How to Appreciate the Art of Calligraphy

How to Appreciate the Art of Calligraphy

From the "Three Great Books in the World" The representative calligraphers of each era are based on the inheritance of their predecessors and then integrate their personal style.

It is not an innovation out of thin air, but a kind of inheritance and development. When it comes to calligraphy, many people say "I don't understand". Why is calligraphy so complicated? Because it has experienced thousands of years of historical development, it is difficult not to be complicated.

Today, let's go to the simple and simple, and start with the most sought-after "Three Books in the World". Before talking about it, let’s briefly popularize a few knowledge points: calligraphy is mainly divided into five types of calligraphy: seal, clerical, regular, line, and cursive. Qin gradually evolved "Xiaozhuan" from oracle bones and other characters, and it was set as the standard font for the issuance of official laws and orders, and the little scribes who copied laws and records at the grassroots level, in order to improve work efficiency, simplified seal script into official script; In the Han Dynasty, as the official script became the mainstream script, it was still used as the official standard font. Another group of small scribes who copied materials wrote Zhang Cao (running script) in order to improve efficiency. And the calligraphy of this period is mainly based on practicality and functionality.

When history came to the Wei and Jin Dynasties, it officially entered the peak of the development of Chinese calligraphy art. At that time, a group of literati represented by Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi began to write for the expression of their own temperament. Calligraphy is no longer just a practical recording tool, but has been elevated to the height of aesthetics, and it can best express individual temperament. of cursive calligraphy. Therefore, when people appreciate calligraphy today, they always feel that they can’t understand it, or they don’t know which perspective to look at, because this level is no longer simple literacy, but has risen to the level of aesthetics, which requires a person to have Sufficient knowledge and cultivation. When appreciating famous works in history, one of the easiest ways is to imagine that you can return to the background of that specific historical era, and experience the mood and feelings of people at that time with your heart.

The Eastern Jin Dynasty, where Wang Xizhi lived, was just a short period of unification after China experienced a long period of war and division (the Three Kingdoms period). At that time, the prevailing style of seclusion was to travel around the mountains and play and sing and sing poetry. Against such a historical background, Wang Xizhi invited more than 40 of his friends to drink and recite poetry in the thick forests in the mountains. The poems written by these people are collectively called "Orchid Pavilion Collection", and the slightly drunk Wang Xizhi came to write the poems. The poetry collection is inscribed with "preface", and the state at this time must be that the poetry is flourishing, the mood is free, and the improvisations written must also reveal the true feelings, even if the works are altered. What literati advocates most is the revealing of one's true temperament.

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