In the late Qing Dynasty, the famous Chinese painter, calligrapher, seal engraver, the first president of the Hangzhou Xiling Printing Society, and Wu Changshuo, who was jointly known as the "Four Great Masters of the Late Qing Dynasty" with Ren Bonian, Pu Hua and Xugu, had many nicknames, and there were common cangshuo, lao cang, lao miao, bitter iron, great deafness, Tao Daoist, stone venerables, etc., but it was still not as much as its seal carvings.
In Wu Changshuo's art world, he combines "poetry, books, paintings, and prints" in one, and if you talk about the merits of the founding of the founding sect and its influence on future generations, you should first promote seal engraving. Because of its earliest involvement in seal carving, it has the longest time to explore and pursue the art of seal carving; there is also the fact that its books and paintings are deeply influenced by seal carving.
Wu Changshuo's seal engraving has gone through four important stages, such as the imitation period, the exploration period, the innovation period and the sublimation period. He learned to print at the age of 14, and when he first learned the methods of the Zhejiang, Deng, and Zhao schools, he had to take the correct path, absorbing the sword of the Zhejiang school, the smoothness of the Deng school's chapter law, and the vigor of the Zhao school's penmanship. Subsequently, he chased after qin and Han, taking the fa from the golden stone text and integrating it into India. After experiencing imitation and exploration, Wu Changshuo's seal engraving art entered a period of innovation and style formation, turning ancient methods into his own methods and forming a unique personal appearance.
one
Imitation period: all by heart, practice steadily
Wu Changshuo began his long process of controlling seals at the age of 14, and he said in the "Records of Xiling Seal Society": "Give less good seal carving, from less to oldest, and not one day away from india", which shows his love for seal carving. It began to imitate from the "Zhejiang School", and then specialized in HanYin, good at leaving blank space, or diagonal oblique, meteorological glory, and a strong sense of volume in the composition block surface.
The works of this period are probably as follows: for example, "Hukou Yusheng" is Hanyin-Indian, indicating that he has been in contact with Hanyin very early, and has been able to copy and imitate it skillfully; "Park Chao" is obviously the style of the Zhejiang School, Wu Changshuo is in the era when the Zhejiang School is popular, he is subject to the trend of the times, it is also very normal to contact the Zhejiang School and learn from the Zhejiang School, in addition to his own residence called "Park Chao", he named his first printed book "Park Chao Seal Spectrum".
In fact, Wu Changshuo's seal engraving during this period did not specialize, but relied entirely on his own heart, compared with the information he could find, followed the trend, did not cross the thunder pond half a step, diligently and earnestly, and practiced basic kung fu in a down-to-earth manner, of course, this was caused by Wu Changshuo's thick, simple, and tenacious character.
two
Exploration Period: ShiBaijia and Rongguyi
During this period, Wu Changshuo was between the ages of 27 and 42, and he broke the boundaries of the sect and time and space, not only according to what he had, but also "self-made antiquity". At the same time, it also breaks the boundaries of various artistic disciplines, "poetry, calligraphy and painting seek their way". The concept of "books entering from the printing, printing from the books" has been thoroughly implemented here in Wu Changshuo. The integration of books and seals is mutually explicit, and the integration of poetry, calligraphy and painting has greatly enriched the expression techniques of seal engraving art, expanded the field of expression, and also enhanced the realm of seal engraving art.
On the basis of inheriting the punching knife method and the cutting knife method of his predecessors, Wu Changshuo integrated the strengths of all the families, and in a large number of seal engraving creative practices, he constantly explored, and fused the two knife methods of punching knife and cutting knife together to form his own knife method of punching and cutting. This knife method is flexible and changeable, or in the middle of the punch with cutting, or in the middle of the cut with punch, or even in the cut with the cutting... This changeable knife method integrates the sharpness, strength and pleasure of the punching knife with the subtlety and simplicity of the cutting knife, and expresses the calligraphy and knife intention to the fullest, so that the personalized characteristics of his seal carving knife method are majestic and simple.
In the past ten years, he has collected at least five printed notations: "Cangshi Zhai Seal Seal" was collected at the age of 31, "Qiyunguan Seal" was collected at the age of 33, "Seal Yunxuan Seal" was collected at the age of 36, "Tiehanshanguan Seal" was collected at the age of 38, and "Cutting Yaolu Seal" was collected at the age of 40.
Wu Changshuo has learned almost all the seals of famous masters, starting from learning Qian Song, he has realized that the sword technique is not the key, to learn Deng Shiru, he digested the "printing from the book", to Wu Rangzhi, he comprehensively solved the problem of the knife method and the unity of the printing surface from the book; to Xu Sangeng, he began to expand his personality in addition to "printing from the book"; to Zhao Zhiqian, he has begun to have an attempt to "seek printing outside the printing".
Wu Changshuo continued to make friends, had the opportunity to sort out cultural relics for Lu Xinyuan in Huzhou, and helped him print the "Bronze Seal" and the Zhong Ding Yi Instrument Diagram at Wu Yun's house in Suzhou. This made him really see the golden stone characters such as sealing mud, ancient brick tiles, Han Dynasty inscriptions, mirror inscriptions, etc., and then got to know the Golden Stone family Yang Da, and later even moved to Suzhou to live next to Yang...
In the process of contacting ancient artifacts, Wu Changshuo combined his previous learning, and integrated his insights into his seal carving works, especially in ancient pottery, ancient seals, Han and Jin brick texts, and inscriptions. For example, "Bo Nian" obviously takes the ancient seal of the Law; "Guxiang Lingu" is to take the Fa Han stele; "The Masses Are Not Counties" takes the Law sealed mud; "Deaf Miao" is obviously the line of Qin Quanliang... In the taste of playing with ancient gold and stone artifacts, Wu Changshuo's aesthetic departed from the vulgar style and went to gaogu.
three
Innovation period: integration, maturity and transformation
During this period, Wu Changshuo's seal engraving art has shown the basic characteristics of natural rhythm, majestic bone method, rich knife technique, global echo, unique luck of edge grid, and good use of damage. Emphasize the writing meaning of stroke lines, and significantly increase the use of lines with different degrees of curvature. It combines single knife and double knife with punching knife and cutting knife to achieve a raw, mellow and textured texture. And the full use of borders and boundaries, perfectly handle the echo and harmony effect of the outer sidebar and the inner seal.
In terms of calligraphy, Wu Changshuo integrated the Various Seals (mainly variants of the Small Seal) of the Chinese Seal (mostly the Six Kingdoms Script), the Ancient Seal Script (mostly the Six Kingdoms Script), and the various seals in the Genre Seal (mainly the variations of the Small Seal) into one furnace, opening up the various writing styles, only to present the beauty of the complete seal carving; in the knife method, he will punch, cut, and phithethe knife methods, and his seal is often informal, only for the printing surface effect; and the means of printing sticky edges, thick boundary grids, and coarse Zhu scripts are introduced in the chapter law.
According to the general theory of seal engraving, Zhu Wengui is light, Bai Wen is precious, and Zhu Wen is shallow and fine, but Wu Changshuo is unusual, and the rough Zhu Wen has been rejuvenated in Wu Changshuo's hands. For example, "Broken Lotus Pavilion" is majestic and upright, and the posture is robust; "Xiling Zi Cai" seems to have been polished and polished from ancient times; "bitter iron" is enough to show that Wu Changshuo's aesthetic began to move towards freehand after middle age.
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Sublimation period: clear in the heart, carved by myself
After the age of 54, Wu Changshuo's seal engraving style was handy because of the continuous accumulation of his intellectual cultivation, and he said in the preface to the "Coupling Flower An Seal": "It is not difficult to engrave the seal, but it is difficult to be pure in font, dense in configuration, distribution of vermilion and white, and differences in square circles." "It fully embodies his concept of seal engraving."
As far as the chapter law is concerned, Wu Changshuo's seal engraving pays attention to the unified integration of the layout of the printing surface and the text, which can be described as a thousand thoughts and painstaking management. He once said: "A party seal is like a human body, the body trunk must be properly configured, and the blood and essence of the whole body should be especially unhindered." In terms of calligraphy, on the one hand, he opened up the Miao Seal, the large and small seals, accepted the idea of "seeking seals outside the seal", and introduced the Warring States Spring Cloth, the Qin and Han Tablets, the Quan Zhao, the Mirror Inscription, the Sealed Clay, and the Brick and Tile Characters into the printing surface; on the other hand, he strived to make these characters unified and coordinated in spiritual temperament, and also handled this coordination not rigidly, not rigidly, and seeing each other in all directions.
During this period, Wu Changshuo's seal engraving gradually surpassed the law of the people as he grew older, and entered the realm of knowing the heart and doing whatever he wanted. Most of them are mainly engraved with punching knives, and most of them are mainly carved with cutting knives, supplemented by multi-method mutual use. Its damaged knife is far beyond the ancients, and the knife is seen in the residue, and the pen is seen in the residue, which is cruel and orderly, which greatly enriches the printing effect. As Zou Tao said: "In order to make the seal achieve the 'rotten copper' effect of the ancient seal, he carried out all kinds of post-production, or tapping, or rubbing, or wearing, or scratching, etc., all kinds of techniques that had not been used by previous generations were used for him, making the printing surface effect extremely colorful." ”
In short, Wu Changshuo's creative method is both carved and crafted, returning to simplicity, rough and inconspicuous, but the more you look at it, the more you see the brilliance. Such as "Lu He", which is wu Changshuo's 77-year-old time, the stone drum seal method into the print, Canggu Pumao; "Jing Shengxuan", 83-year-old work, rough white text, the border is broken; "fresh frost in the chrysanthemum", 72-year-old work, the five characters are handled according to the four-character chapter method, and the overlapping characters are replaced by two horizontals, forming a "three dense and one sparse" pattern.
From the above point of view, the development process of Wu Changshuo's seal engraving art and its achievements have always run through "chasing, breaking, integrating and creating". "Chasing" means constantly pursuing ancient and modern masters, masterpieces and correct paths. "Breaking" means constantly breaking the old system and inherent thinking and form; "integration" is constantly integrating the essence of various art disciplines; "creating" means constantly creating and innovating. It is these "broken" to give us simple, subtle, thick, clumsy and other special aesthetic effects, Wu Changshuo on the basis of the traditional punching, cutting knife method, supplemented by knocking, hitting, chiseling, grinding or borrowing sand and stone, shoe soles, nails and other means to greatly enrich the expression of seal carving art, and creatively the golden stone taste produced by the effect of knife stone in seal carving art, rising to a new aesthetic realm of incomplete beauty.
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