The Historical Significance of "Funeral Notes"

"Jin people's brushwork" or "Wei-Jin brushwork" refers to a brushwork in which calligraphy evolved from a simple silk script in Han Dynasty to Cao Zhang and then to "Jin Cao" in Wei-Jin period. Since Mi Fei put forward in Song Dynasty that "cursive script is inferior to Jin personality", it has become the lifelong goal of calligraphers to have Wei and Jin demeanor. However, because there are not many original calligraphy works in Wei and Jin Dynasties, only the calligraphy works of the Western Jin Dynasty, Ping Fu Tie, collected in the Palace Museum, have been handed down to this day. Wang Xizhi, a "book saint" in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, has no original works, but only a copy of the Tang Dynasty that is "not as good as the original". Among them are the funeral sticks and Confucius sticks collected in Japan, and three peace sticks collected in the Palace Museum in Taiwan. The Japanese collection of Wang Xizhi's works, starting from 1936 Rong Geng's Shadow of Two Kings, has only seen ink prints. In 2006, funerals and Confucius posts were exhibited in Shanghai Museum.

In 2006, Chen Zhenlian gave a speech at the "International Symposium on Calligraphy between China and Japan" entitled "Seeing the True Style of Calligraphy in Wei and Jin Dynasties from Imitation Gold Postings in Tang Dynasty —— Talking about the Topics Caused by Confucius Temple Postings and Funeral Postings Collected in Japan". Chen Zhenlian believes that believers can follow the trend and imitate the original lines of "Gold Iron" to some extent, that is, the methods of "twisting", "wrapping" and "twisting" besides pushing and dragging. It is a copy of the Tang Dynasty collected in Japan, such as the funeral staff, the Confucius staff, the two-thank staff, the first moon staff (collected by Liaoning Provincial Museum), the walking staff (collected by Princeton University), and the official military school, which left the most authentic line form of "Jin Tie Gu Fa" and "Wei Jin brushwork" for later generations.

With regard to the brushwork of Jin people, Qiu Zhenzhong said in the article "Some Issues on the Evolution of brushwork" written by 198 1: "In the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Cao Zhang developed into a modern grass in Wang Xizhi's first month post and seventeen posts, and at the same time, the twisting brushwork made unprecedented achievements." Wang Xizhi's works, such as Frequent Sorrow Posts, Mourning Posts and Waiting for Middle Posts, are all masterpieces of calligraphy art in this period, just like the early moon posts. If the stippling in the works is not regarded as lines, but books are regarded as squares of various shapes, we can find that the shapes of these squares are more complicated. The edge of a block is a combination of some complex curves and polylines. The curve is smooth and beautiful, and the broken line is rigid and straight. At the same time, stippling has a strong sense of sculpture, and the ink seems to overflow from the edge of stippling, which is gloomy and full. This richness and three-dimensional sense are all due to the frequent changes in the conical surface of the pen. Every painting in the work is like a ribbon floating in the air, and its different sides are intertwined and twisted ... It seems that it is no longer a plane object, but a volume: one side of this section implies the space occupied by the other side. This is the brushwork of Jin people and the fruit of twisting.