Zhang Yu's Calligraphy Characteristics

Zhang's book is a beginner for Zhao Mengfu, and he entered Song Xue's room. Zhao instructed him to study Li Yong's Monument to General Yunhui, and he got a dense Chinese font, and his brushwork became sharp and vigorous, which shows the book Tai Xian Ting Ji. He removed the elegance and calmness of Zhao Shu and added elegance and nobility. His "Jiusuo Mountain Poetry Regular Script Volume" has the bold and elegant spirit of the Six Dynasties. Later, he traveled more and more. After the age of 60, he took off his cassock, returned to Confucianism, lived in seclusion in Hangzhou, and lived with a group of hermits such as Huang, Ni Zan and Yang Weizhen, especially as a companion. After that, great changes have taken place in his thoughts and life. He indulged in debauchery, having fun, and coveted "a moment of spring is priceless." Calligraphy, he was also a private scholar in Mi Fei, and his calligraphy style became unrestrained. His masterpiece "Climbing to the Top of the Axis of Nanfeng's Poems and Calligraphy" uses a special contrast between density and agitation in style and composition with a slender pen from truth to truth, and the work presents an extreme recluse scholar. Therefore, Zhou Zhishi, a scholar in the Ming Dynasty, commented on "You He Tang Mo Tuo": "Zhang Boyu is healthy, and he is close to the monarch." This aesthetic standpoint naturally belongs to the category of Zhao Mengfu's aesthetic moderation.

The calligraphy axis of Deng Nanfeng is a vertical axis, with a height of 108.4 cm and a width of 42.6 cm, which is rare in the calligraphy works of Yuan Dynasty. According to the Complete Works of China's Calligraphy, among the nearly 300 works in seven volumes compiled by 80 calligraphers in Yuan Dynasty, there are only 7 vertical works, including 2 by Yang Weizhen, 4 by Changyu and 0 by Ni Zan/kloc. It can be said that Zhang Yu and Yang Weizhen are the pioneers of China's calligraphy from Han miscellaneous, Jun, Jun to vertical axis. Among the four vertical axis works handed down from generation to generation, the brand-new Autumn Poetry Axis, which exists in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, is the earliest one. Written in his later years (i.e. 59 years old), the scale is/kloc-0 154.3cm×34.3cm. The cursive script with seven quatrains is two lines to the right, and the next paragraph reads eight particularly small running scripts at the bottom left: "Dayuan to Zhengxin Temple. Obviously, the author has not found the proper composition of the manuscript fee, which should be regarded as his attempt to write a vertical book. The following "Zi Zhongshu Poetry Axis" is written in small letters, just like the above "Deng Nanfeng Axis", and there is no signature. Obviously, Zhang Yu has not found a mature structural position in her composition.

Two of the four-axis books are less than three feet high, which is still very small compared with the Gaotang axis, which often exceeds the height after the middle of the Ming Dynasty, but this change has caused great changes in calligraphy creation and aesthetic touch. If a large number of cursive scrolls by Zhang Xu, Huai Su and Huang Tingjian have completely divorced from practicality and entered the state of pure artistic creation, then Zhang Yu's vertical axis works have further divorced from practical functions in aesthetic form, so it can be said that this vertical axis book has entered the state of pure art from creation to aesthetics. Zhang Yu's pioneering work in vertical axis calligraphy creation.

Under the tide of retro-ism, he verbally returned to Wei and Jin Dynasties, just like Zhao Mengfu, but in creative practice, he is still in the same strain as Su, Huang and Mi in the Northern Song Dynasty, and is essentially an opponent of Zhao Mengfu's calligraphy.