The title of Cao Sheng comes from Du Fu's Song of Drinking Eight Immortals and Three Cups of Cao Sheng Biography in Zhang Xu. He waved his paper like a cloud before taking off his hat and revealing the top of the maharaja. The image vividly shows Zhang Xu's unrestrained and independent personality. Among Zhang Xu's calligraphy works, cursive script has the highest achievement. On the one hand, it inherits the calligraphy tradition of Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi, making the handwriting very good, and at the same time, it draws lessons from Zhang Zhi's cursive script, creating a natural and unpredictable weed.
In calligraphy, Zhang is good at observing objective things and combining objective natural images with personal subjective feelings. He not only inherits tradition, but also dares to innovate. By inheriting and innovating the calligraphy achievements of predecessors, his own weed art reached a peak in the prosperous Tang Dynasty.
Zhang Xu's Calligraphy Thought
Zhang Xu advocated the idea of learning from nature and emphasized seeking inspiration from nature and human social life. In Zhang Xu's eyes, all natural images and all traces of life are the objects of learning from nature, which can inspire his creative inspiration. According to historical records, Zhang Xu enriched the thought of white cloth structure from "contending for Tao", gained the inspiration of speed, weight, richness and thickness of brushwork from "following the wind", and found the compact, powerful, reasonable and ethereal charm of wild grass calligraphy from "sword dance", which made the calligraphy have a qualitative change.
From these records, we can see that Zhang is good at observing objective things, combining objective natural images with personal subjective feelings, and understanding the way of calligraphy from all kinds of beings in nature. It is a combination of objectivity and subjectivity, and the combination of natural beauty and artistic beauty just fits the "natural" way in Laozi and Zhuangzi's thoughts.
Reference to the above content: Baidu Encyclopedia-Zhang Xu