Bright pearls hanging in the marketplace: Self-expression and commodification in the painting of Xu Wei (China)

The paintings of the late Ming dynasty artist Xu Wei (1521-1593), executed in a dramatic, bold wet ink wash style and with a sketchy abbreviation of form, have been traditionally interpreted as a direct transmission of his eccentric personality, his tragic life experiences, and his theoretical commitment to spontaneous and straightforward artistic expression. This study examines Xu Wei's paintings of flowers and plants in its socio-economic context, as well as its biographical one, in order to understand the complexities of one artist's manipulation of personality, self-expression, reputation and the market. In addition, previous scholarship on Xu Wei's painting has not examined the role of his poetry inscribed on both extant and recorded paintings. This dissertation looks carefully at this body of texts in order to illuminate Xu's painting practice and analyze the iconography of Xu's paintings within the context of the late Ming economy of luxury commodities.; Xu's fame as a writer of poetry, prose and drama during his lifetime enabled him to use his literary reputation as a component of his painting. This reputation was characterized by the promotion of vernacular language as a more immediate form of expression, social criticism, especially in his plays, and an unconventional use of language and metaphor in general. These values are present in many of his paintings, in which a dramatic and seemingly spontaneous execution is coupled with poems that describe the ostensibly mode of their production yet simultaneously articulate their status as a goods in the marketplace. Through his use of style, subject matter and text, Xu Wei also overtly appeals to various sensual consumer desires prevalent in the local cultural sphere of Shaoxing and in the wider region of Jiangnan at the end of the sixteenth century. While continuing to explore the stylistic legacy of literati flower painters who worked earlier in the sixteenth century, Xu Wei uses that genre to explore and exploit the complex tension between the increasing commodification of luxury goods and elite culture in the late Ming period and contemporary discourse on self and self-expression.