Elegy Of Life Art's Swan Song

XuWei and Van Gogh are two geniuses of art living in the 16th century and the 19th centuryrespectively, who left the world deep thinking and perpetual shock in the soul. This thesis is tofocus on creative mentality, the artists' creative mentality, i.e. the overall comprehensivepsychological quality which is triggered by physiological quality, life experience, the politicalculture concept and artistic tutelage in consequence of the objective survival environment and thevarious subjective physiological mechanism. By using the approach of Comparison of creativementality and the case study, this thesis is to explore the similarities and differences of theircreative mentality in reality and art in their different cultural background between east and westand go into their inner world according to their unique pursuit of aesthetics. At the same time,similarities come from the difference, which breaks the boundary between the east and the West.Standing on the high level of human art, it reveals certain common artistic rules in depth and theprofound humanistic spirit, and deepens the understanding of the process of artistic creation.The thesis is divided into four chapters:Chapter one: to discuss XuWei and Van Gogh's realistic presentation of creative mentality.They are every high life in the new old time change historical environment, is the new thought,the new prevailing custom commands troops the character, but has the different cultural idea andthe religious belief. The thesis aims to pick out three mentalities: mentality of solitary, mentalityof romanticism, mentality of crazy to tease their life, ideal and experience to conclude thesimilarities and differences of the two men's creative mentality on angle of life by making acomparison of literature and history. Although the three mentalities permeate into each other,Realistic reflections distinguish itself.Chapter two: to explore XuWei and Van Gogh's artistic reflection of creative mentality. Bothof them are artists. Both are unpleasant in the life and the emotion, entering to the artistic domain,reflected in the artistic works. Xu Wei's emotion is uneven to the earthly life and the indignation,which expresses critique meaning to the reality. Then Van Gogh's emotion displays more ideally.With purity and holy of religion, he devoted himself to the art , just like a saint putting behind allthe earthly lives. The chapter focuses on their works such as Xu Wei's prose, drama, drawing, thecalligraphy and Van Gogh's drawing, correspondence carrying on the comprehensive survey, toanalyze the theme, the style and the thoughts and to probe the similarities and differences of theircreative mentality concerning the perspective of art.Chapter three: to probe XuWei and Van Gogh's source of thoughts of their creative mentality.In this chapter, it analyzes that the thoughts of Confucius, laocius, Zen and Wangs' theory and thethoughts of Christianity, romanticism and realism, from the aspect of macrocosm, have deepinfluence on XuWei and Van Gogh's creative mentality respectively. Then it comes into theconclusion of ideological origins in their creative mentality.Chapter four: to sum up the enlightenment of XuWei and Van Goghs' artistic life. In XuWeiand Van Gogh's works, it shows up the experience of life and art deeply and violently. We have tothink about the artistic phenomenon by rethinking and exploring in depth in order to find out thebasic regulations of artistic creation: The influence of mental disease and the acceptance of the artto the artistic creations;The relations between Time, religion and art;The relations between Artand vitality;The relations between innovation and national culture, The chapter is the distillationof the thesis.