Bubai is the entire pattern of calligraphy. When people look at a painting, they first do not look at a piece of color or a part of the object in isolation, but look at the whole picture and feel that it is beautiful, and then appreciate the details. When appreciating a piece of music, you don’t just appreciate one or two fragments in isolation, but rather appreciate the rhythm of the entire piece. When it comes to the symphony, you have to taste all the movements.
The same goes for appreciating calligraphy. Those who are good at reading books are always interested in a work, and then they carefully appreciate every detail of it, from the macro to the micro, and then from the micro to the macro, back and forth.
Those who are good at managing books should have an overall picture in mind. Not to mention the more static styles of regular script, official script and seal script. Running script and cursive script seem to be written with ease, but in fact they are more organized and clear. Especially in Kuangcao, the calligrapher strives for freedom, flight, and danger. Its momentum is like a sudden storm and unpredictable. Don't think that he doesn't have an overall picture or a blueprint in mind. In fact, the more unpredictable and unpredictable the cursive writing is, the more it requires careful consideration and the design of a blueprint. Although the writing changes according to the situation, it is actually carried out in accordance with the requirements of the law.
A person who is good at calligraphy is like a system engineer who is good at macro control. This system engineer relies on his knowledge of mathematics, especially operations research, and uses computers as the main computing method to plan and design a complex system project and obtain the most ideal design solution. When part of the system needs to be modified, the original design can be improved immediately. Our "calligraphy system engineer" relies on his familiarity with the various data of strokes, characters, and lines, as well as his sense of artistic proportion in his heart, to complete or improve the writing plan in an instant at a speed almost as fast as computer calculations. And put it into practice immediately on paper.
The key to organization is communication. It is to connect and connect words with words, lines with lines, into an organic whole, showing rhythm and harmony in changes, and showing movement in static.
There are three ways to achieve connection:
The lines of calligraphy are connected by blood. They should be connected with each other in form and momentum, and should be integrated into a whole and concentrated. There is a very vivid metaphor that can help us understand: writing is like entertaining guests. We must take care of all the guests, so that they can be harmonious, talk and laugh happily, and no one is in a corner and feels lonely.
Wang Xianzhi, who is as famous as his father Wang Xizhi, has a cursive "Mid-Autumn Tie", which has been called a century-old model of "blood connection" since ancient times. There are only 22 characters in this calligraphy masterpiece, but the consistent characteristics of the style can still be seen. Each line of characters is directly connected or connected with the meaning of the strokes. Later generations called it "one-stroke calligraphy". This calligraphy was collected by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty as the second treasure in his Sanxi Hall.
The virtual and the real come into being in a piece of calligraphy. The place with strokes is the real place, while the space between the words and the lines is the virtual place. One virtual and one real requires them to form an organic whole. Calligraphy terminology It's called "thinking white is black". This is just like in traditional Chinese opera, the arias with lyrics are real, and the instrumental ensemble or instrumental ensemble in the middle of the lyrics is virtual. Together with the musical introduction and ending before singing, they all play a role in brewing emotions, developing emotions, and enhancing the atmosphere of the plot. effect. The "gradually weakening the sound until there is no sound" (perdendosi) in Western music is also from real to virtual. This "virtual" plays a role that "real" cannot play. Just as an ancient poem says: "At this time, silence is better than sound." .
Chinese garden art also pays attention to the interplay of virtuality and reality. The real scenery in the garden is often set off by nearby and distant mountains and rivers to add interest. The Summer Palace (the imperial summer residence of the Qing Dynasty) located in the western suburbs of Beijing is a typical example. It is mainly composed of Wanshou Mountain in the north and Kunming Lake in the south, both of which are artificially created. There are pavilions, pavilions, corridors and courtyards built on the hillside and at the foot of the mountain. The most spectacular ones are the Paiyun Hall and the Buddhist Incense Pavilion. Kunming Lake has beautiful scenery, including a several-kilometer-long west embankment and a small island with a pavilion built on it and a seventeen-hole bridge connected to the land. If the mountains and various buildings in the garden are real scenes, then the large area of ??water is a virtual scene. Not only that, there is a virtual scene outside the garden, which is Yuquan Mountain and Xishan Mountain in the distance to the west. In spring, summer, autumn and winter, cloudy, clear, morning and afternoon, the mountain colors are ever-changing and varied, adding a special style and artistic conception to this famous garden.
The method of expressing the virtual and the real in calligraphy is completed in one go at the moment when the dots fall on the paper. As soon as the pen and ink arrive, the real part is completed, and the virtual part comes out; unlike other arts, such as painting , especially oil paintings, you can think about it slowly and revise it repeatedly.
The requirements of calligraphy are strict: the actual parts should be like "cut with a golden knife" (like a metal knife), and the empty parts should be like "measured evenly with a jade ruler" (like a ruler made of jade that has been measured evenly). Same). It is easy to imagine how agile, dexterous, and skilled the mind and hands are to meet such requirements.
Protected and well-proportioned. This is another way of communication that uses colorful interlacing to create excitement and seek variety within strict laws. Seal script, official script, and regular script have stricter rules and require neat postures. They also emphasize the principle of "keeping the center", which means that the central axis of each character in a line coincides with the central line of the entire line, without being deviated or crooked, as if it is made up of an invisible thread. The beads strung with thin threads hang straightly, row by row.
The cursive script and running script, which tend to have a more flying style, do not emphasize the principle of keeping the center. That is, the central axis of each character sometimes coincides with the central line of the line, and most of them do not coincide. And form a small or large angle. In addition to the fact that the axis of some words is not centered, there are also some words that are far away from the center line of the row, causing the row of words to swing left and right, staggered and undulating. We can see from Huang Tingjian's cursive script "Du Fu's Poems to Helan Cobalt" written by Huang Tingjian of the Song Dynasty, how ups and downs it is, how unpredictable it is, and how easy it is to escape.