A Research On Liyu's Philosophy Of Designing

Li Yu is a scholar, author, and designer at the joint of Ming and Qing Dynasty. Li's interest all his life ranged over drama, fiction, poetry, history, painting, dance, architecture and garden, home furnishings, collections, treasures, costume and accessories and other aspects. His representative work, the book "Occasional Record in Leisure", intensively expressed his design ideology which came from experiences during improvement and creation process in life. His delicate and peculiar design ideology consisted of his personal life practice, abundant artistic experience, perceptive theoretic insight and aesthetic judgment about leisure life.This paper systematically hackles and explains Li's design ideology in order to explore meaning of the artist's design theory again under new historical background. At first, The present thesis briefly overviews the social, political, economic and cultural setting and design artistic activities during his life. And then it analyzes the origin of Li's aesthetic ideology from his unique identity as a "carefree scholar", his acceptance of innovations and aesthetic desire in life, and lays the foundations for clearly explaining Li's design ideology. Secondly, this thesis analyzes the basic structure and theoretic meaning about Li's design ideology from four aspects:the nature view, function view, formal aesthetic view, and his entertainment interest. And then it systematically explains Li's design ideology's philosophic relationships between man-made design and nature, between humanism and natural harmony; it also illustrates his function view of design for utility, happiness, morals, his aesthetic view of advocating artistry, caring about pattern, pursuing to innovation and returning to nature and his aesthetic attitude and life aesthetic ideology of empathy to scenery, pursuing to leisure emotion. Thirdly the present thesis objectively and historically assesses Li's inheritance of the designing art in ancient Chinas designing and his unique contributions to the designing with the developmental prospect. By centering around the philosophy of Li's designing which presents as "the art merging into life" and " the life merging into art" and combining his philosophy with the contemporary realization, the present thesis sheds light on the enlightenment of Li's philosophy on the contemporary life and art.Li Yu's design follows the "compliance substance" philosophical ideas, adhere to adapt to the nature of things. He pays attention to life functions and pursuits the natural harmony and unity, and obeys the people-oriented objective criteria at the same time. With the word "I"--- aesthetic interest of art-in mind, He stresses the device should pay attention to cultivation conditions and the perfect combination of self-realization, which results in a modern sense of artistic thought. Li Yu is the representative with active thought in craftwork aesthetics at joint of Ming and Qing. He breaks through the orthodox Confucian thinking infection taken by Ji Cheng, Sung Ying, Wen Zhenheng et al, and become unique, forming his own school. He saw life as art, and merge art into life, committing himself to beauty and life, He also merges art into the integration of individual life, creating the unique characteristics of the art aesthetic theory of leisure life. "Life itself is a more generalized art; the life history of each person is his own work." Li Yu's philosophy provided a number of reference and inspiration to our current design practices and our modern way of life. Indeed. Due to historical limitations and personal impact of feudal gentry, Li Yu's philosophy of designing has something negative, even vulgar. But the defects cannot obscure the virtues. We should take the essence, and discard the dregs. Li Yu's design is still providing us with a wealth of nutrients for nowadays design.