Due to people's different tastes, hobbies, psychology and habits, there will be some differences and tendencies in the appreciation and evaluation of calligraphy. For example, some people are partial to Tang Jie, some people are infatuated with Wei Bei, some people like Xiao Yi's running script, and some people love weeds, which are all normal social phenomena. It is an indisputable fact that every school has its own advantages.
However, in the history of our country, the imperial examination system has had a long-term negative impact on calligraphy. The popular calligraphy style in Qing dynasty is a cabinet style with weak and introverted appearance. Students and officials all hope to win the appreciation of bureaucrats, and even the ultimate goal is to read Zhu Pi in the holy land. There are hook, grid, stroke, pledge and touch commonly emphasized in calligraphy circle. The pen tube is vertical and impartial, the wrist is flat and the palm is vertical, and the pen tube is tightly held. Although the calligraphy method advocates the center, it loses its important function of adjusting the front after the pen tube is locked, which seriously restricts the development of calligraphy art.
Ruan Yuan, Bao, Kang Youwei, etc. , once set off a dispute between square and round steles. In order to make people get rid of the shackles of calligraphy in the library and fight against the decadent and conservative calligraphy style, they advocate the study of steles and vigorously promote Wei Bei's calligraphy, which is vigorous, vigorous, bold and vigorous. With Fang Bi as the main feature, Wei Bei's brushwork, structure and composition really look like a sword dance and revolution.
There are many arguments about this and that, and the atmosphere of the book world makes it one brace up, thus promoting the development of stele science. Today, most of the different factors of people's psychological hobbies have been able to agree with each other calmly. However, the dispute between "pen" and "knife" is still unresolved. The difference is that during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, many epitaphs in the form of pens carved on rocks were based on the calligrapher's brush Shu Dan. Or is it a font cut against the calligrapher's wishes? The focus of the problem is whether the brush can write sharp and magnificent strokes, which involves the basic problems of calligraphy.
Some people think that Wei Bei's calligraphy is a "carving with three points and seven points", which leads to ink distortion. They think that those vertical and horizontal paintings with square, sharp strokes and changeable triangular points are all "special effects that a brush can't achieve", so they come to the conclusion that "the sculptor cut them with a knife" or even "the sculptor manipulated the knife at will and distorted the calligraphy of the original calligrapher".
What's more, except for a few calligraphers in Wei and Jin Dynasties, they are all dismissed as "the works of masons who can't touch the door wall at all" and are "non-artworks with poor calligraphy and seal cutting skills", and "non-artworks are always at an absolute low level, and even the highest level of non-artworks is lower than the lowest level of art". Paradoxically, in the same article, the author admits that "Wei Bei's ... style features ... Gu Zhuo's vigorous, bold and unconstrained, ups and downs are beyond the reach of Tang books, ... but the purpose is the art of calligraphy in the aesthetic sense ... not", including "Jianbaobei" and other "works by people who really understand books".