Xu Wei was an outstanding painter in the late Ming Dynasty. Xu Wei's achievements are mainly in the fields of poetry, literature, calligraphy, painting, drama and music. He went in and out of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Good temperament, specializing in historical records, dabbling in medical skills, couplets, riddles, tea making, wine making and fencing.
In painting, Xu Wei's achievements in splashing ink on flowers and birds are the most outstanding. He created a new style of freehand brushwork flower-and-bird painting after the Ming Dynasty, and even directly influenced the later development of flower-and-bird painting.
The formation of Xu Wei's unique painting style is closely related to his various literary talents, bumpy life experiences and maverick personality.
Xu Wei's freehand flower-and-bird paintings are common themes in traditional literati paintings, such as plum blossom, hibiscus, narcissus, chrysanthemum, lotus, osmanthus, begonia, plantain and bamboo stone. There are also fruits that Xu Wei often contacts in his life, such as pomegranate and grapes, as well as common aquatic animals such as fish and crabs in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.
These common themes can be seen in Xu Wei's works, showing extraordinary artistic appeal and spiritual realm. This is precisely because Xu Wei has many unique techniques in dealing with these common themes.
Xu Wei's freehand flower-and-bird painting is characterized by concise pen and ink language, and his brushwork is often relaxed and open-minded, without seeking similarity. The most striking picture is the interest of pen and ink and his strong personality.
Xu Wei often calls his painting method "drama painting", which shows that he is close to the game mentality when painting, and he is even more eclectic about objects and statutes. He even simplifies objects to directly express the shadow of objects.
Xu Wei is another famous painter who freehand brushwork fish and crabs in pure ink after Chen Daofu in Ming Dynasty. The ink grapes and pomegranates painted by Xu Wei are completely a kind of hearty ink shadow, which has become the representative theme of his ink-splashing freehand brushwork and branded with the unrepeatable Xu Wei style mark.
The combination of objects in Xu Wei's paintings is bold and free, and is not limited by space and time. His long scroll "The Rise of Clouds" is to draw flowers and fruit trees in different periods of the four seasons in one painting. Xu Wei also painted plantains and plum blossoms growing in different periods, and there was only a wall between them. This poem is more interesting. The poem reads: Bananas rot in winter and sprout in spring, and the partition laughs at old plum blossoms. Who in the world is good at both? Eat the fish and pick the shrimp.
Once this combination is inscribed in poetry, it becomes a new idea in painting theory. Most importantly, the profound and delicate expressive force in Xu Wei's paintings is unique in his previous flower-and-bird paintings. Xu Wei's artistic style has finally created a new era of flower-and-bird painting. Therefore, Xu Wei is a key figure in the transformation from classical beauty to modern beauty.
Xu Wei's artistic technique is also abstract, that is, the figurative object is integrated into the bold and abstract pen and ink language, which greatly enriches the expressive force of ink and wash images.