Aesthetic Studies On The Ugliness-advocating Consciousness Of The Late Ming Dynasty’s Paintings

In the traditional concept of aesthetics and art, ugliness is considered to be the negation andopposite side of beauty. The standards of beauty are ever-changing; in the meanwhile, ugliness isbeing redefined and re-understood. With further consciousness in individual spirit during theperiod of late Ming Dynasty, paintings are filled with intuitive projection of individual feelingsand experiences, pursuit of the aesthetic taste of “ugliness and clumsiness”, as well as thecapacity of transforming ugliness into beauty, thus drawing the watershed of classical andmodern Chinese paintings.This paper, on the basis of documental materials and paintings, adopts the methods ofanalysis, induction, accommodation and integration. Proceeding from the definition of the word"ugliness" in ancient China, this paper analyses various manifestations of ugliness in traditionalChinese painting, endeavoring to reveal the dialectical relationship of mutual transformationbetween beauty and ugliness in ancient Chinese aesthetic appreciation. Subsequently, this paper,within the overall context of painting during the whole Ming Dynasty, analyses in great detail theappreciation and representations of ugliness in paintings as well as several representativepainters such as Xu Wei, Chen Hongshou, Fushan and Bataishanren, and their works, of the lateMing Dynasty, trying to pinpoint where ugliness lies in paintings of the late Ming dynasty andexplore the reasons for the intensive tendency of appreciating ugliness, from the perspective ofsociety, economy, philosophy, individual character of artists. Eventually, this paper analyses andsummarizes the aesthetic value lying in the ugliness-advocating consciousness of paintings of thelate Ming Dynasty and its far-reaching influences on later generations.