Cai Yong: Creating "Flying White Style" and Writing "Nine Trends" to Explain Calligraphy Experience
Cai Yong, a famous civil servant in the Eastern Han Dynasty, had a daughter named Cai Wenji, who was a very famous talented woman at that time. Cai Yong is extremely filial by nature. It is said that when his mother was seriously ill, he never took off his clothes for more than 70 days, regardless of the cold, heat and climate change. He served before his mother fell. Cai Yong studied under Taifu Huguang, and was good at poetry, astronomy and mathematics, playing drums and playing the piano. He was the last master of Ci and Fu in Han Dynasty. His ci and fu are small, suitable for life, teaching students in accordance with their aptitude and changeable.
The human feelings in ci and fu are full. His masterpiece Shu Xing Fu is rich in emotion, short and pithy, critical and bold. Cai Yong is good at seal and official script, especially official script calligraphy. Cai Yong is good at it. His calligraphy structure is serious and neat, and he dives on his back bit by bit, creating a set of flying white calligraphy.
According to records, Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty ordered people to build the Hongdu Department, and craftsmen dipped a broom in white powder to write on the wall. Deeply inspired, Cai Yong created a flying white body, as if with a dying brush in one go. At that time, it was a unique calligraphy font, which was also loved by later calligraphers and widely circulated. It can be said that it had a wide influence on later calligraphy.
Moreover, Cai Yong specializes in calligraphy and has written several works, such as Old Things, Babylon and Shi Zhuan, and summed up some characteristics of calligraphy creation:
Cai Yong talked about the "potential" in calligraphy in "Nine Potential". The situation of calligraphy form appreciation needs to pay attention to space art and express the situation of calligraphy with form. Everything in the world has yin and yang, and calligraphy art also needs the combination of yin and yang. Calligraphy can fully and clearly use the contradictions and poles of things to express the situation. The brushwork is ups and downs, the strokes will pause first, and the strokes will hide their heads and protect their tails. Just as the vitality of life is in healthy skin, the power center of fonts must be in the middle of words.
In On Pen, Cai Yong said at the beginning that calligraphy writing is mainly about expressing feelings. You have to open your arms and indulge your temperament with your heart in order to write elegant and unique words. Cai Yong's outlook on life and values is dominated by Confucianism, but his font art is influenced by Taoism. He respects the extension of calligraphy creation and understands the laws and characteristics of calligraphy art. He said that if he can't get rid of secular distractions and be limited by the secular, he can't create calligraphy with an ethereal and refined aesthetic mentality. If you only have calligraphy in your heart, then the creation of calligraphy will be more perfect;
In Shi Zhuan, Cai Yong gave full play to the aesthetic thought of pictographic images, and his description of objects and images was very vivid. He concluded that calligraphy writing can't just stick to form, and calligraphy art can't just copy. Art originates from real life, but it is not completely real life. Like a raging torrent, you can't catch it. Cai Yong's "form" is to pursue the vividness, vividness and interest of calligraphy art, and pay attention to the close combination of "form" and "rhyme" to express the beauty of calligraphy art.
Xiping's Book of Songs: the first book of songs, leading the era of "engraving history"
Xiping Shijing was carved in the Lingdi period of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Founded in Luoyang Imperial College, it is also called imperial academy's Book of Songs. This Shijing is the earliest official version of Confucian classics in China's long history. The whole article is written in a very standard eight-part official script, so it is also called "One-word Shijing".
The fonts in The Book of Songs are all square and well-known. When The Book of Songs was first carved successfully, many students came to visit and study. Every day, they go to the stone tablet to copy and study, and there are more than 1000 vehicles, which can fill the whole street. The Book of Songs pioneered the engraving of The Book of Songs in China, which reflected the great achievements of official script in Han Dynasty and was praised as a model of calligraphy by calligraphy learners at that time.
Calligraphy reached its heyday in the Han Dynasty. Due to the need of political and economic development in Han Dynasty, simplification and beauty became more important, which provided a good environment for the development of official script, so writing official script prevailed in Han Dynasty.
According to records, the Five Classics of the Han Dynasty stood side by side, and all the classics saw and sang. There is no unified official book for everyone to circulate. During the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Confucian books that were "exclusive to Confucianism" were regarded as classics, and doctoral officers were set up to give lectures as the basis for judging irregularities and making decisions.
At that time, Confucianism was the official academic orthodoxy, and the doctoral examination was often controversial because of different words. Some candidates even rewrote the words of the royal collection of Lantai lacquer books by bribery. Cai Yong discovered this problem and asked the Emperor Ling for permission to define the Six Classics. Therefore, Cai Yong and others carved 46 inscriptions to proofread all the classic texts, which played a very positive role in correcting the perforation of Confucian classics and maintaining the unity of classic texts.
Later, because of the war, the stone tablet was destroyed. In the Northern Song Dynasty, this incomplete stone tablet was excavated. The official script of Xiping Jing is exquisite, beautiful and vivid. Its own silk script is exposed, the text structure is closely combined, the font is graceful and smooth, and there are many schools, which led the development of official script in Han Dynasty and laid the cornerstone of its development.
His brush strokes are appropriate in shade, dry and wet pens are interchangeable, the size is uneven, and the brushwork is subtle and ups and downs, giving people a sense of beauty. The typical feature is that there is a strong sense of force and dynamic curve between strokes. The application of "twists and turns" and "swallow's tail" perfectly shows the aesthetic feeling of the intersection and mutual reflection of straight lines and curves, and the combination of real pen and virtual pen in this paper is just right.
Its solemn style gives people a uniform aesthetic feeling of writing, and the beauty of "wave" and "fold" is vividly expressed in the inscription. The so-called wave means that the strokes are like curved waves, and "folding" means that the strokes are like the tails of geese, and the strokes are long and horizontal, just like the heads of silkworms. The strokes in the middle pitch with this wave, and the end is called the goose tail.
In the use of pens, there are hidden pens, exposed pens, round pens, Fang Bi and other brushstrokes, with beautiful gestures; In the font structure, Bian Xiao's vertical bar is changed to a square, which makes people sink and the curve is changed to a straight circle. The horizontal direction is from left to right, and the up-and-down movement is limited. The font is characterized by the eight-part writing style of sweeping left and picking right, which is suitable for both dry and wet use. All horizontal paintings in the font are from beginning to end.
That is to say, in the process of writing, the hidden front forms a shape similar to the silkworm head, which is a gesture with "wave". At the end of writing, raise the pen obliquely to the upper right at the pen receiving place, and the official script used in the inscription is the basic way to simplify the official script. To better master official script, we must understand the circle of official script.
The strokes of official script in inscriptions, whether straight or square, all contain the arc potential of seal script. The straight strokes in the official script used by Cai Yong often fluctuate obviously and have great vitality. In fact, the strokes of official script are based on the movement of strokes. Moreover, in the evolution of redundant points in seal script, the official script in the inscription separates points from strokes, which simplifies the disconnection and makes the strokes of later regular script have the same topic and connect with each other. The thickness of strokes is remarkable, the strokes are distinct and varied.
Short cross and long cross have their own advantages. The short cross is turned into a cross, and the tail is protected by tail protection, which is a bit like seal script. The hidden nib of the long horizontal pen is reversed upwards, and then rotated downwards to the right with Fang Bi to show the posture of the silkworm head. Then write to the right, the strokes are a little sluggish, and no drifting is allowed. When it reaches two-thirds of the horizontal stroke, it is deeply pressed to bring out a downward recess, and then
Moreover, the bottom one of several horizontal lines appears at the same time, and the rest are short horizontal lines, with long horizontal lines and long horizontal lines. The long horizontal line uses the dovetail of the silkworm head, which is what the predecessors said: "Silkworms have no two colors, and geese don't fly together."
Conclusion:
Cai Yong's Xi Shi Ping Jing, as the earliest Confucian classic officially finalized, uses the standard eight-part essay. Cai Yong is mainly good at seal script and official script. His flying white pen was famous at that time, and his calligraphy forms were diverse, which was deeply loved by future generations. It is also praised by the book as wonderful and magical. He created the first Buddhist scripture of stone carving in China, set an example for the world with stone carving, led a new era of studying the history of Buddhist scripture of stone carving, provided a model of Confucian classic teaching materials for students, and inspired the invention of punching and rubbing technology. He was a pioneer of printing.