Calligraphers in history are all literati calligraphers, who have been trained in strict writing norms since childhood and have written a lot. I remember an American writer once put forward the "10,000-hour law". He said that if a person wants to be an expert in a certain field, he must keep exercising for 10 thousand hours in this field. For example, if you want to be a calligrapher, you should write eight hours a day for at least five years. The reason why ancient literati calligraphers are high-level is that reading and writing are their daily work, and it is easy to reach this standard and become experts in the field of calligraphy.
But we also know that not all ancient literati are called calligraphers. In fact, not every ancient literati has reached the level of calligraphers. Because, there is a key thing in this, that is, the writing should have a little artistry. Without this artistry, you will write for 100,000 hours in vain.
What is the artistry of writing? How many/much? This question is answered by calligraphy theory. From my personal experience, writing should be artistic. First, you have to make a copy. Calligraphy is an art with a long tradition of form. The works of the ancients can be said to have exhausted almost all possibilities in form. Today's people can't compete with the ancients out of thin air. Second, from the perspective of calligraphy creation, your works should be "writing the mind", an expression of your mental state and an expression of your emotions. Your calligraphy can't be called a work of art if there is no emotional expression beyond the general norms.
The expression of emotion is the projection of personality in calligraphy works. Of course, the so-called emotional expression is also easy to misunderstand. Everyone has emotions. How can calligrapher's writing be emotional expression, and how can non-calligrapher's writing not be emotional expression? For example, in the current "old cadre style", you can't say that there is no feeling between the lines. Since he is an "old cadre", he naturally has rich life experience and emotional experience. Why can't "old cadre style" be calligraphy art? I think the key to the problem is to find out what the emotion in art is. According to clive bell, the emotion in art is not the joys and sorrows of ordinary people in daily life, but an "aesthetic emotion"-an emotion caused by the "meaningful form" of works of art, which has nothing to do with the specific emotions in daily life. According to this theory, when we talk about the emotion of calligraphy works, we should add an attribute in front: art.
Calligraphers in ancient China have long been aware of the emotional problems in calligraphy works. Cui Yuan of Han Dynasty said in cursive script: "Birds and beasts want to fly; Cunning rabbits are violent, they will run before they run ... and animals will be angry and depressed, and it will be strange after they are released. Or if you are stunned, if you are in danger. " Cui Yuan found the empathy of calligraphy to nature in his calligraphy works. Words such as ambition, terror, melancholy and anxiety all reveal emotional factors. After entering the Tang Dynasty, the emotional expression of calligraphy was further theorized. Among them, the famous sayings of Sun and Han Yu are the most famous. Commenting on Wang Xizhi's calligraphy, Sun said: "Writing is full of emotion; The book "Painting Praise" was originally intended to be magnificent; Huang Tingjing is full of nothingness; " Taishizhen is also a vertical and horizontal debate; And almost "Lanting Gathering" is a collection, thinking about ease, swearing in private, and feeling miserable. The so-called music-related party laughs and sighs. He believes that Wang Xizhi's different works express different emotions. This point has now become a theoretical problem of calligraphy. Because, in Sun's exposition, it seems that a specific work points to a specific emotion. Therefore, this understanding led to the interpretation of Yan Zhenqing's "Sacrificing a Nephew", a masterpiece of another master in the history of calligraphy. Anyone who has studied Yan Zhenqing knows that "Sacrificing a Nephew" is a eulogy for my nephew who died of grief in the Anshi Rebellion. Therefore, some people look for the expression of grief from the style of "Sacrificing a Nephew", such as the writing rhythm from line to grass, such as stippling through the lines on the back of the paper, such as the composition of messy clothes, and so on. In a word, they think that without that kind of specific grief, they can't write a work like "A Manuscript for Sacrificing a Nephew". But what I want to say is that for this theoretical problem, we must first understand it based on common sense. We can ask: as long as we are human, we will experience joys and sorrows. So why can Yan Zhenqing write a work like "Sacrificing a Nephew", but others can't?
I think the fundamental reason why Yan Zhenqing can write "Sacrificing a Nephew" is that he has a mature and high-taste calligraphy style, which can be expressed in different mental states, in other words, it is beyond everyday and ordinary concrete feelings. In this respect, clive bell's theory is undoubtedly effective in explaining calligraphy-Yan Zhenqing's works, even Sacrifice for a Nephew, are all based on the expression of "artistic emotion".
In addition, it is worth noting that it is easy to misunderstand Sun only from a passage in Book Score quoted above, which is caused by misunderstanding of stylistic rhetoric. Sun listed so many emotional types, not to find the corresponding relationship between specific daily emotions and specific works in his works, but to emphasize the vast spiritual world and rich sensibility to art forms possessed by a great calligrapher. His conclusion is in the following sentence: "Do you know how to talk and get coquettish?" Yang Shu is miserable, which is based on the heart of heaven and earth. "The great calligrapher's" writing heart "is" based on the heart of heaven and earth ",not just" coming to the mood "like ordinary people. This reminds me of Croce's saying that "art has nothing to do with usefulness, pleasure and pain". Artistic emotions do not come from specific emotions in daily life, but from things different from these specific emotions. Croce believes that artistic emotion is a kind of "intuition" and intuition is a "comprehensive function of mind".
Later than Sun, Han Yu pointed out in Preface to Master Gao Xian that it is also a "comprehensive function of the mind". He said: "Zhang Xushan's cursive script was in the past, but it failed to cure other skills. I feel embarrassed, sad, happy, resentful, eager, drunk, bored and wronged. If there is anything moving in my heart, it must be cursive. Looking at things, you can see mountains and rivers, cliffs and canyons, birds, animals, insects, fish, flowers and trees, the sun, the moon and stars, storms, thunder and lightning, song and dance battles, and changes in heaven and earth, which are gratifying and embarrassing. " Zhang Xu's cursive script is great not because he is good at expressing concrete daily feelings through concrete calligraphy images or forms, but because he perceives the vastness of the world. This also confirms Croce's other statement: the so-called "genius" is not because his feelings about things are qualitatively different from those of ordinary people, but because of the difference in quantity. Genius is human. The difference between him and ordinary people is that he has a wider range of feelings and richer sensibility.
In this way, we return to a problem that is easy to reach an understanding in calligraphy: for an artist, his feelings and feelings are first caused by art, while for a calligrapher, his aesthetic feeling is trained by tradition-perhaps it is too humble to say so. Do you have a keen and unique feeling in the face of copybooks that thousands of people are learning? This sensibility is what distinguishes artists from non-artists, that is, whether you can surpass ordinary copybooks and become an art discoverer. This ability of discovery is the foundation of calligraphy achievements.