Painting Qin by Gu Kaizhi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (partial)
People in the Han Dynasty held pens like fists.
Distinguish by the number of fingers touching the pen holder, such as' two fingers',' three fingers',' four fingers' and' five fingers'. At the same time, whether the ring finger and the little finger are suspended, there are single hooks and double hooks, such as' two-finger single hook', which can be described as endless changes.
Holding tube and pen
Cang Xie in the Eastern Han Dynasty (partial)
On the basis of collecting a large number of images, Zhuang, the head of the project of "Study on the Characters of Past Dynasties in China" and the former director of the Institute of Ancient Fine Arts of Nanjing Museum, analyzed the characteristics of the characters of past dynasties, and found that people in different periods in China held pens in different ways.
In Han Li, which is famous for its vigorous founder, when people wrote this font in the Han Dynasty, the way of holding the pen was quite thick-the pen head was down, and the whole hand held the pen like a fist, which was called "holding the tube".
In the past, it was always a mystery how people in the Han Dynasty held pens. When doing the project, we found the picture of people holding pens at that time through the direct historical data-Han Dynasty stone relief. According to Zhuang, a large number of stone carvings show that "grip" was very popular in the Eastern Han Dynasty. For example, on the stone reliefs in Linyi, Shandong Province, Cang Xie's writing method is holding the tube.
Based on this, it is speculated that in order to use and popularize this writing method, the writing method of Chinese ancestors was also imagined and fixed as the tube-holding method to show that the tube-holding method is ancient and orthodox.
Three-finger brush is the most popular, and two fingers are the best.
Zhuang found that two-finger and three-finger single hook writing methods were mainly popular in Jin, Tang and Five Dynasties. Although single hook writing was the main method in Song Dynasty, double hook writing gradually became popular. By Yuan Dynasty, single hook writing and double hook writing had shown a parallel trend. Although the single hook method was still used in the Ming Dynasty, the three-finger double hook method was mainly popular. In the Qing Dynasty, there appeared the coexistence of single hook, double hook, four fingers, wrist back and other writing methods.
In the long years of more than 1000 years, China people have been holding pens with two or three fingers, and four fingers only appeared in the Qing Dynasty.
Zhuang believes that the three-fingered method is the most worth learning.
One of Yang Zihua's Northern Qi School Books.
Collection of Boston Art Museum, USA
According to Zhuang, the most commonly used method in the world is the three-finger writing, that is, the thumb, forefinger and middle finger are close together, which is also the method used in modern hard pen writing in China. But this way is not the best.
How did the famous Wang Xizhi get a pen? In the "Qin Tu" painted by Gu Kaizhi, a great painter of his time, the handwriting of the characters is clearly shown as a single hook with two fingers; In the Song Dynasty, Liang Kai's Book of the Right Army was also written by Wang Xizhi with two fingers and one hook.
Zhuang introduced that the two-finger brushwork is actually a brushwork with the index finger as the main part and the thumb as the auxiliary part, which is the simplest and most flexible brushwork. Zhuang originally used the three-finger method, but after practicing the two-finger single hook method for several months, he found that' the pen strength does not decrease, but it highlights the sensitivity and flexibility of the pen and fingers'
What happened to holding a pen in five fingers today?
Then pull the time back to the present. Many people learn calligraphy when they were young, and they all use the' five-finger writing method', that is, all five fingers touch the pen.
Zhuang believes that this five-finger method should be abandoned.
Zhuang's research found that the history of five-finger writing is very short, only more than 50 years. In his view, the basic five-finger calligraphy textbooks have been issued one after another since modern times; At the same time, people's brush writing has changed from wrist hanging writing to wrist arm pillow writing, and the five-finger method has become the mainstream.
He thinks that the modern popular five-finger writing method has obvious shortcomings. In short, it is complicated, rigid and inconvenient. He said that teaching children to learn calligraphy now should give up the five-finger method as soon as possible. Compared with the best but most difficult two-fingered method, it is more appropriate to teach children three-fingered method.