Appreciation of selected calligraphy works from Houma League

The calligraphy art of Houma Meng Shu is unique and unique. The writing era of alliance books is later than that of oracle bone inscriptions, and is roughly the same as the era of bronze inscriptions. According to archaeological research, the calligraphy of Houma League scripts is different from oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions. Oracle bone inscriptions are the earliest mature writing in my country that can record language. Below are the selected calligraphy works from the Book of Houma League that I have compiled for you. I hope it will be useful to you!

Appreciation of the selected calligraphy works from the Book of Houma League

Pictures of selected calligraphy works from Houma League's book 1

Pictures of selected calligraphy works from Houma League's book 2

Picture 3 of selected calligraphy works in Houma League's book

Picture 4 of selected calligraphy works in Houma League's book

Introduction to the Book of Houma's Alliance

The Book of Houma's Alliance, between the 15th and 23rd years of Duke Dinggong of Jin Dynasty in the late Spring and Autumn Period (497 BC ~ 489 BC) between Zhao Yang, the Shiqing of the Jin State, and the officials of the Qing Dynasty A document that stipulates an oath of covenant. In 1965, the Shanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Working Committee discovered the Jin Dynasty site in Houma, Shanxi, and excavated it from November of the same year to May of the following year. The alliance letter is also called "Zaishu". "Zhou Li? Si Meng" "Method of Holding Alliance Zai" notes: "Zai means an oath of alliance. The alliance members write down their words and policies, kill the animals to collect their blood, beat the animals, add the writing on them and bury them, which is called Zai. "The princes and officials at that time often held such oath-taking activities in order to consolidate internal unity and fight against hostile forces. The alliance letter is made in two copies, one is hidden in the alliance mansion, and the other is buried in the ground or sunk in the river to win the trust of gods and ghosts. The Houma League is written with a brush on a piece of jade. The writing is usually vermilion, and a few are black. The font is similar to the bronze inscriptions of the late Spring and Autumn Period. Its discovery is of great significance to the study of the ancient Chinese oath system, ancient writing and the history of the Jin Dynasty.

department. More than 400 pits (pits for burying animals) have been found in the oath site. Sacrifice are usually buried at the bottom of the pits. Cattle, horses, and sheep are buried in large pits, and sheep or alliance letters are buried in small pits. There is also a small niche at the bottom of the north wall of most ridges, in which is placed a sacrificial jade called "coin" in ancient times, and several pieces are buried in some pits. There are no niches or jade coins in the ridge where the alliance book is buried. These jade coins and sacrifices were offered to gods or ancestors during the oath. The jade coins used for sacrifice include Bi, Huang, Yuan, Jue, Long, Zhang, Gui and broken jade pieces. They are all made of tremolite and other stones, and are delicately carved and quite exquisite. Most of the jade pieces on which the alliance letters are written are in the shape of a Gui. The largest one is 32 centimeters long and nearly 4 centimeters wide, while the smaller one is 18 centimeters long and less than 2 centimeters wide.

The essence of the beauty of calligraphy and its forms of expression

1. Thoughts on the essence of the beauty of calligraphy

1. The reasons why Chinese character writing developed into the art of calligraphy

In our inherent concept, Chinese characters and the art of calligraphy cannot be separated. ?Calligraphy is the art of writing Chinese characters?. There are hundreds of countries and nations in the world, and most of them have their own languages ??and characters, but their writing has not become an art. The uniquely Chinese Chinese characters have become art in the process of their evolution, or they have a certain artistic quality from the very beginning. Some scholars use the theory of "the same origin of calligraphy and painting" to explain the origin and nature of Chinese characters becoming an art, such as Liu Gangji's "A Brief Essay on the Aesthetics of Calligraphy" and Jin Xuezhi's "A Discussion on the Aesthetics of Calligraphy". Because writing originated from pictograms, and because the stipple writing of writing can create various shapes that are similar to the shapes (or dynamics) in real life (Liu Gangji), writing has become a way to describe real life. figurative art. This concept that calligraphy must reflect real life is obviously just an application of general artistic principles. More people believe that the fact that Chinese characters have become art is due to the structure of Chinese characters, and thus believe that calligraphy is an abstract art.

The complex and simple structure of Chinese characters and the staggered stipples create many elements of beauty, which is a prerequisite for it to become an art. Without the complexity of Chinese character structure, it seems unimaginable that simple writing would become an art.

However, here, we need to distinguish between "artistic" and "artistic". We say that the shape of Chinese characters has innate artistic quality because its shape conforms to some basic aesthetic principles. For example, the structure of many Chinese characters has symmetry, just like certain objects in nature have basic beauty, such as the branching of branches, the symmetry of the veins of leaves, or the symmetrical arrangement of a human torso, etc. Another example is the structure of Chinese characters. Different characters may be complex or simple, large or small, long or flat, square or round (nowadays, artistic characters are uniform in shape, but handwriting is different). When many Chinese characters are arranged together, they naturally form A kind of contrasting beauty. These innate characteristics have become important prerequisites for the art of calligraphy, just as the particularity of the human body structure and human movement performance are the basic prerequisites for the art of dance. But being artistic is by no means equal to art itself. If we must say that the original Chinese characters are the art of calligraphy, it would be childish and ridiculous to say that basic human movements (such as walking, running, playing, etc.) are equivalent to the art of dance, even though those original characters seem to have It has quite a sense of beauty.

2. Thinking about the ontology of life through people and books

Chinese culture, generally speaking, is a change in the understanding of the nature of humans and nature. For example, the Taoist understanding of the laws and ways of the occurrence, development and change of all things in the universe, the Confucian understanding of the human ethics that people must follow in the process of life and behavior, the Buddhist Zen understanding of the meaning of life and the realm of life, etc. wait. All this cognition takes life as its core content. Introducing the understanding of life into the philosophy of art makes art, as a human spiritual activity, an experimental field for people to reflect their understanding of the way of life. Therefore, whether it is calligraphy, painting, music, etc., all It can transcend ordinary craftsmanship and become a profound art that can not only please the artist himself, but also the appreciator and connect the two.

The understanding of life is nothing more than the following aspects: First, the understanding of the ontology of material life. The fields of biology, medicine and other natural sciences are mainly aimed at studying the structure of living matter. The human form is the most representative of natural life forms. The second is the understanding of the life behavior process from birth to death. The expression of human personality and desire for creativity, the social consciousness that comes from getting along with others, people's awareness of themselves and the transcendence of life, etc., constitute the beauty of life that is unique to humans and differentiates them from animals. The third is the understanding of the inner laws of why life exists, why it develops, and why it changes. Life is created by the combination of yin and yang. The two bodies of yin and yang are constantly intermingling and separating, thus causing the change, development, death and rebirth of life. Humans are divided into male and female, and animals are divided into male and female. The two bodies of yin and yang cannot exist independently. There is yang within yin and yin within yang. In the Bagua, the Qian and Kun hexagrams are all yang and all yin. They are just symbols and have no independent existence. All other hexagrams can correspond to different feelings of all things and life. Yin deficiency, yang deficiency, etc. in TCM pathology refer to the pathological conditions of life caused by the imbalance of yin and yang in organisms, revealing the profound philosophical principles existing in life sciences.