In the calligraphy and painting exhibition, faced with a pair of calligraphy works with different styles, you don't know which one to like, and you are worried that your favorite level is not high. You don't seem to see anything good after winning the first place.
In the face of calligraphy works, what can you say except: well written and beautiful?
Hou Jiliang's How to Understand Calligraphy is an introductory reading for calligraphy appreciation, which can help laymen to understand this legendary elegant art. Although it is an introductory reading, some of its analysis may help people with certain writing experience to make up for it.
Calligraphy can't be just visual art, there are more important things before visual beauty.
That is the inheritance of writing, literature or culture.
To put it bluntly, when you appreciate calligraphy, you have to understand what this work is about. Once you leave the meaning of words, only technology remains in art, and the best calligraphy in history is literary works.
Facing all kinds of fonts in calligraphy, you must first be able to name them. They are:
Feng, Li, Xing, Cao and Kai
Now there are generally running scripts and regular script, and seal script is like this.
Three characteristics of seal script: vertical, horizontal and equidistant. Therefore, seal script is solemn, generous and serious, and it is really effective in advocating government decrees.
When appreciating calligraphy works, we often hear the word "Gao Gu". Hou Jiliang thinks that the Gauguin is absolutely horizontal, vertical and equidistant, which is a classic example of all classical arts.
Writing such words requires a high degree of concentration and slow writing, otherwise it is difficult to control the accuracy, so it is not suitable for practical use.
The strokes of official script are more casual, faster and less rigorous in structure. It is a font that is actually used in daily life.
Official script is like this:
The change of speed, rhythm and weight, coupled with the "swallow-tailed silkworm head" style, the writing style of official script is much stronger than that of seal script.
Many people learn calligraphy in the order of regular script first and then cursive script, so it is easy to mistake cursive script for the last development. In fact, cursive script should appear at the same time as official script.
The cursive script is written like this, which is not easy to write or read.
Cursive pen is more free and changeable, lines are free and smooth, and font structure is more beautiful. Because cursive writing is rapid, it requires skilled techniques and a high degree of concentration, so it often shows the writer's psychological state. Han Yu said Zhang Xu in "Send Master Gao Xianxu":
Many people mistakenly think that cursive script is scrawled, but it is not. Cursive script is the strictest of all fonts, and the drawing should not be sloppy, and the angle, size and radian of the turning point should not exceed the regulations.
The change of fonts reflects the evolution process, and the invention of five fonts has its own functions and specific aesthetic implications.
Seal handwriting-document announcement
Official script-inscription commemoration and announcement
Running script and cursive script-sketch, notes and life applications
Regular script-inscription commemoration and announcement
Next, I will introduce three best running scripts to you, which are recognized as the three best running scripts in the history of calligraphy.
These three works are drafts, and because they are drafts, you can follow the pen when writing, turn the pen at will, and show your feelings in the strokes.
Therefore, the author emphasizes that calligraphy should first return to the basic attitude of "writing" and often write and record one's feelings and thoughts, so that a turning point of the soul can enter the stroke.
We often say that "words are like people". What kind of people write words, even after strict training, show their own nature at the moment of writing.
Then we can try to figure out the calligrapher's personality from the calligraphy works.
Let's take a look at the Preface to the Lanting Pavilion, which is the ultimate testimony of beauty.
Literature and art before Wei and Jin Dynasties mostly praised the regime. It was only in the Wei and Jin Dynasties that beauty began to be pursued and enjoyed as an independent function.
This feeling depends entirely on the fluent and beautiful calligraphy of Wang Xizhi, Wang Xianzhi and Wang Xizhi. Otherwise, we can only imagine what the so-called romantic life in Wei and Jin Dynasties was like.
It is in an extremely peaceful and relaxed state that the handwritten draft when drunk becomes a treasure in calligraphy. It is said that Wang Xizhi rewrote it many times after waking up from drunkenness, but it was the same as the manuscript.
Focus on the process, enjoy the process, the process is correct, the result is correct, even beyond expectations.
Preface to Lanting is just a draft. Everywhere I went, I was absorbed in my thoughts and ideas at that time. Because of physical and mental freedom and carefree, I can directly see the true feelings of life.
Let's take a look at the Manuscript for Sacrificing a Nephew, which is full of national enmity.
Background: During the Anshi Rebellion, Gao Yan (G m 40 means to work at sunrise and rest at sunset) was appointed as the magistrate of Changshan (equivalent to the rank of mayor), the city fell, and his youngest son Ji Ming was killed. Yan Zhenqing sent his nephew Quan Ming to identify the body, but only Ji Ming's first funeral was lost, and Yan Zhenqing offered it as a cultural sacrifice. This is the manuscript of Sacrificing a Nephew.
The whole manuscript is written in lines, and writing is Yan Zhenqing's habit. In the mood at that time, the manuscript of sacrificing a nephew was often deleted, altered and smeared, which showed his grief and resentment. This kind of mood corresponds to the breath of the sentence "The world regrets the disaster, who will poison it" in the article. Reading today, people still feel the pain of great changes in their home country and the tragic death of their loved ones.
Finally, take a casual look at Su Dongpo's Cold Food Post.
Cold food stickers can be said to solidify Su Dongpo's life realm. Because in the second year of Yuanfeng (1079), Wutai Poetry Case (an imperial consultant He Chen Zheng impeached Su Shi, played a thank-you table after Su Shi moved to Huzhou, and said that Su Dongpo "Your Majesty knows his folly in time, and it is difficult to make new progress;" Seeing that he is still noisy when he is old, it is better to raise the king. " Su Dongpo's intention of mocking state affairs is hidden, and Li Ding, the imperial adviser, also pointed out four major sins that Su Shi could abolish. Su Dongpo was demoted to Huangzhou.
In August of the first year of exile in Huangzhou, his nurse king died in Lingaoge and was exiled to the frontier. Even his life became a problem. It goes without saying that even with the help of friends, his heart is bitter.
The "cold food sticker" was written on two pieces of paper connected together, with some missing words added, typos removed and no signature. Only after the poem, a line of "Two Cold Foods in Right Huangzhou" was written in smaller words to identify the title of the poem. It is in such a casual way that Su Dongpo's feelings about life in Huangzhou are revealed without exaggeration or reservation.
Through these three works, we also feel that once we write, we think that when we write, we usually can't write well, so we should regard calligraphy as an ordinary thing, and then we can appreciate the fun and highest realm of calligraphy.
Facing a calligraphy work, what aspects can we analyze?
First, use a pen
The beauty of calligraphy lies in the use of pens.
People who are good at expressing the sense of stroke lines with pens will have strong bones; People who are not good at using pens can easily make lines weak.
A calligraphy work is full of thousands of paintings, but it is born in one point, accumulated in one painting, accumulated in one word and accumulated in one piece. Only by using each stroke well can the work reach the ideal realm. In the Qing Dynasty, Liu Xizai said that "there is courage and bone; Patience and strength. " This is an exposition of the strength of bones and muscles in calligraphy strokes. Courage focuses on a rigid beauty. Forbearance lies in the elastic beauty of combining rigidity with softness.
Care and echo between strokes. "The pen was exposed when I called, and it should be hidden." Refers to the writing between the upper pen and the lower pen, the former is derived by the exposed front of the pen tail, and the latter is responded by the hidden front of the pen tail. The structure of a word itself has a call, a response and a hidden dew, which makes the whole word run through.
Second, the structure
This sentence appeared in Mr. Qi Gong's Poem on a Book, which means that when writing, how to master the structure of words is the most difficult, where to put each stroke and how to structure each stroke are the most important. The reason is simple: no matter how beautiful the strokes are, they can only be "icing on the cake" if they are attached to a reasonable "skeleton". If the structure is "abnormal" first, even if the brushwork of Wang Xizhi and Yan Zhenqing is used, the characters cannot be combined into beautiful shapes.
In the structure of calligraphy, it is boring to blindly pursue correctness, and it will lose attitude to blindly seek novelty. It should be seeking difference in the middle, seeking change in the middle, and grasping the sense of proportion can be wonderful.
Third, composition
Composition is to arrange the harmony and unity between words and lines in the whole calligraphy work; And rich and diverse, so that a word presents the law of overall beauty.
"A word is a rule, and a word is the last rule." This is Sun's highly summary of the composition, planning and layout of the calligraphy of Shupu. When the first stroke falls, the theme of a word is established, and the first word determines the theme of the whole article. Once the theme is determined, the whole article should be completed in strict accordance with the corresponding rules and regulations.
Composition is an important part and means of expression of calligraphy works. Therefore, calligraphy can only be counted if you know the rules and regulations. Every word and stroke must be handled according to the rules and regulations. Otherwise, it is: "Although the difference between one point is big, a thousand miles are missed." This is Sun's exposition on the pen and layout specification of calligraphy works, which means that even the slightest deviation in pen or layout will have a serious impact on the effect of the whole work. To achieve accurate and skilled brushwork layout, we must observe and simulate for a long time to understand the "rules" of ancient people using pens. Moreover, all styles of play should be based on "rules", and then they can be gradual.
Fourth, "shape", "spirit" and "rhyme"
Rhyme is obtained through brushwork and form, but it is not deliberately achieved. "Walking in simple leisure has a profound and endless taste." "Rhyme" should be an independent and extreme aesthetic category, which transcends form and can provide unlimited space for understanding and appreciation. The production of rhymes does not need to be colorful and bizarre. On the contrary, it is simple leisure that can produce endless charm.
This is a bit abstract. Personally, I think it still depends on more "enlightenment".
The above is only the superficial content of calligraphy appreciation. Personally, I think that you can see more, copy more and create more, and then you can appreciate the beauty of calligraphy art with a certain understanding.
After all, we are from China. We write Chinese characters and have a natural affinity for calligraphy.