In China's classical cultural system, various types of art compete with each other, and they maintain their own unique relative independence in their own unique forms of expression, while at the same time having a wide range of connections. They influence, learn from each other, absorb, enrich and improve their own artistic language, and enhance their own artistic expression. Among the many art disciplines, Chinese calligraphy is the most closely related to Chinese painting, which also belong to the category of plastic arts. In the long river of Chinese culture for thousands of years, they have both the same origin and the same home, using the same tools and carriers - pen, ink, paper (silk), and stone; they have the same lyrical aesthetic characteristics, the same cultural spirit and cosmology, the same ideological origin and aesthetic taste; all take classical harmony and beauty as the highest ideal. Their essence is to achieve reproduction on the basis of performance, in order to achieve simplicity, harmony and unity of form and lyricism.
The sisterly relationship between books and paintings is well known. They are intimate, books are paintings, paintings are books, and they are the most basic forms of artistic expression of the Chinese national spirit. Mr. Li Kuchan said: "Painting to the height is a book, and a book to a high place is a painting." "It reveals more deeply the intrinsic relationship between calligraphy and painting. Because of this, the calligrapher particularly emphasizes the aesthetic law of calligraphy art in the close connection between calligraphy and painting, and engages in calligraphy art creation with reference to the aesthetic ideas and aesthetic laws of painting. Excellent works of art are not only the unity of content and form, but also an organic combination of inner beauty and external beauty, as are calligraphy works. We cannot deny the artistic appeal of the external beauty of calligraphy and its important position in the creation of calligraphy, but we cannot ignore the role of inner beauty in the work, because the ultimate embodiment of the ideological connotation and artistic charm of the work is the inner beauty of the work, which plays a lyrical role. To this end, this paper attempts to explore the influence of ancient Chinese painting ideas on the idea of calligraphy creation through the intrinsic connection between books and paintings, in order to excavate the inner beauty of calligraphy works.
Lin Sanzhi Luggage White Poem Excerpt from 1973
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Natural beauty is the objective basis of calligraphy creation
The aesthetic thought of ancient Chinese traditional painting believes that life is the source of creation. The painter must adhere to the creation of the teacher, go to nature to observe, experience, obtain creative materials and inspiration, so that "the source of all things is exhausted, and the mountains and rivers are exhausted", and then it can enter the creative stage. Painting takes objective existence as the object of expression, while calligraphy takes Chinese characters as the object of expression. Although the creation of calligraphic images does not reproduce the beauty of nature as vividly as painting, it emphasizes the connection between calligraphy and natural objects, and it pays attention to the simulation of lines and structures and the function of objects. Calligraphy affirms the aesthetic value of natural beauty at the beginning, takes natural beauty as an imitation object and as an objective basis for aesthetic associations, and the form of text is only a medium that evokes people's aesthetic associations. Therefore, natural beauty is an indispensable objective basis for calligraphers to create calligraphy and explore calligraphy beauty. People seek the beauty of calligraphy from the simulation of natural beauty images such as lines, gestures, structures, etc., so that the calligrapher is required to have a feeling of life in the process of calligraphy creation and the basic grasp of the traditional skills of calligraphy, and on the basis of life, "think of the wonderful", and then "write God in shape", and write the spirit and life of nature through the line. Shi Tao's "Mountains and Rivers Meet with Gods and Traces" is about the fact that the artistic image of the traces on the paper is a subjective and objective unity, and what is shaped is a more beautiful artistic model than actual life. Like a painter, the calligrapher should read thousands of books and travel thousands of miles, obtain the spirituality given by nature, broaden his mind, and accumulate beautiful and living images, so that he can write his own life in his works, get his natural interest, show the harmony of the universe, and achieve the artistic state of the unity of heaven and man.
Lin Sanzhi was born to become a Buddha in 1989
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"Pen and ink are contemporary"
It is the fashion of the times of calligraphy creation
Another requirement of ancient Chinese traditional painting thought for creation is the understanding and application of the law, and the painter must correctly understand the dialectical relationship between the law and the inability, so that the law is born of the impossibility. All techniques are created by man, from scratch, from simple to complex, from immature to mature, from imperfect to perfect. When we understand this principle, we have the courage and courage to dare to create a new law. Many writers do not dare to create for life, only stay in the stage of posting and collecting words, and dare not cross the barriers of the predecessors, that is just a reproduction and repetition of the ancients, such works have no style of the times, and have no value.
There is a law and not a law. The law is subject to reason, and as long as it does not violate reason, it can be changed. Man must not be bound by the law, and man who has mastered the law is not the ultimate goal, but the ultimate goal is to be reasonable. The unreasonable will become the slaves of the Dhamma, and the rational will be able to control the Dhamma. With its unique rigorous structure and strict legality, Tang Kai has become a model for future generations to learn calligraphy, and learners can grasp its basic brushwork and knot rules as long as they write for a few years. But it is not easy to write a personal style, and it is necessary to take the strengths of each family, otherwise it will become Tang Kai's slave. Wang Duo strengthened the rapid rhythm, tight structure, thirsty pen and ink, and peculiar chapters on the basis of the "meter" character with a unique aura, conveying people's psychological turmoil in a unique art form, which is an allusion to the social turmoil in the early Qing Dynasty. At the same time, it also opened up a large distance from The Artistic Style of Mi Fu, that is to say, Wang Duo did not become a slave to the word "Rice", but better mastered the Fa. Just imagine if Wang Duo had not dared to break the "rice" method, there would have been no existence of his own artistic style. If you can't do it, you can't do it, but it's the ultimate law. Shi Tao had a brilliant exposition on this: "Before the ancients enacted legislation, they did not know what law the ancients had. After the ancients legislated, they did not allow the present people to issue ancient laws. For thousands of years, the present generation has not been able to stand out from the ground. The traces of the ancients and not the hearts of the ancients should not come out of the ground. Wronged! At the same time, he proposed that "pen and ink should be contemporary", emphasizing that on the basis of inheriting tradition, he borrowed the past and opened the present and wrote the style of the times. This style is different from the historical writers, and it also concentrates the advantages of any of the ancients, which is refreshing and has the atmosphere of contemporary life. It is national and epochal.
It is impossible, it is not really impossible, but the Chen Fa without predecessors, the new law of today's people; the law without rigidity, the method with its own characteristics, which is in line with the laws of art and the spirit of the main body of Chinese culture. When the writer is emotionally excited and unstoppable, he swings his pen, and he does not know which method to use, and he can easily pick it up, all of which are raw flowers and wonderful pens. The viewer appreciates it, and often immerses himself in the realization of the artistic conception and the playfulness of the style, and forgets the technique in the realm and enjoyment of beauty, which is "getting carried away". Even if there are some unruly "failures", they do not affect the whole in the slightest, and even these "failures" are new techniques bred out of violations of rules and laws, which embody the arrogance and talent of the scriveners who have never been in the past. "Change is the basic criterion of artistic creation, and it is an inevitable trend of calligraphy creation to integrate modern ideas and consciousness into calligraphy creation and write out the style of the times.
Lin Sanzhi inscribed a poem on paper
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"When you paint when you are raw, you are ripe"
It is the natural expression of the calligrapher's mind in the creation of calligraphy
For the raw and mature in the creation, the painter Zheng Banqiao said this: "When the painting is raw, it is the time of maturity. He believes that painting should go through two processes, first from raw to mature, and then from cooked to raw, that is, "raw and then cooked, cooked and then born". The process from birth to maturity is achieved by ignorance through learning, but after reaching the state of knowledge, it is then transferred to life, which is the higher state of art. Su Dongpo believes: "When the weather is magnificent, the five colors are brilliant, and the old and mature are created plain." "Gradually mature and tend to be plain and naïve to achieve a return to basics, which reminds us of our own "development zone". For example, the content of calligraphy writing, the pen is Tang poetry, the creation is Tang poetry, as if calligraphy can not be written except For Tang poetry. It is better to broaden our horizons and find more content suitable for our own writing, so that our calligraphy creation is richer. Although calligraphy works focus more on the beauty of form in terms of content and form, both content and form require that we cannot blindly repeat the ancients and repeat ourselves when creating. Repetition will shrink the creation of calligraphy and hinder the prosperity and development of calligraphy art. Therefore, in the creation of calligraphy, we must get out of the small circle that we have formed and others, and we must "look up, down, left, and right." Although it was not easy at the beginning, it has taken a step towards the creation of the true sense, with all the effort and energy to pursue, and naturally reach the realm of maturity and rebirth. However, behind this life is actually very ripe, that is, first ripe and then born. The ripeness of life is the natural expression of the creative mind, the maturity of long-term accumulation and cultivation, the life of the painstaking pursuit of pursuing a higher realm, not the ripeness or rawness of disguise, so that the work can have a fresh and innocent atmosphere. Therefore, from raw to mature and then from mature to raw is the inevitable process for the writer to reach the ideal creative realm.
Lin Sanzhi Wine Feng Li Ai Five Words Joint Sentence written in 1980
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"Undressing"
It is the mental state that calligraphy creation should have
"Undressing" is a borrowing of the story of painting to tell the Taoist idea of "letting nature". This idea of not being bound by secular rituals shows a particularity of artistic creation, that is, the artist should have a mental state that is different from ordinary manual labor when creating, especially as a calligraphic art characterized by emotional expression. The painter Yun Shouping said: "Painting must have the intention of untying the clothes plate next to no one, and then the machine is in hand, the vitality is in disarray, not bound by the first craftsman, but swimming outside the law." The phrase "untie clothes and plates" is the mantra of Chinese painters, so the scribe must also have a mastery of the heart, a chest, not bound by the world, breaking the rules and precepts, and cannot be bound spiritually. Most of the excellent works in the past have been completed in a specific atmosphere and a state of spiritual relaxation, and Wang Xizhi's "Preface to the Orchid Pavilion" creates a peaceful and quiet artistic mood with a smooth brushwork and a sparse layout, expressing the joy and comfort of the Famous Shi Xian Ji Resort in Jiangzuo. It is conceivable that Wang Xizhi did not expect to write a "first line of the world's book" at that time. In the mental state of if it is intentional and inadvertent, the virtual, dense, thick and thin form a rhythmic movement, which is natural and vivid. It is so peaceful, not exciting, and embodies the order and harmonious beauty of the universe. Contemporary writers have a similar situation when creating, and my own works that are more satisfactory are all in the spirit of random sprinkling. Therefore, it is important to adjust your mentality and mental state when creating calligraphy.
Lin Sanzhi's works
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The artistic conception of "vivid rhyme" and "ethereal turbulence"
Artistic conception is an indispensable factor in the composition of artistic beauty. With a limited visual perceptual image, it induces association in the combination of virtual reality, and the viewer is infected in the "inexhaustible realm" of sensibility, understands its "outside the scene" and even "unexpected magic", and subtly plays its aesthetic role. Chinese painting aims to express the human spirit of subjectivity, which is called "intention" or "heart". Meaning is the main idea, is the emotion, the ancients said "standing image to exhaust the intention", "exhaustive intention" is the end, "standing image" is the means. "Standing image" is to express the meaning profoundly, and the object image of the painting is to do its best. Therefore, imagery is an artistic image that fully embodies the subject's thoughts and feelings. The more specific the image, the more limited it is, and the more profound the meaning, it is often difficult to discover by relying on individual concrete images alone. Therefore, Chinese painters cannot be satisfied with the limited number of images, but must look for an image that can express endless meanings, that is, the image outside the image. Therefore, the artistic conception is the combination and collision of the subject's spiritual emotions and the image outside the image. So what kind of artistic conception does traditional Chinese painting pursue?
The pursuit of artistic conception in ancient Chinese painting is ethereal. The artistic mind is born in the moment of self-forgetfulness, that is, the so-called "still light" in aesthetics. The starting point of "stillness" is emptiness, the mind is unencumbered, and it is temporarily isolated from the world. Looking at everything, everything is like in the mirror, bright and pure, each with its own place, showing its own, full, inner, free life. The so-called "contemplation of all things is self-sufficient", this self-satisfied, free life in silence reveals its brilliance. Su Dongpoyun: "Quietly moving in groups, empty and empty of all realms." "Emptiness produces beauty, and reiki flows, so in the final analysis, the form of beauty lies in emptiness." The Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra says, "Color is emptiness, and emptiness is color." At the same time, emptiness is a kind of "nothingness", and "nothingness" and "being" are opposite contradictions, "nothing is existence, and existence is nothingness." Zheng Zhongguang once pointed out insightfully: "Those who have no level but have levels are better, and those who have levels but no levels are clumsy." "Dialectically elucidates the relationship between being and non-being. Huang Binhong's landscape paintings show a layerless but layered artistic conception. His works are like a world full of vines and roses, preventing us from entering, and luring us in, so that the viewer lingers in the world of the dot line and tastes endlessly. Calligraphy works need such an artistic conception, while paying attention to the shape and quality, grasping the overall weather, so that the calligraphy works create an ethereal and changeable and interesting artistic conception.
Virtual tranquility is an aesthetic category of ancient Chinese national characteristics. The theory of virtual stillness is called "static breath" in the aesthetics of painting, and even "static breath" is regarded as the highest standard of artistic conception. Calligraphy has an obvious bookish atmosphere and literary tone, coupled with "calm atmosphere", which makes the calligraphy works present the aesthetic characteristics of literary and polite.
As a calligraphic medium, Chinese characters, unlike Western pinyin, which are composed of many different letters, are a spatial unit that "looks up and down, is similar to left and right, four corners are photographed, the size is complementary, the length is wide and narrow, and the temporary adaptation" and "eight square dot painting, ring arch center", showing a life space with tendons, bones, blood, and flesh. Words and words, lines and lines look up and down, yin and yang rise and fall, give in to each other, and inherit each other successively, so that the individual life space converges into the flow of life and becomes a space of movement. This space has a vibrant, sporty, spiritually noble rhythm. This rhythm gives the viewer a sense of music, which in turn produces a rhythm.
Qi rhyme is the rhythm and harmony of the "qi" that encourages all things in the universe. Vividness is the endless movement of life, and movement can produce beauty. In calligraphy works, from each basic stroke that makes up a calligraphy work to a single word, to the whole work, all of them pay attention to the beauty of a movement. Wang Shu said in the "Mustard Garden Painting Notation" that the essential of painting is only one word "live", that is, anger. The artist's creative activity is to fight against "death" in order to find the place of life. Therefore, every bit of the calligrapher's painting when creating is a portrayal of his own life, and the words and lines reflect the rhythmic and orderly harmonious movement of the universe, presenting a magnificent atmosphere. In the works of the two kings, we can feel that the whole world has returned to tranquility, living and working in peace and contentment, without quarrels and desires, which is indeed a symbol of harmony. The works of Xu Wei and Fu Shan convey depression and resentment with their scattered brushwork and crowded and tight spaces, and hint at social turmoil and uneasiness. Whether it is a smooth brush or a vertical and horizontal scattered brush, whether it is a sparse layout or a crowded and tight space, it can visually create a vivid aesthetic feeling.
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Quaint and elegant style
It is a sign of the taste of calligraphy creation
Style is a taste determined by formal norms. The style is mainly expressed in formal techniques, but it is also very closely related to the spirit of the subject. The level of tone displayed by different lattices directly reflects the subject's aesthetic standards, aesthetic fashion, aesthetic preferences and aesthetic ability. Therefore, the aesthetic thought of ancient Chinese painting pays special attention to the grasp of style in painting creation, and believes that it is the primary problem solved by creative conception. It's like singing, setting the tone accurately, in order to sing well. The creation of calligraphy, on the one hand, is to improve the visual effect of the external form, on the other hand, to improve the connotation and style of the artistic conception of calligraphy works, so as to create high-grade fine works of the times.
Simplicity and elegance are a symbol of the aesthetic character of Chinese literati, and the ancient is also new to the extreme. The more sophisticated people are, the more complex their thinking, the less true and simple things there are. Lao Tzu said that "seeing the plain and embracing the simplicity", and Zhuangzi proposed that "both carving and pondering, returning to the park", both of which are to carve and chisel the appearance of hua and fake, return to the park, and obtain the true meaning of art. There is nothing noble in art than simplicity, no greatest work is simplicity, and simplicity and simplicity require simplicity and simplicity. The style is high and ancient, and the ancient is elegant. This requires the writer to win the heart of the ancients, to get his heart out of the worldly vulgarity and return to simplicity, so that future generations always require the work to have an ancient meaning. When the human heart enters the realm of ancient times, the work also enters the realm of nobility, simplicity, simplicity, greatness, and simplicity. People appreciate works with high style and antiquity in order to seek "ecological balance" - what is not available in reality can be satisfied in art. The use of antique propaganda in calligraphy creation may also make sense. The traditional Spring League is red paper and black characters, modern people instead use gold powder to write on red paper, as if with a sense of auspiciousness of the times, but lost the traditional aesthetic taste of calligraphy, became vulgar, gorgeous, and the taste of simplicity is gone.
Style is related to personality. The style of the book is personality, the same modern clothing, worn on different classes of people is not the same style; the same Chinese characters, different cultivation of people to write the style is also different. Therefore, the calligrapher should read thousands of books, because reading can nourish the qi, strengthen the cultivation, improve the personality, and then improve the style of calligraphy works, cultivate people's aesthetic sentiments, and give people a high-grade artistic enjoyment.
Source/ China Painting and Calligraphy
Editor-in-Charge/Xuan Xuan