Six months ago today, I had to stop updating this section because I had some bad physical problems. For half a year, almost every week, I can open Douyin, and I can see a bunch of likes, comments, and collections. Thanks to everyone's support, the accident has passed, starting next week, I will continue to restore the update of the aesthetics column.
When I first made this column, I hoped to use as simple and clear a way as possible to explain "what is beauty" and "beauty has these kinds". In this revisit, I will abandon the idea of "conciseness and simplicity". Because, as beauty, it's so diverse.
It must be admitted that for different people, beauty is not universal.
As we grow up, the "past" shapes our character, opinions, and aesthetics.
Moreover, the scope of beauty is too large. Not only in terms of vision, but also in hearing, smell, taste and touch have the influence of beauty.
So sometimes, I think it's beautiful, and you feel ugly.
vice versa.
Take the aesthetic fringe category we've introduced today: the Cthulhu style.
Rock 'n' roll, which emerged in the 1950s, you're no stranger to it. There is a genre in rock music called heavy metal rock, and there are many styles in heavy metal, one of which is called death metal. Death metal is also known as the Lovecraft style.
Who is Lovecraft? In fringe cultures, he is a milestone-like figure. In 1926, he published The Call of Cthulhu, a resulting aesthetic character of evil, mysterious, grotesque, dark, and indifferent that has been influential for nearly a hundred years.
In Lovecraft's writings, Cthulhu was all green and his body was enormous, as tall as a mountain; his soft head had countless tentacles, three eyes on each side, his body was fat and covered with scales, his limbs were born with huge claws, and behind him was a pair of tattered wings that did not seem to grow.
Cthulhu is buried in the sunken Abyss City of Lalaye, and his dreams affect the dreams of many human beings. For centuries, some sensitive people have been constantly affected by this dream. It is usually the ability to create art that awakens the recipient from a dream and drives them to create a nightmarish painting or sculpture. If they are affected by this dream for a long time, some people who have nowhere to vent their feelings and what they see in the dream will eventually go crazy and even commit suicide.
The Cthulhu people founded a religion in which the faithful believed that the recipients of Cthulhu's dreams were glorious and held them high esteem, allowing them to better speak of the echoes of the thought of the great Cthulhu. It is unclear whether these dreams are intentional actions or if Cthulhu's dreams happen to affect the minds of sensitive people. In any case, the recipient will see those terrible inhuman scenes in the dream, and even appreciate Cthulhu's unspeakable thoughts.
This was the earliest Cthulhu.
Since the birth of this image, such an aesthetic has appeared in the human world. They love the grotesque, illogical growths and events, the combination of softness and sharpness, gazing at filth, deliberately offending, preferring to surrender to nothingness and contempt for all human power.
For 97 years, this genre, although it has always been marginal and niche, has been little by little recognized and accepted.
Of course, in the eyes of most people, the Cthulhu style is far from beauty, even the opposite of beauty.
But is that really the case?
If we let go of pride and prejudice, break down the barriers of inertia, and try to interpret this type of style, it is not difficult to find relevant aesthetic logic.
For example, the strange stone that our ancient literati and inkers loved and warmly sought after, the top one is the Taihu stone.
Regarding how to appreciate Taihu stone, there are four words to describe: "wrinkled, leaky, thin, transparent". If we compare it according to our aesthetic of people, this is completely ugly. But the most appreciated garden stone is the top beauty.
Then there is the appreciation of the root carving. The emphasis is on "three points of artificial seven points of nature". The selection criteria in the shape can be summarized as four kinds: rare, strange, ancient and strange. Obviously, this also does not correspond to the aesthetic characteristics that we like and are universal.
As a "monster", we had such a monster worship as "Green Dragon White Tiger Suzaku Xuanwu" in ancient times, not to mention the rich mythological system of China such as dragons, gluttonies, and cattails. Then there are the ethnic minority masks, the faces of Peking Opera, and the masks of Tibetan opera. As for the West, gargoyles, etc., which are commonly found in architecture, are also obviously contrary to the general aesthetic cognition, but they are still widely accepted.
Just a casual mention of it, we can find a bunch of aesthetic traditions in the same direction as the "Cthulhu style". Perhaps, whether it is Cthulhu novels, Cthulhu-style paintings or death metal rock music, it is still niche, marginal, and underground in the eyes of most people, but it is undeniable that it has its own soil and reason for existence.
According to my personal incomplete survey, people who appreciate the Cthulhu style are often well educated, personally highly cultivated in literature or aesthetics, and have a gentle and generous life and are very easy to get along with.
For example, a friend of mine, pen name Xiaoshi, is such a person.
As an unemployed person who resigned from a game company in Shenzhen Tencent to go home to paint, as long as he is painting, he can be happy. Although his income is dozens of times lower than that of going to work.
In the eyes of many people, Xiao Shi's paintings are not so easy to understand. Because his work is typical of the Cthulhu style.
Grotesque, twisted, soft and sharp, powerful and eerie.
But what I saw was the paranoia about the art I loved, the imagination that was wild, the stubbornness of not compromising because of the "big context".
So, I'm going to put on an exhibition for him. The paintings he has created in the last year are on display. Recently we are working intensively to prepare for the exhibition, and the time and place of the exhibition will be announced in the next article in a few days.
Friendly tip: From the analysis of art psychology, the works created by Xiaoshi are unhealthy for patients to see. Please make an accurate analysis of yourself and visit as appropriate.