Appreciate the beauty of Chinese calligraphy art from the historical perspective of calligraphy culture - Yang Xiu, the master of Changchun Zhai, and the appreciation of calligraphy works

In the teaching of overseas calligraphy, it can be said that there are two systems of calligraphy teaching: one is the teaching promotion system based on the global Confucius Institute, and the other is the academic system of teaching calligraphy courses in universities, full-time calligraphy and Chinese teachers. I myself not only teach Chinese calligraphy courses in two universities in the United States, which is a formal elective course with three credits, many graduate students also take courses, from 1997 to the present, hundreds of foreign students have taken Chinese calligraphy courses; and I also use the platform of Confucius Institutes to teach calligraphy, organize international exhibitions and promotion exchanges of Chinese calligraphy, and let calligraphy spread in a wider field and crowd overseas.

Overseas calligraphy teaching is not only an effective auxiliary and promotion means for Chinese teaching, but also enables students to learn to recognize and memorize Chinese characters through calligraphy, and become interested in writing Chinese characters; it is itself one of the important and effective channels for disseminating Chinese culture that cannot be ignored; calligraphy art contains Chinese cultural and artistic information such as philosophy, poetry, literature, history and aesthetics, so that Western students love, admire and deeply respect from the bottom of their hearts; this also motivates us more - through the efforts of our generation. Let the art of Chinese calligraphy enter the university pulpit, culture and academic fields in the United States, expand its influence, and establish a foothold; let the aesthetics and philosophy of Chinese calligraphy gradually become the international aesthetic consensus.

Language does not seem to affect their appreciation of the beauty of Chinese calligraphy, let alone the obstacle to their use of brushes, and often the best students will not Chinese at all, which also proves that calligraphy has artistic independence. We set the goal of not only to let students learn the skills of writing with a brush, but also to introduce the history and culture related to calligraphy, so that students can appreciate the beauty of Chinese calligraphy and understand its important position in Chinese culture.

At a time when China is rising rapidly and China is in the ascendant, more and more Westerners are enthusiastic about learning Chinese and things related to China, which is a good time to promote calligraphy culture to the world, as a calligraphy educator, we should go all out to do our part to spread Chinese calligraphy overseas, but here we also have to ask: When Westerners respect and love Chinese calligraphy because they understand its important position in traditional Chinese culture, how much respect is calligraphy received in China? In fact, it is no longer a compulsory subject for many primary school students, and it has faded out of the focus of life of most modern young students, if we ourselves do not cherish the precious cultural asset of calligraphy and are not keen to "deconstruct" the tradition, how can we win the respect of outsiders?

The influence of Chinese calligraphy on Western art was more philosophical than technical. It is not that the technical influence is not important, they learned only the fur of the Technique of Chinese calligraphy, but this fur is also very useful. On the issue of similarity and god-likeness, the development process of China and the West is opposite. Western art rarely uses black and white, and their art is three-dimensional. The first impression of calligraphy on them is black and white, but it is also the most beautiful. Overall, their favorite part of Chinese calligraphy was cursive, because cursive was bold and casual and could easily be used in the abstract expressionism of the time.

In our opinion, their borrowing is very superficial, and they have not obtained calligraphy, but they themselves have played very happily and added a lot of their own understanding. In fact, what foreigners borrow from Chinese calligraphy and the aesthetics behind it may be the most basic thing in our tradition.

But because of its basics, we ourselves are blind to it. Some of us often feel strange when we look at the Western abstraction school, and feel that it is nonsense, but we do not feel that people are making a fuss about layout, form, and texture, and they want to express some things that figurative art cannot express.

In fact, we ourselves studied abstract art much earlier than them, and didn't the stones placed in suzhou Master of Nets Garden all show abstract beauty? Chinese admirers of Taihu stone often do not feel that they are appreciating an abstract beauty, and Chinese calligraphers rarely use the word "abstract" to describe or comment on calligraphy. We will say that so-and-so's cursive writing is well-framed, and so-and-so's cursive writing is strong and powerful, but we will not say that so-and-so's word is "abstract". And "abstract beauty" is precisely the most common word used by foreigners to praise Chinese calligraphy.

Conversely, when we look at the works of foreign modern painters, we also feel abstract, such as the paintings of Klein, Ma zewell and others, which is an abstract painting for most Chinese, including Chinese calligraphers, which is different from our cursive writing. We would think that they have not entered the door of Chinese art philosophy. In fact, it is not true that people have never wanted to go in and move the entire mountain of Chinese culture away. Zheng Banqiao said that "half of the learning, half of the skimming ... It is not necessary to be complete, it cannot be complete, and it does not have to be complete", in fact, this is the truth.

Guardian Secondary School is a grammar boys' school with a 370-year history, with more than 200 students studying Chinese and using it as an examination subject for the unified examination. Due to the separation of Chinese characters, Chinese calligraphy is still a problem for British students. During the teaching process at this school, which I was commissioned by the Confucius Institute, a fortuitous opportunity caused me to change my mind and introduce calligraphy into the classroom. 50 minutes of Chinese character lessons, British students can not sit still, I split the Chinese characters into partial parts of the first scrambled order written on the paper, students grouped, by forming the correct Chinese characters to activate the classroom, this game to meet the British students like competition, pay attention to their own characteristics.

To my surprise, the brush writing of Chinese characters with different thicknesses, the strokes of the brush, and the ink-scented handwriting are so magical in the eyes of British children. They always asked me to write on the spot after class, so I combined Chinese character learning and calligraphy learning. I taught them to write, stroke, Chinese, and present them with slides, and then they wrote on water-paper. In the teaching, I also feel that the great potential of calligraphy teaching overseas also promotes the Chinese learning of Chinese characters, calligraphy has a rich cultural content and artistic charm, and cannot be seen as a technique for writing Chinese characters.

Yang Xiuhe, (pen name: Xiaoyang) Chang Chun Zhai Lord, is a famous contemporary calligrapher, painter, calligraphy and painting educator. Born in 1955 in Beijing, China, he is a member of the Chinese Folk Photographers Association, an academician of the Chinese National Arts People's Academy of Calligraphy and Painting, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Calligraphy and Painting, and a member of the Calligraphy and Painting Institute of the Beijing Yuelian Society.

Yang Xiu, the master of Changchun Zhai, and his teacher's calligraphy and painting works have participated in the "Chinese Treasures Stamp Album" for many times and published dozens of works. Yang Xiuhe, the master of Changchun Zhai, has published works in magazines such as "Chinese Volunteers", "Caifeng China", "Hebei Contemporary Calligraphy and Painting", "China Weekly", "Focus on Contemporary Art" and was included in the "Dictionary of Chinese Celebrities" in 2021.