Jingsong
Feng
Intro to art history II
Mini post #1
Axis of The Ink Grapes, painted by Xu
Wei in Ming dynasty, on paper, with ink brush, 165.4 cm vertical and 64.5 cm
horizontal
The painting named “The Ink Grapes”, which was finished by Xu Wei, a
well-known Ming dynasty Chinese painter. He is the creator of “Splash ink
freehand brushwork genre”. With the painter's freehand brushwork and ink using,
the old vines hang at random, the leaves are made of large ink dots, and the
grapes are glittering and translucent in the ink. About the lines he used, the
painting had cursive brushwork painting, which is bold and unrestrained, leaves
and fruit showed in light ink and plastic alum spray, with ink gas dripping
wet. The whole painting produced an excellent effect of ink brushwork, pure ink
to write grapes, with full of water splash ink brushwork drawing grape branches
and leaves. Now this painting is exhibited in the Palace Museum, Beijing.
This painting was finished in 1580s, and at this time Xu was just
in old age. From Ming dynasty era to nowadays, Xu was one of the most
sophisticated and talented artists in history, not only be good at painting,
but also works well on drama. However, at this time Xu was treated unfairly by
his colleagues when they seek their official career. Struggled with survival
and promotion in such frustrating time, Xu gave vent to anger, expressed
emotion in sustenance. Therefore, he
regarded himself as grapes struggled with incorrectly climate and frustrated
time and “The Ink Grapes” was created below such circumstance.
There is a small background story about how the painting was born--One
day in early autumn, Xu was in his old house in Shanyin (now Shaoxing,
Zhejiang), drinking and watching a bunch of purple and black grapes hanging in
front of him, when he was imagining how difficultly the grapes come here, a
sense of creating desire occurred in his mind. At the same time, the county
official Gao required Xu’s painting and calligraphy many times as a “parent
official”, Xu was so tired of Gao’s
harass that he wrote a piece of paper named “blue sky a foot high banner”(it
means Xu pretended to flatter Gao), and signed as “green vine Xu Wei booked”, then
let the old servant send this piece of paper back to official Gao. Xu turned
back to the painting case again, thought about Gao’s promotion and his frustrations,
he couldn’t stand the unfairness but only could vent grief, anger and
resentment. Then the “The Ink Grapes” was finished.
Nowadays, just the method of brushwork, each art style can influence our
thoughts, and different audience can have thousands of insights. Not only Xu’s
painting, but also other outstanding artists—teaching us how to express exclusive
emotions to their own artistic works.
Link: https://www.dpm.org.cn/collection/paint/231318.html
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