Who are the eight eccentrics in Yangzhou?

Yangzhou Eight Eccentrics is the general name of a group of painters and calligraphers with similar styles who lived in Yangzhou in the middle of Qing Dynasty by China. They are also called Yangzhou School of Painting. There are eight "Yangzhou Eight Eccentrics". They are Li, Li (single fish), Jin Nong, Huang Shen, Zheng Xie, Gao Xiang and Wang. Yangzhou Eight Eccentrics are mostly middle and lower intellectuals. Some of them are dismissed state and county officials, some are scribes who have not achieved fame, and some are poor painters who make a living by painting. They either grew up in Yangzhou or came here to live for other provinces, and each had a bumpy experience. They have gathered in Yangzhou to sell their paintings and calligraphy works in Yangzhou's prosperous painting and calligraphy market.

Yangzhou Eight Eccentrics are a group of intellectuals with a sense of justice. They all know the corruption of officialdom and the extortion of wealthy businessmen. Faced with the difference between the rich and the poor in real life, combined with their own experiences, they have a strong dissatisfaction with society. They often show deep sympathy for the suffering people and make angry voices on their behalf. However, because they were educated by feudal culture, and the Qing Dynasty was in its heyday, their feelings and dissatisfaction could not break through the barriers of feudal thought. Among them, officials worked hard to build a number to let the people live and work in peace and contentment in order to maintain feudal order. If you have no intention of officialdom, you will lead an honest and clean life, which is not customary and flaunts that you have lofty ideals. And they can't get rid of the economic dependence on landlords, officials and businessmen, so they are often in extreme pain of ideological contradictions and have to compromise to survive outside cynicism. Zheng Xie, the representative of the Eight Eccentrics in Yangzhou, left many comments, which can be described as a thinker among the Eight Eccentrics in Yangzhou. Li (Jia Dan beside the fish) expressed the most painful and intense contradiction in his works and became the main target of attack.

The most prominent artistic view of Yangzhou Eight Eccentrics is to attach importance to individual expression. They advocate original style and "independence". They openly declared that their works were for selling money to make a living, tearing the veil that literati and painters once regarded painting creation as "elegant things". On the theme of their works, on the one hand, they inherited the tradition of literati painting, taking plum, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum, pine and stone as the main description objects to show the lofty, aloof and vulgar painters. On the other hand, they also use symbolism, metaphor and metaphor to write poems, which endows their works with profound social content and unique ideological expression. For example, Li's "Wind Bamboo Map" symbolizes stubborn and unyielding character with strong bamboo that is not afraid of strong winds; Huang Shen's "Seeking a Picture" and Luo Pin's "Selling Cattle Songs" show their careful observation of the real society, which directly or indirectly shows social injustice. In terms of painting style, Yangzhou Eight Eccentrics mainly inherited the freehand brushwork techniques in previous paintings, and further developed their expertise in ink painting, shaping objects in a highly concise way, not sticking to the shape of branches and leaves. In pen and ink, they are unconstrained and unconstrained, galloping freely and expressing their feelings directly. Because their works are contrary to the subtle and elegant style of flower-and-bird painting popular at that time, they are often severely criticized by critics and called "strange".

Although the art of Eight Eccentrics in Yangzhou was only popular in Yangzhou and its surrounding areas at that time, it had a far-reaching influence on inheriting and developing the traditional ink and wash freehand brushwork in China.