Development of official transformation

The wooden slips unearthed in Qingchuan, Sichuan Province and the bamboo slips unearthed in Fangmatan, Tianshui, Gansu Province provide us with physical materials, which irrefutably prove that there was a transitional font that evolved from Dazhuan to Lishu before the reunification of Qin Dynasty. Qingchuan wooden slips are works in the mid-Warring States period, which are 80 years earlier than the Qin bamboo slips of Sleeping in the Tiger Land. There are glyphs that are exactly the same as those of seal script, and there are glyphs that are quite close to those of Han Li, both of which are rare. Most glyphs show strokes, strokes and strokes of official script. Compared with seal script, it reduces inflection points, simplifies complexity, turns round into square, and changes the shape from narrow to square or flat. This is an extremely important calligraphy work, and the font has evolved from seal script to official script. Qin bamboo slips of Fangmatan in Tianshui were published from the late Warring States to the eighth year of Qin Shihuang (239 BC). Its "version A" seems to have been written earlier than the "version B", and this volume was written just right, so it was careless. This is usually done by selecting short strokes and extending suffixes. What is particularly noteworthy is that when he quickly writes horizontal paintings, he naturally forms a pattern of "stopping at the beginning of the pen and lifting lightly", which is the embryonic form of Han Li's typical stroke "Silkworm Head and phoenix tail". These unknown calligraphers more than 2,000 years ago provided the most powerful evidence for the dating of the extremely important official script in the history of calligraphy in China.

More than 1 100 Qin bamboo slips unearthed in Yunmeng Sleeping Tiger Land, Hubei Province, have rich and colorful styles. Written before and after Qin Shihuang unified the six countries. It is meaningful to compare seal script with it at the same time. Small seal structure is round, positive and balanced; Qin bamboo slips are stiff, sideways and sideways; There is a turning point in Xiao Zhuan and a turning point in Qin Bamboo Slips. The important difference between official script and seal script is that the round turn and square fold are at first sight; The lines of Xiao Zhuan are even and do not insist on rhythm, and Qin bamboo slips have obvious sense of lifting rhythm with pens; Small seal strokes are consistent in horizontal and vertical directions, while Qin bamboo slips are thin and thick in horizontal and vertical directions; There is no wave in seal script, and Qin bamboo slips begin to pick waves and brush ... all these show the results of the complex relationship between seal script and official script. The establishment of official script also means that the spatial modeling moves from rectangle to rectangle, which means that the movement of pen gesture can be opened horizontally. It means that "form" can not only meet the needs of readability of words, but also enhance the aesthetic feeling of brushwork. It is a great change compared with the stable and upright structure of bronze inscriptions and the closed and restrained structure of Xiao Zhuan, and it is a higher-level space creation method compared with the rich and colorful early bronze inscriptions. The spatial structure of "Suishi" is restricted by hieroglyphics, which limits the subjectivity of the author to the natural form, while the official script completely enters the space with abstract lines. Although it is still limited by the formal space of regular Chinese characters, mainly between words, lines and columns, the internal space construction of words, such as stroke length, main sequence, oblique correction, straight correction, back correction, adhesion, increase and decrease, echo, farewell, etc., can all produce various rich changes because of the calligrapher's subjectivity. The formal beauty factor of space construction in China's calligraphy has received unprecedented attention in Lishu.

The appearance of official script not only contributes greatly to the space construction, but also is the innovation of its brushwork. First of all, the pen gesture changed from curved to straight, which resulted in Fang Bi based on the round pen. Because there is a sense of rhythm in pressing and using the pen, it is called "twists and turns", so the method of "opposing people's level" appeared, and the dew front followed. When starting a pen and changing the direction of action, the different changes in speed and strength have produced flanks, and the application and changes of calligraphy have been unprecedentedly enriched here, laying the foundation for the development of calligraphy in a completely personalized direction.

Due to the richness of brushwork, such as the unity of opposing factors, such as center and flank, hidden front and exposed front, bundle and dispersion, disease and astringency, lightness and heaviness, and square and circle, China's calligraphy began to notice that the shape and changes of lines themselves, in addition to building space for fonts, are also an extremely rich vocabulary system-lines themselves finally entered the historical stage independently. From Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the earliest mature writing in China, to the bronze inscriptions in Zhu Fan, and the inscriptions on stones and heavy objects in the Qin Dynasty, font numbers often change in different styles. The differences of these styles are mainly based on the spatial structure. And the feeling of movement disappears in the perfect framework of self-sufficient individuals. In Oracle Bone Inscriptions's inscriptions, our ancestors' naivety in space construction concealed their dullness in linear motion. In Shi Guwen's period, the sense of movement changed from dullness to rigidity, and in Qin Shihuang's seal script period, this rigidity further changed into the almost disappearance of the sense of movement. Qin Xiao's absolutely unified tailoring of spatial structure makes it impossible to take into account the rich changes of lines themselves, and Xiao Zhuan has become the most "quiet and beautiful" model of all fonts. From the perspective of historical development, such "quiet beauty" is likely to stifle the artistic life of calligraphy. Fortunately, Xiao Zhuan has never been a typical calligraphy style in China's book history. Even in the Qin Shihuang period, besides amenorrhea and other official festivals, it also had its place as a writing standard, and its scope of use was extremely narrow. Xiao Zhuan has lost the support of practicality and artistic vitality. It has become a vague existence or the existence of etiquette and patterns, so as to understand the significance of the rise of official scripts in the Qin and Han Dynasties in Random Thoughts. A fundamental betrayal of Xiao Zhuan by the official script of Qin and Han Dynasties is that it completely broke the rigid spirit of Xiao Zhuan and replaced it with an open structure and moving lines. The early aesthetic focus of China's calligraphy history shifted from the construction of spatial form to the movement and change of lines themselves. If Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jin Wen initiated the "line" of China's calligraphy art, the secret lies in that the ancients gradually evolved pictographic pictures into purified abstract structures and lines, thus laying the foundation for China's calligraphy to move towards "line art", then the aesthetic content of Qin and Han dynasties' calligraphy lies in the organic combination of the flowing beauty of lines in the process of time and the architectural beauty formed in space slicing, forming an advanced art form that drives space with time and controls space with time, thus enabling China to. Therefore, in the history of calligraphy, we call the process of official change a prelude to the consciousness of calligraphy art.