On The Of Xu Wei Mad Aesthetics

This article mainly talks about Xuwei a well-known artist who lived in Ming dynasty from Jiajing, reign name of the 11th emperor of the Ming dynasty, to Wanli, reign name of the emperor of China. His whole life is so complicated that we can talk about him endlessly. All his family members died when he was quite young.Sadly, he was never able to pass the provincial civil service examinations, even after attempting it eight times. His mental imbalance led to his killing of his wife. As a result, he was jailed for seven years. In the latter part of one's life, he tried to torture himself in extreme ways many times. However, people never doubt his madness and greatness and his genius. You can see his mental madness from his behavior of axing himself in the skull and drilling both of his ears. We can see his madness of characteristics from his artistic expressiveness and revolutionary ideas in his writing. This paper will investigate the influence of his madness on his works from the aspect of aesthetics. His madness is a form of rebellion against his frustrating fate and a way to find his second self which is sometimes reflected by his disobedience of traditional values and his complete narcissism and sometimes by his overflow of vitality. In his works of art, his physical madness and mental madness winding together constantly impact the format of classic aesthetics and stir us to explore the reason of his madness and the way of showing his madness and most importantly the great meaning embedded in his madness.The first chapter mainly focuses on the reasons of his madness. His miserable life was the direct cause of his madness and the lack of love and self-distrust was the mental one. The affection of the philosophy of Lao-Tsu, a Chinese philosopher who is considered to be the person who began Taoism, and Wang yangming, neo-Confucian philosopher of the 12th century, was also one of the main causes.In the second chapter, we explore the ways of showing his madness by studying his works. He often tried to gain inspirations through self-destruction and self-torture like Gogh, Vincent van in the west. He also believed that the whole world was driven by love and passion. He initiated the revolution of openness in sex but he cowered before traditional morals and belief falling in endless pain. He was so lost in his madness that he even stabbed his wife to death but he also could free himself from all these suffering for a while and indulge himself in imagination boundlessly. The third chapter concentrates on the great meaning of his madness. It was a mighty rebellion against his miserable life and was an only way for him to find his second self. His physical madness and mental madness winding together constantly impact the format of classic aesthetics.In the last chapter, we discuss his madness from the followed three aspects:the means of his creation and his mentality and the final outcome of his works. He often employed sharp contrasts to convey the great difference buried in related things. His writing was a great art of free expression of human feelings. Sometimes, he himself even was obsessed in those passionate feelings and was totally melt in them. He had experienced immense ecstasy when he was writing. From learning the standard norms of writing to abandoning those constraints, he finally became a real master.