In ancient Chinese culture and art, there is indeed a spirit of judging ugliness, but unlike today's so-called ugliness, the ancient art of ugliness is actually weird, in fact, it is a spirit of pursuing individual independence and freedom.
The original meaning of "ugly" is abnormal, deformed, ugly, and shameful. The Shuowen Jiezi says: "Ugly, abominable also, from the ghost, unitary sound." "Ghosts, evil thieves, annoying and fearful.
In history, judging ugliness is an activity with rich connotations, including the evaluation, identification, and criticism of ugliness, as well as tolerance and transformation. The ugliness in Chinese art is not only a formal and aesthetic problem, but is closely related to ethics and morality. For example, the marriage of "old wife and young husband" was considered to be yin and yang out of place in ancient times, and the behavior that violated social ethical norms and moral customs was ugly. The so-called ugliness here is the "ugliness of virtue", which is an evaluation based on moral standards.
The emergence of the idea of judging ugliness is closely related to Taoist thought. Lao Tzu is compatible with beauty and ugliness, he said, "The whole world knows that beauty is beautiful, and si is evil; everyone knows that good is good, and Si is not good." "Great straightness is like bending, great cleverness is like clumsiness", and has a tolerant attitude toward ugliness.
Taoists are good at dialectics of right and wrong, emphasizing that things must be reversed. In the "Huainan Zi" written by Liu An of the Western Han Dynasty, it is said: "If you seek beauty, you must not be beautiful, and if you do not seek beauty, you will be beautiful." If you seek ugliness, you must not be ugly, and if you are not ugly, you must be ugly. ”
Literati were very enthusiastic about dialectical thought full of strangeness, and Zhuang Chang of the Ming Dynasty proposed: "Good to the extreme, vulgar to the extreme." Liu Xizai of the Qing Dynasty said: "Strange stones are beautiful with ugliness, and ugly to the extreme is good to the extreme." ”
Ugly is ugly, beauty is beauty. Why does China have the spirit of judging ugliness? The original intention is not to think that ugly is beautiful, and it is not to think that ugly is beautiful. The most fundamental thing is rebellion against authority. Judging ugliness is actually the truth-seeking spirit of "not being vain and beautiful, not hiding evil". For example, literature, an art form, should face the truth, and the beauty and ugliness in reality must be vividly expressed and cannot be concealed. This reflects the open-mindedness and tolerance of Chinese culture to "accommodate beauty and ugliness, and surpass Yan Yan".
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the ugliness in calligraphy and painting can even be said to have formed a fashion. The creation of calligraphy and painting often takes dead vines and old trees, dangerous mountains and strange stones, and skinny horses and sick plums as the objects of expression. Chen Hongshou of the Ming Dynasty and Ren Bonian of the late Qing Dynasty, their figure paintings, strange shapes, exaggerated deformation.
The paintings of the Bada Shanren mostly depict unbeautiful and even anti-beautiful images such as strange rocks, dead trees, ugly fish, jackdaws, etc., and the fish and birds he writes about are all staring at the world and life coldly. Because he has forged his own ugly and grotesque art world, and has contributed to the development of artistic diversity, it is also commendable.
Fu Shan, in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, put forward the proposition of "Four Nings and Four Noes": "It is better to be clumsy than skillful, rather to be ugly than to be charming, to be more detached than to be slippery, and to be straightforward rather than to arrange.", there is a very deep helplessness to retreat to the second place. Fu Shan's own calligraphy creations are full of contradictions, some are very rigorous, some are full of drunken weirdness, and there is almost no law.
In modern times, Chen Shi once summed it up: "In the literati paintings, there are also ugly and absurd people, who are pure and naïve, do not pretend to modify, and strive to make soft and beautiful postures, and apply grease and powder to ensure their character that can be viewed from a distance and cannot be nearsighted." "Strange ugliness is actually a rebellion against orthodox Confucianism and political rules, and by asserting individuality, within a certain range, challenging the unified idea of imprisoning people."
This spirit of judging ugliness does not really come out of the basic laws of the birth philosophy to escape from reality. It represents a negative force that shows the author's uncooperative attitude through strange forms such as irregularity, illegitibility, abnormality, and even indifference, clumsiness, roughness, and pathology, and expresses a silent protest against the ideology behind the "mainstream beauty" and the real world.
Replacing beauty with ugliness, or turning ugliness into beauty, is fundamentally to use ugliness to escape harsh reality, and it is a disregard and transcendence of the bleak and cold world.
Ugly, where is the difference between ancient and modern? The most fundamental thing is thought.
Chinese culture and art tend to be elegant, and judging ugliness is by no means low-level fun, it ultimately pursues the realm or ideal of "turning ugliness into beauty", not the pure abstract form of the West.
In ancient times, behind the works of judging ugliness, there were extremely profound thoughts, and such works were non-utilitarian and sincere expressions of the heart. And now, simply ugly for the sake of ugliness, it is completely formal, utilitarian. There is nothing ideological to speak of. The purpose is nothing more than to create a sensational effect, attract attention, and sensationalize the public. There is neither basic skill nor connotation, so we have to rely on the side door and the left way to seek a little selfish interest, and that's it. No matter how it is packaged, it cannot hide the fact of superficial hypocrisy.