The Talented Convict Xu Wei

Peter C. Sturman

Professor, Departments of History of Art and Architecture and East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies University of California, Santa Barbara

Late in the year 1566, the polymath scholar-artist Xu Wei (1521–1593) was jailed in the Kuaiji (Shaoxing) magistrate compound for the brutal killing of his wife. Already struggling with mental instability, Xu Wei entered the frozen cell expecting to be put to death by strangulation—the state’s price for murder. This was undoubtedly the nadir of his life, but not only did Xu avoid execution through the intervention of friends, ultimately the six years he spent in jail proved nurturing and transformative. A number of works of calligraphy by Xu Wei survive from his years in jail including some from early in his incarceration that are especially meaningful for demonstrating how Xu utilized a multifaceted artistic expression to cope with his perilous condition. In this lecture, the problematic Xu Wei and his talent as a calligrapher will be introduced in the context of sixteenth-century artistic practice and Shaoxing society. Xu is better known in the West as a daring, expressive ink painter, but he ranked calligraphy as his greatest talent—a judgment that we will wish to interrogate further but with larger questions in mind: how was talent defined in Ming-dynasty China, and how was it manifest through the scholarly arts? Looking closely at Xu’s early jail calligraphy helps bring these questions into focus under extraordinary circumstances.

Thursday, September 19, 2024, 5:30 pm 

Livestream via YouTube @KUArtHistory

OR in-person @

Spencer Museum of Art, Marilyn Stokstad Lecture Hall (RM 211)*