Professor Liu Yuxue, my close friend of calligraphy for more than 20 years, has profound knowledge, elegant temperament and profound Chinese studies, specializing in calligraphy and painting and Confucianism. As an academic leader in related universities, he has been engaged in teaching and research in China University of Political Science and Law for many years, such as "Aesthetics of Calligraphy and Painting", "Research on China Traditional Culture" and "Writing". He has made remarkable achievements in scientific research, teaching and art, and won the title of "Master of Humanities" and many awards.
Liu Jiaoshou studied Confucianism with his grandfather, Mr. Yan Shuming, since childhood, and then studied calligraphy and painting with Professor Xu Beiting, a master of Chinese studies. For decades, he has been lonely and has been writing. His seal works are mostly published in various books, newspapers, ceremonies and documents, and also appear in the titles, characters, plaques and foreheads of universities, municipal governments, libraries, shopping malls, factories, hospitals, conference centers and other enterprises and institutions at home and abroad, and are widely praised as "the master of seal script". In recent years, Liu Jiaoshou was invited to publish many excellent seal scripts for many countries or some related "ceremonies" or "documents", and was invited to create seal scripts for major national leaders and some old leaders, which was well received.
Liu Tizhuan's artistic attainments can be described in many ways. Here we can use the theory of "cage heaven and earth, defeat everything and be unique" to comment.
Lu Ji, a famous art theorist in the Jin Dynasty, pointed out in Wen Fu: "Cage heaven and earth in form, frustrate everything in pen". As far as the field of calligraphy and painting is concerned, this can be understood as follows: an accomplished painter must fully express his unique and lofty "existence realm" formed by the accumulation of aesthetics, art, culture, life, personality and temperament with the pen and ink modeling of "less is love" (Liu Xie's words). In this sense, painting is difficult, and learning books is even more difficult. Therefore, the ancients summed it up as "learning painting for three years and learning books for ten years". Anyone who has worked hard in the field of calligraphy and made concrete achievements will have his own experience. Throughout the magnificent history of calligraphy in China, there are only a few dozen calligraphers who really "win over the world", "start a school", "defeat the enemy" and "have their own characteristics". Therefore, I don't want to follow the footsteps of China's book history. In ancient times, calligraphy and painting were homologous, and then seal script was formed. Seal script is the first stage of the development of Chinese characters, because it has not been separated from "object graphics", and "writing with a pen" is relatively simple, and strokes are mostly "straight and curved". After Qin Shihuang unified China, he vigorously promoted the policy of "the same source of characters", ordered Li Si and others to sort out the characters and write them in a unified way, and issued the seal script by compulsory measures of national laws and regulations, thus forming the "Qin Zhuan", that is, the "small seal script" corresponding to the "big seal script". Since the Han and Tang Dynasties, due to the increasing popularity of official script, regular script, running script and cursive script, seal script has gradually withdrawn from the field of "sacred Chinese characters" and only occupied an "aesthetic" place in seal cutting, tablet inscription, calligraphy and painting, so there are few famous seal scripts in the history of China culture and art. After Li Si in Qin Dynasty, only Li, Deng, Zhao and others had seal script works in Tang Dynasty, which were comparable to other calligraphy masters. In other words, there are few masters of seal script in the history of China, which can be described as "rare". Today, Professor Liu Yuxue, with his profound knowledge of Chinese studies, vicissitudes of life, unique aesthetic thinking, solid knowledge of calligraphy and painting, long-term painstaking efforts and foresight of the times, chose seal cutting as the main direction, found a new way in ancient and modern times, studied paper and pens endlessly, and finally won the reputation of "master of seal cutting calligraphy" today. This has to make people feel good.
Huang Tingjian, a great calligrapher in the Song Dynasty, pointed out that "it is realistic to form a family". Throughout the course of Liu Jiaoshou's seal cutting, people can clearly find that Liu's seal cutting not only has strict tradition inheritance, but also has distinctive times innovation.
As far as traditional inheritance is concerned, for decades, Liu Jiaoshou has tirelessly read ancient posts, assiduously copied famous artists, "stood on the shoulders of giants", and devoted himself to studying, drawing lessons from and absorbing the seal cutting brush and ink, structure, composition and Zhao of ancient seal cutting celebrities such as Zhongshan, Cai Houding and Bell and Qing Confucianism. After a long period of hard study and calligraphy practice, I finally formed a unique Liu seal.
Zhong Rong, a literary critic in the Liang dynasty, pointed out in his poem: "If you don't learn from the ancients, you can't;" It seems like the ancients, where am I; Ancient words, ancient words; It is almost straightforward to spit out the old and absorb the new, and points out that "old hands are decadent, but talented people are bold", which means that talented artists must dare to "discard the old and seek the new" From the perspective of "keeping pace with the times", the innovative features of Liu's seal can be summarized as three points:
First, seek novelty with a pen. "Liu Ti Chuan" uses a pen to apply ink, which is contrary to the traditional thin and rigid state. It has strengthened the strength of using the pen, strong wrist force, straight brushwork, anticlimactic, big drops of ink, small imaginary, anti-in and flat out, the center gains momentum, and it is graceful, stable in stippling, generous in lines, vivid in ink and rigorous in pen and ink. This strongly and powerfully demonstrates Liu Tizhuan's artistic dialectical power in "modeling" of pen, painting, point and line. Among them, there are many artistic contrasts, such as thickness, shade, black and white, reality, length, straightness, concealment, rigidity, rigidity, discontinuity, square garden, moist, withering, fat, dry and wet, skillful, flexion and extension, Ji Xu, scattered. Especially at the end of the pen or word, it is white or light, simple or imaginary, and it is both rigid and flexible, which has great aesthetic charm and is enough to leave people with artistic space for "image reconstruction".
The second is structural innovation. Liu Tiyin's knot structure is mostly composed of the following structures: tight at the top, loose at the bottom, heavy at the top, simple at the top and scattered at the bottom, and stable at the bottom. This forms the beauty of multi-vision and multi-level "density alternation". Correspondingly, the beauty of word formation of Liu Zhuanshu lies in its vigorous pursuit of the artistic effect of "harmony between yin and yang", that is, the structure of words is ambiguous, that is, "yin pen"; There is also cleanliness, that is, the "positive pen". Specifically, the place where the pen is raised, handed in, received or stamped is mostly cloudy or hazy, or like splashing ink, or like fog; The front of the main pen, the middle of the line, the end of the line or the end of the word are mostly clear or bright, or like pine, cypress and bamboo, or like a strange peak hanging over the river. "Printing pen" is helpful to induce the imagination, association and fantasy of the viewer, thus forming image thinking with different "contexts", and then inspiring people to re-create, supplement or extend the artistic conception of seal script; While "Yang Bi" helps to highlight the dominant features of seal script, thus forming the mindset of "context" of seal script for the viewer and further strengthening its theme. The ingenious combination of "Yin Pen" and "Yang Pen" is enough to vividly and skillfully expand the realm of seal script, and greatly release the dialectical energy of China's traditional aesthetics in seal script. It can be seen that the structure of Liu Zhuanshu is innovative. In the process of creation and molding, we not only strictly followed the traditional "Six Books" standard in China, but also made a bold breakthrough and exploration on the "structural configuration" of seal script according to the needs of modern aesthetic lyric, which injected novel and flexible artistic life into the ancient seal script with modern aesthetic significance.
Third, rule innovation. Liu Tizhuan's representative works are mostly based on the need of "expressing feelings and aspirations" in a specific font. In the layout of the article, Liu Ti is dedicated to breaking through the traditional tablet of seal script, which is ingenious and interesting. For example, the 2×4-foot banner "Old vines are crying faintly, bridges are flowing with people", in which the word "water" suddenly falls sideways like a stream, thus forming the overall video beauty of the work. Another example is "How Beautiful the Jiangshan is", which is 2×2 feet square, exaggerates and distorts the female character of "Jiao" and returns to the side of "Qiao" in an interesting way, thus forming a "first-class" sense of Jiangshan. Another example is "Apricot Blossoms and Spring Rain in the South of the Yangtze River", which is 2×2 feet square. The words "apricot", "rain" and "river" are small and compact, like slaves, while the words "flower", "spring" and "south" are exaggerated, and the word "spring" is bigger, like an emperor, thus highlighting the work "spring" and effectively getting rid of the above plane layout. This can't help but make people think deeply and amaze.
The artistic style of Liu's body seal is magnificent, like the giant valley of Xiongshan hanging over the Sichuan Waterfall, with misty hookah, colorful weather and magnificent momentum. Liu Tizhuan's artistic melody, like Beethoven's music, is magnificent and breathtaking. Si Kongtu, an outstanding aesthetician in the Tang Dynasty, pointed out in his Twenty-four Poems: "Poetry is a hero, full of everything, and there is no room." What this theory points to, emphasizes and highlights is the artistic principle of "vigorous and extreme". As far as calligraphy is concerned, throughout history, seal calligraphy has formed a fixed pattern with thin strokes, little stippling and inflexible composition. If there is a breakthrough or innovation, it will be easy to talk. What is commendable is that in the contemporary era of "keeping pace with the times", Liu Sports College has a unique "majestic" realm, which can be described as "netting the world, defeating everything and creating its own face".
August 2008