I flew back from Urumqi yesterday and just gave a lecture in the training class of Xinjiang Book Association, which is a class to prepare for the national exhibition. Recently, I went to Anhui, Shanghai Branch of China Book Association Training Center, and organized several training courses in Sichuan. Just now, Mr. Liu Heng said from a macro point of view that I want to invite several teachers to Shenzhen this time to give you a review lesson together. There are also many considerations.
In terms of manuscript preparation, all provinces are willing to make efforts to enable their authors to participate in this national exhibition. Every author also hopes to make a good performance in the 10th National Exhibition through his own efforts. First he will be chosen, and then he will win the prize. One point I often share with you in class is that all exhibitions are on the rise, so you should not only grasp yourself, but also know your opponent, that is to say, you should know who this exhibition is, how strong it is and what state you are studying. Where is your advantage? You must have a clear understanding. For example, the 9th National Exhibition has about 56,000 manuscripts, and only 1 1,000 works are on display. What are the odds? It is said that there are two exhibition areas this year, and each exhibition area can vote, so the number of submissions will definitely increase. It is not surprising that the total will reach 65,438+0,000,000 if the current speed is maintained. However, how many pieces were selected, 1400 pieces, that is to say, on the basis of the last session, 200 pieces were reduced, the number of exhibitions was increasing, the number of exhibitions was decreasing, and the competition was getting bigger and bigger.
As I said in Sichuan, in the past, there were only 500 works in the 345 exhibition in Sichuan, and about 25 works were selected in Sichuan. What's it like in recent years? In an exhibition of 1000 works in Sichuan, the number of selected works ranged from 12 to 16, and never reached 20 pieces. These authors are still working hard, so I told them that you should seriously reflect on who we are competing with at the 10th National Games and how strong he is. First, there are so many seats for those who participated in the national exhibition or won prizes in the last session. You have to walk in front of one, and then you have to squeeze out one. People in this circle must be your opponents. You must surpass them to make progress and win prizes. Second, how did this 1000 block come into being? I am a judge of the 8th and 9th national exhibitions. How did this 1000 block come into being? It was produced by voting among 56,000 pieces, and finally 4,000 pieces were produced, which means that besides 1000 pieces, 3,000 pieces are equivalent to their level, which means that the level of these 4,000 pieces is the same. Besides, all of you here are preparing the manuscript in your spare time. In other words, you are preparing the manuscript in a state that is not very professional. What about your competitors?
At present, there are 1000 college students, undergraduates and doctoral students who graduate from calligraphy every year. Nationally, there shouldn't be too many. Of the 1000 people, 500 are playing in it. We can ignore him and come out every year. The remaining 500 people are professionally trained and trained hard, 500 a year. In four years, there will be 2000 people. That is to say, there are 6000 people now, and we will fight for 800 seats for you. Then we must avoid being eliminated. You must be professional. You can write whatever you want, and if you submit it, you will definitely lose.
So what we have to do is how to study in an amateur state, with professional awareness and professional foundation, so as to enhance your core competitiveness. In the process of this competition, it is very cruel, and it is also very difficult in the process of selection. When the judges read the work, they didn't have time to read your name. Some people suspect that someone got rid of me. In fact, this is very unrealistic. Now the judges are divided into groups, with regular script judged by regular script and cursive script judged by cursive script. During the selection process, the judges can't whisper, and the judges can't turn over the works. We are facing a work, so you should know that if you don't go to the exhibition, others will make progress faster than you, and everyone is making progress. So if you want to do a good job, if you don't sit down and prepare carefully, you will definitely be eliminated by luck. In the process of preparing for the exhibition, I think you have the strength to prepare for this year's exhibition, but you don't have the strength.
We are sitting here today, not only to prepare for the present, but also to prepare for what will happen five years later. Last time in Chongqing, at a regular script seminar, I talked about three questions. I think it is necessary to mention them again in our study and future preparation. What three questions?
One is the attitude towards classics, the other is the way to interpret classics, and the third is the way to create classics.
When we are creating, we should not think too much, be close to the classics and not be divorced from them. In the face of classics, we must have reverence, and we must not despise tradition, or think that learning tradition will be shrouded and may exist when we come out. No, an important part of China's calligraphy inheritance is the inheritance of the core technique system. It is a kind of existence that different people use this set of techniques to express their inner aesthetics in different States. This is the technical system. Where this technical system is, the classics exist. All the classics record all the technical contents of China's calligraphy. When we face the classics, what advantages do we have compared with the ancients? When we admired Wang Xizhi, we thought, what advantages do we have compared with the calligraphers of the Jin Dynasty? In the face of tradition, the longer the history, the greater our advantage. How to understand this? Wang Xizhi existed in the Jin Dynasty, and he didn't know the history after the Jin Dynasty. The calligraphers of the Tang Dynasty and the history after the Tang Dynasty have nothing to do with him, and the calligraphers of the Song Dynasty and the history after the Song Dynasty have nothing to do with them. In other words, we now have the most abundant classic resources. Before Oracle Bone Inscriptions was unearthed, you told those calligraphers that Oracle Bone Inscriptions was unknown to them. Calligraphers living in this era have the most calligraphy resources in history.
What we have to do now is how to turn these resources into our abilities and cultivate our own abilities through the interpretation of these resources.
The second is the way to interpret the classic, which is this classic. Can you tell? Yesterday, two friends showed me their works. Personally, I think they haven't found a channel in the classics yet. Secondly, they are still hesitant to face the works of the ancients. First, when entering the classics of the ancients, there are still distractions and incorrect methods. For example, when we write a tablet on the Han Dynasty, if there is no accumulation of brushwork in seal script, you may become a painting after entering the tablet on the Han Dynasty. You didn't enter this system. What you wrote must have been drawn, drawn, not written. What is the writing state? It is produced by the movement of the brush on the paper. We use the technique of big seal to write, and when it comes out, it is a big seal, and when we use the technique of small seal, it is a small seal. Conversely, if this technology is used to write on the Han tablet, it is the Han tablet. If you don't even have this technical condition in the process of writing, you can't write the Han tablet. Therefore, to enter this system, it takes a long time to accumulate technology.
I often tell my friends that self-study equals suicide. China's scholarship and human civilization are what they are today because human wisdom can be superimposed. We can fly now because of the superposition of human wisdom. Humans live by wisdom, animals evolve by nature, and live by instinct. Calligraphy has been circulated for thousands of years because of the choice of human culture. The entry of human beings into calligraphy is a valuable intellectual achievement in the history of calligraphy. You turn a blind eye to this history, no matter how great your skill is, it is also in vain. For example, in Liu Xiang, it is better to sit on the train and be a fool than to race with the train. Therefore, entering this technical system is our premise, the premise of our study, the premise of development and the premise of progress, so everyone must ask historical questions.
I told some friends yesterday that in the history of calligraphy, we should constantly solve three problems. One is who to learn from, the other is what to learn, and the third is how to learn. If you haven't asked these three questions, then your study is futile, amateur and can be said to be entertaining yourself.
A few days ago, in the process of communicating with several professors from Sichuan University, I said that our current art education is quite amateur. We thought there were some calligraphy teachers who brought some students here, so we are very professional. It is not enough for a master to take an apprentice. What textbooks have you used, what ideas have you used, what conditions are there to cultivate students' creativity, and what procedures have you used? He has discipline. We all know that we must buy clear copybooks, and the clearer the better. But clear copybooks can only cultivate your beginner stage, and fuzzy copybooks can achieve great things. The clearer things are, the worse your creativity will be ... for example, the education in the Academy of Fine Arts is procedural education, and then it will be gradually deepened. ..... So when we face the classics, we should have a serious attitude and make ourselves more professional. ..... The core competitiveness is that our works should be more professional and have a higher spiritual realm, so that our works can be closer to the classics and bring forth the new. That's what I want to say today. Thank you.