Deng Yizhe (1892-1973), the master of aesthetics, may not be familiar to everyone, but when it comes to Deng Shiru, his fifth ancestor, a great calligrapher and seal engraver in the Qing Dynasty, everyone knows about calligraphy lovers. For contemporary people, his son is even more famous, that is, Deng Jiaxian, the "two bombs". Deng Yizhe's fame is not as good as theirs, but his achievements in the field of aesthetics are comparable to those of these two professionals. He is one of the founders of modern aesthetics in China, and enjoys the reputation of "Southern Zong and Northern Deng" with Zong Baihua. He is good at calligraphy, and Jin Yuelin took Lin Weiyin's poem "A poetic waterfall, an April day on earth", which was written by him, but he is better at calligraphy and painting criticism and has unique modern aesthetic views on China's calligraphy.
He focuses on how artistic conception is expressed from the aspect of calligraphy. He thinks that the beauty of artistic conception consists of two factors: form and meaning, and form and artistic conception are inseparable: "A book can't become a word if it's invisible, and it can't become calligraphy if it's unintentional." The formal elements of artistic conception beauty of calligraphy are mainly "strokes", "structure" and "composition".
"strokes": He thinks that calligraphers use their fingers, wrists and hearts to wave a brush and draw lines. These handwriting have bones, flesh, tendons, blood and breath, which shows the calligrapher's "meaning". Especially when it comes to the "blood continuity" of cursive strokes, which makes them turn and lead, "these methods are not easy to follow the shape and quality of the strokes, but have actually merged into the artistic conception."
"knot": In Mr. Deng's view, symmetry, concession, convergence, opening and so on of the glyph are all the works of the creator, which are pleasing to the eye and give people a beautiful feeling, so they can show the artistic conception of calligraphy.
"composition": "seal characters are mostly embraced internally, so their composition is modest, which is beneficial to the introverted form and spirit; Li's situation is a foreign embrace, so its composition is steep and steep, and its shape is flying. True grass ... is close to the so-called connotative bones and muscles of the seal, and it is graceful and graceful. If it is close to the official, it will shine and win. " He proposed that "the composition and artistic conception have been intertwined".
He believes that the development and evolution of China's calligraphy style has experienced the process of ancient prose, big seal script, small seal script, official script, chapter script, running script and cursive script, which is the development from formal beauty to artistic conception beauty. "Running script is actually a calligraphy style with artistic conception beauty. ..... I behaved as I really am, and there are still too many careless people in the world? Therefore, cursive calligraphy is the end of the evolution of calligraphy. "
Deng Yizhe also studied painting, and his theory of painting was mainly reflected in two articles, A Probe into Painting Theory and A General Interpretation of Six Methods. In these two articles, he created the structural patterns of "body-form-meaning" and "vividness-spirit-charm" to describe the diachronic development of China's painting. At the same time, he believes that the highest end of this development process is "charm", that is, "artistic beauty."
Deng Yizhe loved calligraphy. He suffered from hematemesis during the war and had no money for treatment. His family was starving and refused to sell the works of their ancestors. However, in order to better preserve these cultural treasures, he donated all his treasures of Deng Shiru paintings and calligraphy to the Palace Museum.