Li Zhimin's works of art

Lin Sanzhi's cursive script is elegant beauty, while Li Zhimin's cursive script is boundless beauty, with different styles and complementary rigidity and softness, and can be called a saint. In the contemporary cursive script, it has the reputation of "South Forest and North Plum". Li Zhimin replaced the master of calligraphy with all his academic qualifications and advocated "the combination of inscriptions and calligraphy", which is a great contribution of him. He writes cursive script in a "pure grass" way and rarely mixes it with cursive script. His pen is simple, short, dry, sharp, intermittent and dangerous. There are not many long and continuous lines, but his steps are brisk, which is quite similar to Huai Su's rubbings of A Thousand Words of Grass. But the difference is that Li Zhimin's cursive script is more sharp, with sharp lines, and sometimes there are "burrs" in the brush line, and sometimes there is a harsh feeling, which has the unique thickness, strength and momentum of the monument.

Mr Li Zhimin's cursive script has a strong personality. Cursive script has always been an art of continuous lines, but Li Zhimin's cursive script is a kind of "point" walk-every line segment has the trend of "shrinking lines and changing points", and a work as a whole is like a dance of points, so Li Zhimin's cursive script can be called "scattered school", which is unique and groundbreaking in the history of cursive script in China.

In order to avoid the increase of points from hindering the pleasure of pen gesture flow, Li Zhimin seldom uses "word connection" and relies more on the edge (body connection) of the word and the direction (potential connection) of the pen to achieve personalized effect. Moreover, the structure of many words is intentionally incomplete, and things that should be done with one word, such as comparison, echo and remedy, are often promoted collectively with multiple words. Here, a word is often a part of the traditional complete word, and the word group of two or more words is the complete concept of a word-the same is true of multiple words into one word. Whether his pen and pen are continuous or not, there is a strong and concentrated force rushing in front and pulling a string of words at the back, and his books are scattered and gathered together.

There are two kinds of knots: one is high left and low right, and the other is high right and low left. These two structures also drive the lines to be multi-dimensional, and the left and right inclination of the font brings out the movement and melody. The left high and right low junction here is different from the ordinary structure. On the one hand, the left height and right height of the glyph are beautiful. All the horizontal lines in the whole word also show a trend of high left and low right, which gives the viewer a sense of psychological weightlessness and ups and downs. It is these glyphs and lines that make Li Zhimin's cursive brushwork have one more dimension than ordinary calligraphy. The qi pulse has the characteristics of swing and gyration, and each line seems to be rotating. Appreciating such works will have a wonderful feeling. Therefore, it will be strange to look at his calligraphy, because the formation of his cursive structure is the result of a single stroke, rather than the structure determining the strokes. The result of the first stroke is that you will have enough energy to pay attention to the rhythm of strokes, and the length of strokes and the shape of words should cater to the strokes. It is madness to regard points, lines and structures as materials for calligraphers to touch individual rhythms and pursue vivid rhythms, rather than as ends.

Li Zhimin's cursive script opened the core of Mad Grass, which is rarely achieved by contemporary calligraphers. His style is so natural that it doesn't matter. The extensive use of various oblique lines has distanced his writing rhythm and brushstrokes from those of ancient and modern cursive writers, and Li Zhimin is the one who truly understands the realm and melody of cursive writing.

Objectively speaking, Li Zhimin's cursive script, because of its special writing style, is too nervous, forced, depressed and restrained. His writing lines are different from his flat books, full of frustration, with no ups and downs in the middle. For example, when writing a line, his pen focuses on two ends, starting and closing. This line is the connection between two points, with a bang in the middle and a sum on it. Thankfully, his brushwork is rich, more abundant than Zhang Ruitu's, which can make up for the tension in his works to some extent.

If only Mr. Li hadn't died so early. Sometimes an artist's progress is ruthlessly blocked by his short life. However, compared with the artistic level of modern and contemporary calligraphers, he still has an artistic height that is difficult to surpass. His calligraphy attainments and realm will eventually be recognized by China calligraphy circles and more and more people.