□Li Chunyu
In real life, calligraphers’ works are often requested for, such as dinner parties, pen meetings, even chatting over tea, or when meeting by chance on the road, “it is hard to escape bad luck” ". There are also people who have never met each other who ask for words casually, such as on blogs or WeChat. What is puzzling is that, no matter whether they are close at hand or thousands of miles away, the speaker's language is crisp and his tone is natural. You can't see or hear the slightest bit of shyness. What's more, some people think that asking for your words is giving you face.
There are only two reasons for this. First, calligraphers themselves have insufficient understanding of the marketization of calligraphy art and are subconsciously bound by emotions. Some calligraphers always think of themselves as cultural people and feel disdainful when it comes to selling calligraphy. There is an invisible constraint on myself psychologically - I am playing with culture, how can I be tainted with the smell of copper! Because of this, some calligraphers in high schools in the Qing Dynasty were simply stolen from the artistic fruits of their years of hard work. In addition, although some calligraphers have a superficial understanding of the marketization of calligraphy art and cherish their creations, they cannot escape the barriers of human sophistication, leaving invisible relationships and tangible emotions firmly trapped within them. In this way, they suffer in pain "still holding the pipa half-hidden", often regretting the masterpiece they had no choice but to send, and even having trouble sleeping and eating; they also often blame themselves deeply for sending a work that was not enough. Even blushing and heartbeat. This kind of "reap the consequences" behavior not only fails to dispel the idea of ??asking for words, but to a certain extent contributes to the social trend of asking for words for free.
Secondly, the calligrapher lacks sufficient respect for the art of calligraphy or has a mentality of taking advantage. In the eyes of some people, isn’t the so-called calligraphy work just writing Braille on rice paper? How much is the price of pen, ink, paper and inkstone, no matter how expensive it is? There are also some people (mostly those with market economy awareness) who are keenly aware of the money-making effect of the calligraphy and painting market. In order to maximize their interests, they would rather disrespect their own personality or the artistic labor of calligraphers. It has become normal to ask for words. These people often send calligraphers away with just two words, "thank you." If you can treat a calligrapher to a drink, that would be the highest reward for a calligrapher.
In fact, calligraphers don’t have to be shy when selling calligraphy. Because calligraphy works themselves are products, artistic products condensed with the hard work of calligraphers. We say that the clothes produced by manufacturers using cotton thread or chemical fiber materials can be sold for money, but can't the dignified artistic products produced by calligraphers with painstaking efforts go to the market in a dignified manner? Speaking of which, we are really lagging behind the ancients. According to Jin Weiheng's "Four Body Scripts" records, during the Eastern Han Dynasty, Shi Yiguan once said that he sold his writings in exchange for wine: "Emperor Ling was good at writing, and he was the most capable one, and Shi Yiguan was the best...or sometimes He went to a restaurant to drink without holding money, and because he wrote on the wall, the people who looked at him would pay for the wine, and he would destroy it if he had enough money. "Although Shi Yiguan's method of selling words in exchange for wine is questionable, he is not shy about the idea of ??selling words. The concept is really worth learning from today’s calligraphers. When it comes to openly selling calligraphy, the most influential person is undoubtedly Zheng Banqiao in the Qing Dynasty. According to Ye Shiguan's "Oupi Fishing Talk", Zheng Banqiao decided to polish his calligraphy and painting by himself at the age of 67. Among them, not only the size of the calligraphy is related to the price, but also it is said that "giving cash in cash will bring joy to the heart, and both calligraphy and painting will be good. Gifts are entanglements, and credit is especially bad debts..." Since then, calligraphers at that time ordered the performance of Runhuan. For the atmosphere. "When you have time to write about green mountains and sell them, don't make money to do evil in the world." This famous saying by Tang Yin, one of the "Four Wu Clan Schools" in the Ming Dynasty, also shows from another perspective that it is natural and noble for calligraphers to sell calligraphy for money.
Here I would like to emphasize to callers that real calligraphy works are by no means simply written on paper. Because calligraphy is a comprehensive art. It integrates philology, ancient poetry, aesthetics, philosophy, history and the legal requirements of calligraphy itself, as well as the calligrapher's own cultivation, emotion and mind. A good work must have a measured brushwork, spirited knotting, textured lines, changes in ink color, and a sense of charm throughout the entire text. To do this, calligraphers must not only have more than ten or even decades of skill in calligraphy, but also have to dabble in many cultural fields for many years to increase their skills outside of calligraphy. Historically, Su Shi's "Brush becomes a tomb, ink becomes a pond" and "A bald pen has thousands of pipes, and ink grinds thousands of ingots" is the best evidence. Shen Peng also wrote the poem "Three thousand square meters of waste paper hates a small amount of waste" to express the difficulty of learning books. We can also get a glimpse of the status of culture in calligraphy from the famous sayings: "The spirit of poetry and calligraphy comes from China" and "The excellence of calligraphy should be the method in the calligraphy, and the fun of calligraphy lies in the skill outside the calligraphy." The time and energy that culture consumes calligraphers cannot be directly calculated by money.
Therefore, when we say a good calligraphy work, its cost is very high. In addition, the creation process of calligraphy works is irreversible and the expression technique is single. It is really difficult to embody richness in singleness and show brilliance in irreversibility.
It can be seen from this that it is natural for calligraphers to sell calligraphy and they should do so openly. At the same time, we also advise those who ask for words to respect art and artistic labor, and to be ashamed of asking for words and to be proud of buying words. In this way, the calligraphy art market will develop healthily.