After the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion, the once-prosperous Tang Dynasty took a sharp turn for the worse, and multiple social contradictions such as the division of feudal towns and towns shrouded the Tang Dynasty in a gloomy haze.
In addition, the whitewashed Gou An Taiping, the disaster of war and chaos for many years, made the hearts of the people of the Tang Dynasty feel disillusioned from time to time, and the gentle, gentle, even, symmetrical and elegant beauty that the Tang Dynasty pursued before has been difficult to arouse the aesthetic perception of the people of the Tang Dynasty.
As Mr. Wen Yiduo said: "The magnificence of the early Tang Dynasty, the magnificence of the Tang Dynasty, and the beauty of the recent ten talents have become tired of it, and it is easy to cause a sense of disillusionment." They need a little coolness, even a little sourness, for a change of taste."
The life experience of tossing and turning, the frustration of the tortuous and bumpy journey, and the bitterness and pain of hunger, cold, poverty and disease all brought a double blow to the spirit and body of the people of the Tang Dynasty, and further prompted them to experience social life with different feelings.
In addition, the upheaval of life brought about by the war, as well as the hunger, cold, poverty, and ups and downs of the Huan Hai, plunged the people of China and Tang into both mental and physical suffering, which further prompted them to experience social life with different feelings.
Therefore, some literati in the Middle and Tang Dynasty broke through the aesthetic concept of the magnificent ideal of the society at that time and showed a bizarre and grotesque aesthetic concept.
Their aesthetic concept has also had a certain impact on the aesthetics of society, forming an aesthetic concept of pursuing the freedom of the body with the strange as the beauty in the world, and the culture of judging the strange and the ugly has also become very popular.
So what is "ugly"? "Huainanzi" says: "If you don't seek beauty and ugliness, then there is no beauty and no ugliness, which is called Xuantong." To a certain extent, beauty and ugliness are "incompatible with fire and water."
Since beauty is a representation of harmony, ugliness is a representation of disharmony. And "ugly" is usually not accepted and liked, but it has the same aesthetic effect as the kind of elegance, which can have a certain impact on people's physiological senses.
At the same time, "ugliness" will make people have some sharp contradictions and conflicts on the emotional level, especially in a state of shock and psychological imbalance, which can easily form a more bizarre sense of beauty.
It is not denied that ugliness is the foil of beauty, but ugliness is more conducive to revealing the essence of things than beauty, so as to realize the development of beauty. Moreover, when the aesthetic subject can overcome the rejection of ugliness, a certain pleasure will be formed.
At the same time, it is more impressive and memorable than aesthetic pleasure in the general sense.
Therefore, the literati of the Tang Dynasty should have what that person should have, and I don't have to have it; I don't have the disposition and courage to show the ugliness that can often be seen in daily life, plus my own aesthetic experience, through literary and artistic works, and use the power of art to transform the ugliness of reality into the beauty of art, so as to achieve a unique sensory stimulation and aesthetic pleasure.
Just as we can feel in many literary and artistic works of the Tang Dynasty, "ugly monsters" occupy some of the space that originally belonged to "beauty".
For example: "Hungry bones check teeth, coarse burrs break flowers." The color of the burnt beads falls, and the hair is broken and sawn and numb. Through the "coarse hair" of the bones and teeth, the ugly image of the horse is depicted.
"Sell charcoal, cut down and burn charcoal in the southern mountains. His face was full of dust and smoke, and his temples were pale and his fingers were black. "By depicting the ugly image of the charcoal seller with a dusty face, gray hair and dark fingers, it is thought-provoking and exciting.
This is the unique aesthetic pursuit of the literati in the Tang Dynasty, who never embellished the ugly and weird, but showed the ugly with the unique power of art, so that this "anti-American" beauty brought people a new aesthetic pleasure.
It was recorded in "Youyang Miscellaneous": "Inside and outside the door of the Zen courtyard, the trees and stones in the east corridor are dangerous, and the monks are also strange. West Corridor Longevity Bodhisattva. On the south wall of the courtyard gate, the emperor painted ghosts and gods and carvings, and the situation was like a detachment. ”
A large number of grotesque and ugly things are depicted on Buddhist murals and sculptures, which greatly stimulates the aesthetic feelings of the people in the Tang Dynasty.
This concept of "taking the strange as beautiful" set off a revolution in the traditional aesthetic concept in the Middle and Tang Dynasty in the mainland, and guided the aesthetic concept of the Middle and Tang Dynasty to open up a new aesthetic realm of strange and ugly.
The formation and development of clothing aesthetics is closely related to the social aesthetic trend, under the reflection of the body aesthetics of the strange as the beauty of the Chinese and Tang Dynasty literature and art, the Chinese and Tang Dynasty women's clothing also shows a peculiar and absurd aesthetic trend, the most prominent manifestation is the popularity of "Yuan and the time makeup".
The Anshi Rebellion was a fatal blow to the Tang Dynasty and a turning point in Tang society.
In the Tang Dynasty, people no longer have the passion, romance and vigorous enthusiasm of the Tang Dynasty, and the main tone of life has changed to hesitation and emptiness.
In this context, people's aesthetic concepts and aesthetic concepts have changed greatly, and people place their inner sorrows and hopelessness in books, paintings, costumes and other works of art and crafts.
Different artists and craftsmen have emerged with a variety of aesthetic pursuits, forming a variety of aesthetic concepts in society.
In the field of clothing, it is characterized by people's pursuit of new and different, Yuan Zhi described the fashionable decoration at that time as: "Modern women, faint eyebrows, about the top sideburns, friends and friends are wide, it is to match the color, especially dramatic."
The costumes and makeup of women in the Middle and Tang Dynasty were quite grotesque, with gray colors, long clothes mopping the floor, and strange makeup.
"New Tang Dynasty Book Five Elements Chronicles" recorded: "At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the woman was a round bun, without ornamentation, without vermilion powder, but with black sound on the lips, like a sad cry."
Bai Juyi's "Makeup of the Times" describes, "The makeup of the times, the makeup of the times, comes from the city and spreads from all directions. The fashion of the times is not far and near, and the cheeks are not powdered. The black lips are like mud, and the eyebrows are painted low. Yanwa's black and white lost her true state, and her makeup seemed to be full of sadness. It is round and has no sideburns, and it is oblique red and not halo-shaped. ”
This poem vividly reproduces the makeup of women at that time, without applying grease and powder, smearing black lip sound on the lips, and the two eyebrows are painted in the shape of a figure of eight, giving people a state of sadness and sorrow as a whole.
From the perspective of aesthetic experience, the face is the most prominent area of expression in the whole body beauty, and some subtle details in it can produce a fascinating effect.
The human face is very important, the first thing a person catches the eye of others is the face, and people's thoughts, emotions, and mental states are more conveyed to others through the face.
The face is the visual center of the human body, so the dress of the face is particularly important. In the Middle and Tang dynasties, due to the influence of politics, clothing became restrained and conservative, and at the same time, there were more choices for facial decoration.
For example, the face was originally used to beautify the face, so some rouge was dyed on the face.
By the middle and Tang dynasties of the mainland, all positions on the face became decorative parts, and the entire face was covered with various strange patterns, while the facial features were ignored.
This image, which is incompatible with the beauty of traditional neutrality, strongly stimulates people's physiological senses, making people enjoy a strange beauty while being shocked. Each era will have its own representative fashion style, and the most conspicuous is how people dress and dress.
Although people mainly want to express their individual clothing style in the process of dressing, it can highlight the trends and trends of the times, which is a typical collective aesthetic taste.
At the same time, clothing, as a person's "second skin", not only "has a rich physical relationship and interest, but also relates to people's mental state and lifestyle, and is even a kind of concern for people's body and mind to generate each other".
From its essential dimension, it can be seen that the essence is a form of catharsis for women in the Middle and Tang Dynasty at that time, as well as their yearning and pursuit of physical individuality and freedom.