Calligraphy is both familiar and unfamiliar to every Chinese, familiar because we almost all have the experience of writing with a pen, and strange because calligraphy as an art is not just as simple as writing. For calligraphy is not just writing, embodied in **, there is always a feeling of indescribability. Fang Jianxun's "Fifteen Lectures on Chinese Calligraphy" makes an easy-to-understand interpretation of this issue from a professional point of view, specifically, it is mainly reflected in the relationship between aesthetics and practice, law and Taoism.
Fifteen Lectures on Chinese Calligraphy, by Fang Jianxun, published by Peking University Press.
As long as you can write, you can be regarded as having practical experience in calligraphy, but aesthetic ability can not be improved by writing, and requires certain theoretical knowledge and cultural literacy as support. Fang Jianxun's book starts from aesthetics, from the past and present life of calligraphy to the spirit, qi, bones, flesh and blood, telling the classic works one by one, and in the process of appreciating the classics, summarizes some core essences of calligraphy in aesthetics. The difference between art and craftsmanship lies in aesthetics, for learning calligraphy, it is better to "have a good eye and a low hand", and the eyesight (aesthetics) determines the upper limit of the brush and ink under the hand, otherwise no matter how much practice can only be reduced to mechanical repetition.
Those who study calligraphy may have experienced that in the process of writing, they will gradually learn many other things about traditional culture: the balance of yin and yang, the use of existence and non-existence, the coexistence of virtual and real, and the ...... of literati funWriting is like a ferry, carrying us to the deeper depths of traditional culture. The concept of both "internal power" and "extra-book work" is mentioned numerous times in this book. Fang Jianxun once quoted Su Shi's "Retreating from the pen to become a mountain is not enough, and reading thousands of volumes begins to pass through the spirit" as evidence, clarifying that learning calligraphy is not enough to hone the technique ("character internal skills"), but also needs to cultivate temperament and spirituality, and the best way is to read. This concept also runs through the whole book, which not only involves the structure, brushwork, and dot painting, but also emphasizes the personal temperament, traditional aesthetics and fashion of the times conveyed in the brush and ink, which provides a good window for us to look at the art of calligraphy from a more comprehensive perspective, and can also more deeply appreciate the holographic nature of traditional culture and art.
In most cases, the words "calligraphy" and "calligraphy" are common, but if you carefully distinguish between them, you can find that there are still some differences between the two, reflecting different perceptions of "calligraphy". The Dharma is diverse, while the Tao is unified. In this book, Fang Jianxun not only explains various "laws", but also extracts the ever-changing "Tao" from the "laws".
As the saying goes, "the entry must be correct", and now there are many people who write calligraphy, and there are various calligraphy courses on the market, what is the so-called "right way"?Every calligraphy teacher and learner will probably have their own opinion, and this book tries to ** this problem.
First of all, most of the illustrations used in this book are classics that have stood the test of time, and at the end some classic inscriptions are attached to the study guide and **, read more, visit these classics, help to cultivate basic judgment - only when your basic stability is stable, you will not get lost in the face of various concepts and ink.
Secondly, the basic stability can easily lead to prejudice, prejudice will obscure our eyes to appreciate more beautiful things, and Fang Jianxun is more restrained when expounding some "laws", fully respecting the accident and agility of calligraphy, for example, in the fifth lecture "structure", it is said that the position of the "spiritual knot" of the word is as follows: "The spiritual knot - the visual center, it may be in the 'real place', that is, a little painting, or it may be in the 'virtual place', that is, in the blank space." ”
In short, the "spiritual knot" varies from character to word, and we can grasp some basic "Fa", but if we stick to it, we will deviate from the "Tao" in a more ultimate sense. According to Lao Zhuang's point of view, "Those who can speak are also coarse;Those who can be interested are also the essence of things". The "Fa" is a kind of truth that can be said to be superficial, while the "Dao" can only mean that it cannot be spoken, it is subtle, and to abandon the essence for the sake of coarseness is to abandon the original and chase the end, that is, we often say that learning "dies". Calligraphy is an anti-design art, and a good calligraphy textbook should be decentralized, knowing everything about the "law" that can be spoken, and keeping awe of the unspeakable "Tao", and returning the right of imagination and creation to the reader.
After reading this book, on the one hand, you can increase some necessary knowledge about calligraphy, and on the other hand, you can make readers realize that calligraphy is not only writing, but also more things that can be deeply studied and comprehended.
Author: Wu Man.
Text: Wu Man Editor: Zhou Yiqian Editor: Zhu Zifen.
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