Chapter 2: Thoughts on the beauty of Chinese calligraphy
Practicing calligraphy has been very difficult for me since I was a child - during calligraphy classes in elementary school, the teacher would always ask everyone to write Paste the words on the wall and circle the highlights.
At that time, I was the only child who did not have any circles in his homework.
When I was in junior high school, I was very envious of the class monitor’s good calligraphy. In my senior year of high school, I practiced penmanship every day when I had nothing to do.
The fifteen minutes before the first morning reading class were spent tracing the block letters on the plastic template.
A year later, a steel plate font was carved out.
Later, I spent a long time to change myself. Some people said that my writing is not as beautiful as when I was in high school, but I don’t think so.
Because it is dynamic, a little more lively than the original rigid thing.
This is the feeling when reading Jiang Xun’s book.
When he talks about calligraphy, he always starts with people.
In the traditional Chinese calligraphy concept, writing is a very solemn thing.
Moreover, the first thing when writing is to be a good person.
The emphasis is on "a straight heart and a straight pen". Chinese people like to talk about character, and calligraphy is a reflection of character.
If you can practice calligraphy well, you will get extra points in the imperial examination where there are many talents - this shows the importance of writing.
In fact, appreciating any calligraphy work without the author will be in a cloud.
For example, "Han Shi Tie", which is ranked third in running script in the world, I have never been able to really like it. It was not until I read Jiang Xun's "Desolate Monologue Writing" that I understood what kind of complex state of mind it was. The famous post came out.
The bamboo slips unearthed from the ancient city of Liye in Hunan always remind people of the city officials who fulfilled their duties.
As for Yan Zhenqing’s steady writing style, it reminds people of the prosperous period of the Tang Dynasty - any font is inseparable from that era, and writing itself is a period of history.
And the accumulated ink is both my private history and the public written history.
So you can’t write without seriousness.
Only by practicing the rules can you "do whatever you want without becoming more disciplined".
However, in the overall history, what cannot be ignored is the individual's brushwork - where do the vivid changes come from?
Those vivid brushstrokes are so beautiful in Jiang Xun's writing.
Before they are touched, they are just a dead ball of ink on the paper.
Calligraphy is an art of imagery. Jiang Xun’s book will introduce the ins and outs of this type of font at the beginning, and attach corresponding posts to let people understand the history contained in them, and at the same time supplement it with personal Introducing the nature of the book, it helps readers understand their history, their emotions, and their most touching parts from those details.
Most books about art history are either trivial or self-absorbed.
And in the history of Jiang Xun’s calligraphy.
There is no empty and boring incomprehensible text like the four words commonly used in traditional aesthetic books, and there is no smooth and steady reading of the book. Some of it touches the depths of the reader's soul.
That’s precisely because Jiang Xun extracted the most basic human emotions from the beauty of calligraphy.
Aesthetics is abstract, but the carrier of beauty and aesthetics itself are not abstract - especially calligraphy, which is an art with rich connotations arising from the resonance of people and society.
Chapter 3: Thoughts after reading "The Beauty of Chinese Calligraphy"
As a primary school calligraphy teacher, in order to make the regular calligraphy classes lively and interesting, and to make the profound calligraphy knowledge easy to understand, I I discovered a very meaningful book on calligraphy culture - "The Beauty of Chinese Calligraphy".
This book is a masterpiece by Jiang Xun, a famous Taiwanese esthetician, writer, and painter. It introduces the beauty of Chinese calligraphy from four chapters: the evolution of Chinese characters, calligraphy aesthetics, perceptual education, Chinese characters and modernity.
By reading this book, I gained a new understanding of Chinese character culture.
A black pottery statue unearthed from the Dawenkou Culture has a symbol on the table, with a circle at the top, a curve at the bottom, and a five-peak peak at the bottom. This is the oldest writing found so far.
Knot ropes, Cangjie, writing brushes, stone drums, etc. flashed before my eyes like a movie.
The aesthetics of calligraphy gave me a new understanding of the history of the five calligraphy styles: the official script lines of waves and cornices, the thickness and elegance of inscriptions, and the smoothness and danger of cursive to wild cursive. Jue, the artistic conception and personality of calligraphy in the Song Dynasty, the form and expression of calligraphy in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, and the simplicity and clumsy taste of calligraphy in the Qing Dynasty.
It also made me appreciate Mrs. Wei's "Bi Zhen Diagram" in detail.
The points of "Falling Stones from the Peak" are shape, volume, weight and speed; the horizontal lines of "Thousand Miles of Clouds" are the interactive rhythm of water and ink on paper; Shu is all the strong life that looks old but is uncompromising.
Seeing the big from the small allows people to see the wonders of Chinese calligraphy, not only between the fingers and wrists, but even breathing. It is health preservation, body movement, expression of temperament, and learning of life and doing things. , is the power of stability and protection, and ultimately becomes "the most authentic ritual for me to get along with myself." Just like yoga, Tai Chi, dance, and even jogging, it turns from stillness to seeing stillness in movement, achieving a kind of The beauty of body rhythm.
Chapter 4: After-reading: "The Beauty of Chinese Calligraphy"
It was a chance to buy Jiang Xun's "The Beauty of Chinese Calligraphy". I met a classmate I hadn't seen for a long time on the Internet. , he is a doctoral student majoring in Chinese, and now he is also a junior high school Chinese teacher like me. Whenever I had the opportunity, I asked him what books he had read, and he recommended "The Beauty of Chinese Calligraphy" to me.
I immediately placed an order on Dangdang.com, and replied to him: "With such a bad word, I really need to read a book like this.
"My classmate sent this sentence The words: "It's still far away from life, but you will definitely fall in love with Chinese characters after reading it."
It's really like this. After reading it, to be honest, I still can't count them one by one in animal bones, It was recorded on metal, stone, bamboo slips, and paper. In each dynasty, it was written with lines that were either heavy and simple, or soaring and graceful, or solemn and grand, or wanton and wild.
But just looking at the pictures makes people linger, and just touching the texture of the book makes people recall it.
In this month of scattered reading, it gave me heart-touching beauty and surprise.
Jiang Xun said: Calligraphy is breathing, health preservation, body movement, expression of temperament, learning about how to behave, the power of stability and blessing, memory in the reality of life, and restoration to the original state. The seriousness when writing one's own name...
The author uses his unique aesthetic feelings to tell a touching story of Chinese calligraphy.
The words are woven into pictures, and we have walked into the ancient but modern time corridor of Chinese characters. The respect and joy of oriental writing are between your and my fingers!
Chapter 5: Students are really happy - reading "The Beauty of Chinese Calligraphy"
"The practice of Chinese calligraphy probably has a deep impression on many Chinese people.
“
The calligraphy that I remember when I was a child was writing brush calligraphy.
I was really envious when I saw the teacher holding a big brush and waving his hand, and a few decent brush words appeared on the white paper. But how to write and how to read the posts was unclear. In the fog.
Most of the teachers are temporary substitutes, and the requirements for calligraphy are not strict. If we have a calligraphy pen, we will use a calligraphy pen to write. If we don’t have a calligraphy pen, we will find a small stick, dip it in the ink of the classmates in front and behind, and write it in the notebook. When writing "Shang" and "人", I thought it was very easy to write "Shang" and "人". I could do it horizontally or vertically. I had no idea about calligraphy terminology such as the stroke of the brush, the movement of the brush, and the closing of the brush. At that time, brushes were bought for one or two cents. Ink is also the cheapest and has a stinky smell that has not been used for a long time. Therefore, after writing calligraphy, the classroom was filled with an unpleasant smell. Our hands, faces, and clothes were covered with black, smelly ink. , looking at the crooked characters written by myself was a joy, just for fun, not too interested.
Now every time I walk through the calligraphy room of the school, I smell the faint fragrance of ink and look at the primary school students standing or sitting at a regular distance apart, following the calligraphy teacher in a decent manner. I wrote a large-scale work while writing the post, and I couldn't express the envy in my heart.
It wasn’t until I went to a normal school that I realized that calligraphy is a broad and profound art. I got to know some calligraphers, and I deeply realized the importance of imitation in calligraphy.
Only then did I truly realize that "there is always a boundary framed by a red line, a nine-square grid evenly divided by vertical and horizontal red lines, and the outline of the characters surrounded by thin red lines.
" Red is like a "boundary". The black ink of the brush in my hand cannot casually exceed the scope of the red line outline. The nine-square grid allows me to learn "boundaries", "discipline" and "rules".
It was then that I started to really write calligraphy. Every day when practicing basic skills, I would read the calligraphy carefully according to the teacher's requirements, copy with heart, enjoy the fragrance of ink, the beauty of Chinese characters, and the tranquility brought by writing. Zhiyuan.
"Writing in childhood is the earliest learning of 'rules'.
'Gui' is a curve, and 'moment' is a straight line; 'gui' is a circle, and 'moment' is Square.
Learn the uprightness of straight lines, and learn the gentleness of curves; learn the straightness of 'square', and also learn the tolerance of 'circle'.
"Students in a world full of ink like us." Study and live in a fragrant school, be sure to write every stroke of life well, and truly understand the benefits of writing a real "big" and "person".