After the long-term ethnic confrontation and the havoc that occurred during the Southern Song, Liao, Jin, Xia, Mongolian, and Yuan Dynasties, the rulers of the early Ming Dynasty once devoted themselves to the revival of the long-decayed Royal Academy of Painting and intended to reproduce the grand occasion of the former academy-style painting, to enjoy being the royal family. For a period of time, the painting in the early Ming Dynasty was shrouded in the retro style of academy style painting. From the perspective of region and time, the academy-style painting system represented by Liu, Li, Ma, and Xia in the Southern Song Dynasty was undoubtedly the most easily accepted and learned painting style from the psychological and cognitive levels of painters in the early Ming Dynasty. However, from the mid-Ming Dynasty, the painting style of the Zhejiang school gradually became wild, and its painters often regarded themselves as "immortal drunk", and their brush and ink language were indulgent and unruly, like a golden snake dancing wildly. Pursue the ink splash effect mixed with ink and wash, and even show the sense of power and speed of sweeping and swaying freely like a performance in front of people. And its form also began to be rude and frugal, resulting in the slander of "mad monster" and "crazy evil school". The "madness" of the painters during this period was not an accidental case, but an artistic phenomenon that was precisely opposed to the Wumen literati painting school that began to occupy the mainstream of the painting circle in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. The artistic pursuit and the aesthetic tendency of the orthodox social mainstream thinking. Under the unprecedented strengthening of centralization during the Ming Dynasty and the ideological control of the eight-legged scholars, the art world was full of "madness". This phenomenon makes people think about the two-way interaction between the times and art, and whether mainstream art can reflect mainstream consciousness. form? Between "cult" and "orthodox", who can better express the demands of an era? I hope to have a preliminary discussion here.

Li Duling. Analysis of “Crazy Aesthetics" of Painting in Ming Dynasty. Frontiers in Art Research (2022) Vol. 4, Issue 4: 52-55. https://doi.org/10.25236/FAR.2022.040411.

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