Cui Xiangjun
On the morning of December 15, 2006, he completed a three-day lecture mission at the Shijiazhuang Oriental Academy of Fine Arts. When he returned to Hunan and waited for his flight, he received the publication "Youth Calligraphy" Brother Quan called and told me that "Youth Calligraphy News" will add a supplement to the first issue next year and that some articles are needed, so I asked him to write one. Asked: "What should I write about?" Brother Shi Quan said, "Anything related to calligraphy and seal cutting will do. It is best if the readers find it interesting." What can be interesting to write about? After much deliberation, I decided to record a small incident in the creation of the award-winning works at the 7th National Calligraphy and Seal Engraving Works Exhibition to see if it can enlighten readers.
The work submitted for the "Seventh National Exhibition" is a large seal script couplet. This couplet was composed by Master Hongyi when he was at Jingshan Temple in Hui'an, embedding "Jingshan" into the second character of the upper and lower couplets respectively. The couplet says: "If you purify your mind, you will be as bright as the wind and the moon; the stones from other mountains will become your friends and teachers." I feel that creating large seal scripts is a difficult task. The first is to choose more appropriate content. If it is a couplet, its artistic conception should be simple, simple and thought-provoking; secondly, the selected couplet text should be able to find the corresponding ancient text. However, even if the ancient characters are matched, the knotting characteristics and artistic style of each character are not necessarily uniform. Therefore, it is indeed difficult to create seal script. It seems that it really takes a lot of effort to create this large seal script couplet.
After repeated thinking and practice, we decided to use the line quality of bronze inscriptions as the keynote, blending the brushwork of Wu Changshuo's Linxiejie characters, and use the found ancient Zhen characters belonging to different countries and regions before the Qin Dynasty to The seal, official and silk scripts of Chapter A of "Yin Yang and Five Elements" unearthed in Mawangdui have an oval ankle-flat shape as a unified shape, which makes the general style tend to be coordinated for creation. And this method is exactly in line with Master Hongyi’s views and methods in calligraphy creation. Therefore, after the draft was completed, I consulted relevant information and wrote a long running script of nearly 200 words for the main body of the seal script couplet. The text is: "Purify your mind, and you will be as bright as the wind and the moon; the stones from other mountains will be your friends and wise masters." This couplet was written by Master Hongyi when he was at Jingshan Temple in Hui'an, using the second character "Jingshan". The couplet has a profound meaning and is thought-provoking. It is also very appropriate to use this couplet to describe his calligraphy. Master Hongyi once said in his letter to a friend that "when writing, all the people are dead." According to the principles of Western painting patterns, we try our best to arrange and harmonize the shapes on the paper. We unanimously reject the calligraphy, brushwork, brushwork, brushwork, structure, charm, and even certain stele, post, and school that ordinary people pay attention to. That's right. Master Hongyi's calligraphy in his later years is more calm and tranquil, like the light and wind blowing through the moon, washing away the worldly thoughts and bringing peace and tranquility..."
When writing this couplet, he was Four feet of antique silver-sprinkled rice paper are cut in half, five characters are written on each strip, and then they are glued together accordingly. After gluing it on, I felt that the effect was pretty good. I didn't have time to take a closer look, so I took the opportunity to divide the long paragraph above into four inscriptions on both sides of the upper and lower couplets, and finally sealed two name seals, one red and one white. At this point, the work was completed. However, when I hung it on the wall and stepped back to taste it carefully, I found a problem! When pasting the upper and lower paragraphs of the second line, I didn't have time to look carefully. The 5th character of the second line was written slightly upward, and there were few strokes. Therefore, the distance between it and the 6th character was obviously larger than the distance between other characters. . As a result, there is a gap in the energy between these two characters, which is not coherent enough. Since the small characters on the left and right sides have already been written in cursive script, they cannot be cut and rejoined. what to do? The simplest way is to add a seal between these two words to connect the energy channels. But then I thought about it, wouldn't this be a cover-up and clearly tell the judges about this small mistake? No, you have to think of another way.
Later, I thought of the "elegant ink" that the predecessors accidentally dripped on the paper when writing. Can you learn from this and take the initiative to put two points of "Ya Mo" between the two words? It not only makes people feel that it is an intentional behavior, but also can make up for this small mistake.
So I first dropped two connected drops of ink on the waste rice paper, tore it off and repeatedly adjusted the position between the two characters. After confirming that it was placed in the most appropriate position, I took away the small piece of paper and really put the "elegant ink" After dripping on the work, it made up for the small flaws caused by mistakes, and was recognized by most of the judges. During the award evaluation, it received more votes and won the "National Award".
After the opening ceremony of the "Seventh National Exhibition", I saw this work with a book friend who watched the award-winning works together, and said with emotion: "Xiang Jun, you are so brave, I am so brave. Mo Di also dared to submit his works to the national exhibition." He responded with a mysterious smile.
On the train back to Hunan, open the "Seventh National Exhibition" collection and view the catalog of award-winning works. When I turned to this page of my own, I opened my eyes and couldn't help but burst out laughing - when the kind-hearted art editor was doing the typesetting, he really regarded the two drops of "elegant ink" intentionally dropped as ink dots accidentally dropped, and used Modern technological means have been removed from the computer screen!
December 21, 2006