Why Preface to Lanting is the best running script in the world, historians always have their own praise. Some say it's a compliment from Emperor Taizong, some say it's beautiful, and some say that calligraphy and articles are excellent, which makes sense. I will talk about why Preface to Lanting is the best running script in the world in the sense of the development history of China's calligraphy. My opinion is one word: super. Wang Xizhi's calligraphy transcends history and self, creating a perfect calligraphy miracle in the history of calligraphy.
Calligraphy in Wang Xizhi's era is still an official script era as a whole. But it has a history of running script, cursive script and regular script of about one hundred years. China's first calligraphy work with the significance of regular script is a typical tablet in the Dongwu period of the Three Kingdoms. Modern archaeology also found that some official scripts were converted into regular script during the late Han and Three Kingdoms periods. This is the effort of individual calligraphers. Zhong You is a calligrapher who studies and studies regular script. At the same time, running script and cursive script are also developing. Why are there running scripts and cursive scripts? Because writing articles in words requires thinking and writing at the same speed as possible.
Whether it is official script or regular script, there is definitely no running script or cursive script that is more suitable for writing articles. One of the important tasks of literati officials is to write articles, so it is desirable to learn a quick writing method. During the Wei and Jin Dynasties in the Three Kingdoms at the end of Han Dynasty, it was an affair to like learning calligraphy, and I liked running script and cursive script. However, the calligraphy in this period was "chaotic", that is, the personality was too strong, and there was no unified calligraphy suitable for everyone. Wang Xizhi is a calligraphy fanatic, and his love for calligraphy has reached the point of obsession. Moreover, he is very interested in learning calligraphy and constantly explores the true meaning and fun of calligraphy.
During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, Wang Xizhi learned almost all calligraphy fonts and everyone's works. This laid a solid aesthetic foundation for his calligraphy with rich brushwork aesthetics. In addition, he pursues the liberation of personality and has an eclectic talent. So Wang Xizhi's calligraphy is very rich and natural. It can be said that Wang Xizhi exhausted the essence of all calligraphy art in Wei and Jin Dynasties and created a natural, fluent, vigorous and powerful calligraphy style and a new calligraphy system. In the era of Wang Xizhi, official script was also changing, trying to break through the shackles of official script. But only Wang Xizhi systematically transformed official script, running script and cursive script, which brought the beauty of calligraphy to the extreme and led the trend of calligraphy.
With the passage of time, Chinese characters have also experienced the Northern and Southern Dynasties, in which Lishu is juxtaposed with Wei Bei, but more and more coincides with Wang Xizhi's calligraphy, namely regular script, running script and cursive script. Only then did I find that Wang Xizhi did a perfect job. This is the reason why Wang Xizhi's calligraphy is popular. When looking for this source, later generations found that Wang Xizhi was the birthplace of this source. Preface to Lanting is the earliest and best calligraphy work in the running script system. Therefore, Preface to Lanting is well deserved.