Qiao is a way of expression in calligraphy creation. Shuowen said, "Clever and clever." Joe is a flexible, skilled and shrewd user. Liang Wudi said in "Twelve Notes on Zhong You's Calligraphy": "Clever is layout." The so-called layout needs to be carefully managed. The more ingenious it is, the more painstaking it needs to be, from the wonderful arrangement of the whole calligraphy work to the fine expression of the single word and structure. Therefore, ingenious works often give people a sense of beauty and meet the aesthetic needs of the public.
Calligraphy creation needs clever expression. Ingeniously meet the basic requirements of "formal beauty" and "formal beauty" in creation, and have a reasonable beginning and end, integration and convergence. Preface to Lanting is a very clever work. The author writes calmly, and the structure and form of the characters are orderly, charming but natural. Carved, leaving no trace.
Practice makes perfect, and cleverness is the performance of calligraphy reaching maturity. Calligraphy creation needs real accumulation. Su Dongpo said: "When writing words, you should be familiar with your hands. When your hands are ripe, you will be full and more than enough. " When a person first comes into contact with calligraphy, his movements are usually not smooth, his stippling is not in place and his ink is not harmonious. The whole work gives people a feeling of being clumsy and out of breath, with a lot of ink stagnation. Like the sky before the storm, covered with dark clouds, there is no clear sky in Wan Li. Then gradually skilled, more and more dexterous hands, the surface of the paper roll will be clean, the line thickness and length will be accurate, and the slightest ink will not leak out. Zhao Meng? His familiarity is one of the forces that lead him to forget his heart and hand. When he writes, he has the demeanor of Jin people. He writes thousands of words every day, which is perfect, and his mastery of brushwork and writing is impeccable.
The concrete manifestation of cleverness is smallness. The smaller the thing, the easier it is to show cleverness, and the bigger the thing, the harder it is to show it, so people often say it is small. Small is small skill, that is, working hard in subtle places. In calligraphy creation, we only seek the wonder of painting, the beauty of words and rhyme. Zhao Meng? Tao Te Ching carefully plans the space of each word, and skillfully unfolds characters with different strokes and shapes in roughly the same space, so that it has the beauty of intermediate change. The cabinet styles in the Ming Dynasty are mostly small and exquisite, which can be described as meticulous work. But it is easy to be bound and difficult to control the whole. The written works present only a small emotion, a small pattern, and even boring. Calligraphers can't stick to smallness and don't bother to embellish too much.
Huang Tingjian criticized in Li Zhiyao's After Seeking Books: "Every book should be clumsy and redundant. I don't talk much recently, such as a bride's makeup comb, decorated with hundreds of kinds, and there is no fierce woman. " Much smarter, the heavier the trace of deliberate arrangement, followed by a lot of efforts in non-writing factors. Nowadays, people often let the author rack his brains for an exhibition, what color paper to use, what color ink to use, how to splicing and so on. In short, in the end, the smart color of the exhibition hall is too heavy, just like a rich banquet. There are all kinds of mouth-watering dishes on the table, but when guests taste them, they are all sweets, which inevitably makes people tired of eating without food. Zhao's "On Calligraphy" says: "Those who have an attitude are not only good at calligraphy; Skeleton is the ancestor of calligraphy. Today, we haven't set a good example, but we should pay attention to our attitude first. Why not give up the basics and pursue the end? Stop it! Stop it! "
People who really make good use of cleverness pursue "great cleverness and great clumsiness". The opposite of cleverness is clumsiness Shuowen explained: "clumsy, but a pity." My work is like an uncut rough jade, showing a simple and implicit artistic conception. She doesn't have smart external beauty, and she wasn't as charming as smart at first, but the longer she is in contact, the more likable and interesting she looks. Choosing a clever expression of calligraphy language is like walking a street, full of beauty and excitement. Expressing calligraphy language in a clumsy way is like taking an unpretentious path, cold, gentle and profound. In calligraphy, "skillful and clumsy" has become a higher aesthetic standard than skillful work.
Clumsiness is an emotional appeal of calligraphy, even a spiritual return of calligraphy skills and calligraphy language. The word "self-defeating" is used to describe a person who thinks he is smart, but ends up screwing things up. This is a derogatory term. If put into calligraphy, if a calligrapher can turn cleverness into clumsiness, then he must have a high foundation of cleverness, so many calligraphers aim at clumsiness. There is nothing wrong with this positioning, but the formation of clumsiness is supported by the accumulation of skills and personal understanding of calligraphy, but it is just an empty shell, and the displayed works are often chaotic.
The clumsy work gives people a feeling of being honest and peaceful, that is, it has popular calligraphy language and rich artistic connotation. The park exists in a primitive state, showing childlike interest. This requires writers to put their inner feelings directly between paper and ink. This is one of our nature, without any deliberate carving. The Monument to the Song Gaoling Temple in the Northern Wei Dynasty is quite natural, with a mixed structure and different sizes. Many places seem immature, but they have unparalleled simplicity and natural taste.
The concrete manifestation of clumsiness is massiness. Sun's Book Score says that ancient calligraphy is simple and modern calligraphy is beautiful. Indeed, before the Jin dynasty, calligraphy was simple and honest, and after the Jin dynasty, calligraphy was smooth and flying. This is mainly the result of the transformation of lines from thick to thin. Up to now, most of the calligraphy works handed down before the Jin Dynasty were cast and printed, which greatly deepened the thickness of lines to some extent. Three Dishes of Stone, Shi Guwen, Carving on the Road while Appreciating Stone, and Zhang Menglong are all excellent in jade and gold, showing a magnificent, dignified and simple style. However, the calligraphy works handed down after the Jin Dynasty are mainly paper calligraphy, and the lines produced by the friction between pen and paper are smoother and more natural, which is far less heavy than those produced by casting and printing.
Comparing folk calligraphy with courtyard calligraphy, we will find that folk calligraphy is much more simple and naive. Folk calligraphy often has an indifferent attitude, which is true and accurate, and naturally produces a sense of pleasure and realism. Although folk calligraphy is not profound in technique, its most lovely feature lies in its simplicity and truth. Such as Han bamboo slips, penalty bricks, epitaphs, etc. In Han bamboo slips, we often see several prominent strokes, such as a vertical painting pouring down, occupying a large part of the space, which makes people feel so abrupt but so natural. There is nothing people can do about it. The calligraphy of the courtyard pavilion is beautiful, graceful and mellow, and its personality is greater than personality, which conforms to the royal aesthetic. His calligraphy is to please the saints and gain fame and fortune. Every word is cautious, and I dare not blend in with my emotions. Although Guan Ge's calligraphy is very skillful, the biggest deficiency is that it is not simple and true, and it is not self-centered.
Clumsiness is a kind of emotional appeal pursued by calligraphy creation, but it is also necessary to grasp moderation and go too far. Too much pursuit of simplicity will lead to the negative side. Extreme simplicity will make people feel too hasty, hasty and careless, which will reduce the requirements for artistic composition. Some people try their best to write all Chinese characters on the appearance of a cross-legged plowman and a dull rural idiot in order to pursue simplicity and fully mobilize the suggestive function of each Chinese character, which inevitably makes people feel a little overdone. Calligraphy does not replace vigor with Mu Na, but symbolizes simplicity with scribbling. Calligraphy with messy hair and rough clothes is not the embodiment of true temperament, but the rigor of creation and the lack of artistic elements in pen and ink.
The pursuit of simple style needs to express itself truly on the basis of widely absorbing traditional nutrition. Deng's calligraphy in Qing Dynasty was incompatible with pavilion calligraphy. He extensively absorbed the nutrients in the inscriptions and made them comprehensive, creating a typical seal script of the Qing Dynasty. Its lines are round and thick, and its structure is slightly long but vigorous, showing a quaint style. Writing without the accumulation of letters and pens is self-expression, but it is not the art of calligraphy. Simplicity still needs to be nourished.
Throughout the history of calligraphy, the word "Qiao Zhuo" has been constantly and repeatedly appearing in people's field of vision, which is not only the display of calligraphy style, but also the development process of various calligraphy styles. We can list such a train of thought: the free combination of Oracle Bone Inscriptions and the pre-Qin Da Zhuan ―― the unity of Xiao Zhuan ―― the diversity of official scripts in the Han Dynasty ―― the ancient Weibei calligraphy ―― Tang Kai with strict statutes ―― Song Sijia's Shang Yi ―― Zhao Meng? Fu Shan's "Four Ning's and Four No's" and even the alternation of steles and columns are the pursuit of cleverness and clumsiness. The word Qiao Zhuo reflects the change of people's aesthetic tendency, and any party will die if it develops to the extreme.
At the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, Wang Ruoxu said in Poems of Southern Hunan: "If cleverness is clever, if cleverness is insufficient, the combination of cleverness and clumsiness will make people tired. Only when you are clever, you can be clever. " Smart and clumsy together, just like a person has a beautiful appearance and a simple and straightforward personality, so that he is not tired of looking at it. So is calligraphy.