Today's young people rarely know about Mr. Ren Zheng! But in the seventies and eighties of the last century, Mr. Ren Zheng was still a popular figure in the book world, and the popularity of his works can be said to be a household name.
Last century. Young people in the seventies and eighties came into contact with calligraphy, mostly starting from Mr. Ren Zheng's enlightenment readings! At that time, I went to elementary school in the countryside, and in the third grade, I was allowed to write with a fountain pen, and before that, I could only use a pencil! And set up a calligraphy class, which was called a big imitation at that time! My sister was in the third grade, and I started to write imitations, I was just in school, and I was very interested in calligraphy, and sometimes I used my sister's brush to write a few strokes, and my father thought I could write neatly. It is the meaning of key training, and I bought a copy of the law "Juvenile Calligraphy", the author is Mr. Ren Zheng! You must know that at that time, the imitation textbooks were all a slightly willow-style printing font mold with rice grids! Later, Mr. Ye Shengtao inscribed the "Middle School Students' Copybook", and I began to know the font of Yan Liuou and Zhao Zhu! If I get the treasure, I am reluctant to use pen and ink to spend paper, and use the slate to copy the points on the "Juvenile Calligraphy" every day. The inside is more miscellaneous, mainly in regular script, Li, Wei Bei, and Xingcao are all involved! This kind of learning made me calligraphy start, there was no special family, and the foundation was not solid! But the advantage is that the aesthetic is relatively free and not too rigid. From this point of view, Mr. Ren Zheng is indeed my enlightenment teacher, but at that time, I didn't pay attention to the author of "Juvenile Calligraphy", and it was only later to understand Mr. Ren Zheng!
Speaking of Mr. Ren Zheng today, it is mainly Mr. Tian Yingzhang's death, and many people talk about Mr. Tian's "printing style", and Mr. Ren Zheng is also involved! Speaking of "printed", Mr. Ren Zheng can indeed be regarded as the originator. In 1977, Shanghai Character Mold Factory invited many well-known calligraphers in Shanghai to write letters representing their own styles, and Ren Zheng Xingkai was selected by the factory. It took him two years to complete nearly 7,000 block letters for the Universal Printing List. This set of model characters for the administration of government has been widely used in newspapers, periodicals and books across the country, and has also entered the commonly used font library of computer Chinese characters as a "standard model for writing". This is what we often call "Chinese Xingkai"! But if Mr. Ren Zheng is the same as Mr. Tian Yingzhang, his calligraphy works are all printed, it is still up for discussion!
Generally speaking, Mr. Tian Yingzhang has gained and played by guarding the European body, and has never jumped out of the European body! Mr. Ren Zheng is taking the law and integrating it into his own face, and his pen and ink are more interesting than Mr. Tian's, and his works are correspondingly richer in connotation. Privately, I think that in terms of calligraphy alone, Mr. Ren Zheng and Mr. Shen Yinmo have a fight. Therefore, we can't make a simple analogy between Tian and Ren!
In addition, it should be pointed out that the aesthetics of calligraphy are roughly divided into two paths: practical and artistic! Mr. Ren Zheng's era was still the era when the practicality of calligraphy was the mainstream, and Mr. pursued the neatness and simplicity of calligraphy, and the complexity of the calligraphy was easy to summarize, which is understandable, and it cannot simply be demanded by the aesthetics of modern calligraphy! This is what is often said to be the time of the times! The development of computers and electronics has provided infinite possibilities for the aesthetics of calligraphy to extend and develop to a broader level from practicality. But when it comes to Mr. Tian, it's different, in this era, he still holds on to the incomplete, let's say practical, and makes the brushwork extremely complicated; Let's talk about art, it is like an operator, monotonous and boring, and it has its own reasons for causing many controversies! To say that it is light is to rest on its laurels, and to say that it is heavy is to use "Tian Kai" to solidify the aesthetics of calligraphy, which to some extent reduces the aesthetic level or diversity of the public!
A few years ago, when I went back to my hometown and saw the "Juvenile Calligraphy" that I was studying, I silently brought it back, and in my heart, it carried an era worth remembering. In that era, we were filled with infinite longing!