu Wei's vertical and horizontal talents. There are many characters in the picture book, including noble scholars who climb to see the mountain scenery, chess players who sit by rocks in the shade, fishermen who row pole and break reed flute, and fishermen who cast nets on the shore of Jinghu Lake, all of which describe the characters with a few strokes. Although this album is not big, it is small but big, and the artistic enjoyment for readers is meaningful.