Visiting Mr. Qian Shaowu on the shore of Taihu LakeWang Weishan.
A few months ago, the news of Mr. Qian Shaowu's immortal death came, and I was quite emotional. I studied Xi sculpture more than 20 years ago, and I regarded Mr. Qian as a Taishan Beidou. Later, he devoted himself to painting and calligraphy, and in addition to paying a little attention to the local Taoist statues because they are related to many cultural phenomena that he paid attention to, he also paid little attention to modern and contemporary sculptors and works.
One day, my old classmate asked me to go to Taihu Lake and said that I could meet Mr. Qian, and I was very surprised and gladly visited with me. At that time, Mr. Qian seemed to many people to be slow to respond due to old age, but when we visited, he was very enthusiastic and kind to people like me. I was surprised when I sat down for a while to enjoy tea and talk about calligraphy, and my thoughts were condensed and clear, his voice was like a bell, and his gestures were as rich as that of a conductor.
It turned out that Mr. Qian had not only learned calligraphy, but also put a lot of effort into it, and published a special collection of calligraphy works many years ago. Most people who know Mr. Qian are probably similar to me, and they will guess that Mr. Qian loves Western art because of his experience of studying Xi at the Repin Academy of Fine Arts in the former Soviet Union, but this is not the case. He copied a lot of Northern Dynasty inscriptions, especially fond of the cliffs of Mount Tai through Shiyu, take its opening majestic meaning, cursive writing is also very skillful, strong personality.
Many calligraphers may have different views on Mr. Qian's characters now, but from the perspective of me, who has been exposed to sculpture, I can see the "incarnation" of sculpture in his characters, which is a very specific and special form of calligraphy, which is not perceived by the so-called calligraphers who are numb to inertial writing and passive acceptance. This point is known from my personal experience, Baroque sculpture and painting have some similarities with the calligraphy of the Tang Dynasty, and although the lines used in sketching are different from the calligraphy in nature, they have quite the same ......, and the expression of these feelings is neither audienceless nor seemingly unnecessary. I also visited the famous sculptor Professor He Liping, who is very interested in calligraphy, and has created a lot of works to discuss (many of which people in the calligraphy circle may not think much about), and also paid attention to this parallel group outside the mainstream calligraphers. If the tradition of calligraphy is still recognized, I would like to say that this "heart" is a specific heart, and the calligraphy of non-calligraphy "lines" has its own characteristics and contents, not to mention that there is no "line" in ancient calligraphy. Just like now, we often say "literati calligraphy", in fact, calligraphy is the business of literati, and calligraphy is also a kind of literati calligraphy, and calligraphers are first and foremost literati. And the literati are not people who write a few articles and make a few couplets, but people who have thoughts, understanding, and deeds about culture, and I think it is not too much to define the word "literati" in this way, so why are sculptors, painters, architects, etc., not literati?
Mr. Qian talked so excitedly that he didn't even talk about painting and sculpture for more than two hours, but he was so drunk that he seemed to have a mantra: "Calligraphy, high-level, high-......."He asked his assistant for pen and paper to write a wall book. The old gentleman usually acts cautiously and often needs the support of his family, but Fang picked up the pen and wrote big characters, and the walls and mountains were full of clouds and mountains in a moment. Ouyang Xiuyun: "There is a meaning to it, and I don't know what I do."There is a heart to be happy, and it is tiring to not know things. However, since ancient times, there are all things that are tiring, and there is a heart to enjoy things. "Look at this, believe it.
Figure 1 Qian Shaowu's handwriting
Remember Mr. Jiang's two or three trivial things
Mr. Jiang Qingqing is a well-known scholar who has written extensively on calligraphy and painting. Under the conditions of modern academic refinement, few people care about and understand his in-depth understanding of the old school as a whole, his extensive understanding and absorption of Western studies, and his unique experience of Zhuangzi.
When I met Mr. Jiang, it was his old age. Mr. is clear and clear, agile and witty, and has no dragon clock. At that time, I was less than 30 years old, and Mr. Jiang was lecturing in Beijing, and he was an admirer and supporter because of his outstanding talent. Later, Mr. Jiang asked me if there was anything to discuss, and I said yes. So he left the crowd and went to a secluded place. I remember that at that time, I asked Mr. for advice on the topic of Song Ming Science on the shaping of Yan Zhenqing's status, Mr. said that this problem is worth studying, and said for a long time that if you attack it from science, it is not impossible, but it is not easy to really break this kind of big problem, and there are many people, you might as well start from the local and small places.
Later, Mr. Shi gave a lecture in Hangzhou and stayed in a hotel not far from the West Lake, so he went to visit. On the way, I remembered that I heard that Mr. Jiang had a rule for chatting with guests, no more than 5 minutes, and I couldn't help but feel nervous, I didn't know if it would disturb him. After a few minutes of entering the door, I couldn't help but ask, and I said, "Mr. Jiang, I heard that you have hung a sign at home, saying that you will not be able to meet guests for more than 5 minutes......."Teacher Jiang laughed and said: "That's dealing with gossip people, there is still a side to the sign, it says that the reader can come for as long as he wants, hahaha......."”
Five years ago, I took Zheng Bi's "Yanji" of the Yuan Dynasty as the object of study, but this theory has not been studied by many scholars, and in modern times, even the text itself has been criticized as an unprogressive theory. I was concerned that Mr. Jiang's "History of Chinese Calligraphy Thought" mentions this issue, and he is probably the only theorist who does not take a critical standpoint, and I asked him why, and he said that although he may not agree much with the science itself, there is still some truth in it. In addition, I studied the theoretical issues in Sun Guoting's "Book Pedigree", and once wrote "The Theoretical Proposition of Sun Guoting's Book Pedigree", explaining the similarity between the problems and the problems in "Wenxin Carving Dragon", but the arguments are relatively new, and I am not very sure in my heart. So I called ** to Mr. Jiang, who was in Guizhou at that time. As soon as we chatted, Mr. Jiang was very happy, and he said that this was right. We talked for more than an hour in **, I remember it was summer, I ran out of the office to play in the shade of the tree**, and the mobile phone board was hot. I wanted him to rest, but he said he wasn't tired and kept telling me questions.
Mr. Jiang has been in Penglai for several years, and he often thinks of him every time he writes. Reading the "Zhuangzi" annotated by him in his later years, the theory is that people are the best people, and people are immortals.
Fig.2 The author visits Mr. Jiang Qingqing in Guizhou (left).
The Nature of the Five Elements, the Theory of Talent and Art Education
My friend Fang Jun, a young philosopher scholar, knew that I had an interest in the study of the theory of talent since the Han and Wei dynasties, so I used the relationship between the eight trigrams and the five elements to make the five elements non-qualitative and the principle of one air circulation, which can quite explain the basis of the ancient theory of talent**. Later, he talked about Gorgias and Socrates in ancient Greece, and on the problems of rhetoric, sages, and philosophers, which just caused me to think about teaching.
In the real art education, including calligraphy education, will the question of talent be considered?That is, students are taught according to their aptitude, taking into account their individual characteristics. This is supposed to be the "proper meaning of education", but with the characteristics of the modern university system, this kind of teaching is becoming more and more difficult to achieve.
Even if there is a basis for the realization of the conditions, there will still be very difficult problems, such as the first problem of judging what kind of talent a specific person belongs to;The second is what needs to be taught and what cannot be taught. The first question is used as an example for a little expansion.
An educator wants to judge a Xi, and there are requirements for the educator itself, and this requirement must be that the educator is clear about what the purpose of education is, whether this purpose really makes sense or is worth educating for this purpose. In other words, in fact, it is to judge people according to the purpose of education, and to judge people according to the preset purpose of education. This may seem difficult, because in reality there are very few educators who can honestly and accurately state what they are going to educate others, why it is worth the effort and resources, and what the goals set by the educator are, if they have been achieved or can be achievedAre educators themselves a sample of this ideal?
If the above questions cannot be answered, both educators and education are questionable. And, further, in art education, art is a part of life, and in any case only a limited part. However, it seems that what education should give should also include the relationship between the two, on the one hand, the problem of the worldview, on the other hand, the problem of the profession itself, and the correlation between them. In art schools, art Xi students are different from other practical Xi students, but they are close to the situation of philosophy and "do not know each other" very well. Xi of art and philosophy live in a world where there is still and only this common world, but it is a little difficult for them to understand the universal and real world.
Having said that, if educators really have the ability to deal with these problems, will they be able to provide Xi learners with a larger, subtle, and not necessarily unconstrained and obscured "genre" of knowledge and behavior?I asked Fang Jun what school education was, and this gentleman smiled wryly and said, "About rhetoric." ”