Professor Bai Qianshen, who has studied Chinese calligraphy in the United States on the other side of the ocean, believes that the current calligraphy creation is important to have a "self-entertainment" mentality.
Study the most traditional Chinese calligraphy, but on the other side of the ocean in the United States; After living abroad for twenty or thirty years, he is still a traditional Chinese literati in his bones—such a contradiction does not seem contradictory to Bai Qianshen.
Most of the time, Bai Qianshen is smiling, but when it comes to the problems of the calligraphy world, his voice has improved a lot, and there is a kind of love and hatred between his words, and at that time, the "temperament and elegance" that people are accustomed to can never summarize him. In fact, because of his calligraphy monographs such as "Fu Shan's World: The Transmutation of Chinese Calligraphy in the Seventeenth Century", "Fu Shan's Interaction and Entertainment: A Case Study of the History of Art Society", and "With the Ancients and Juanjuan Hair House", Bai Qianshen's calligraphy research, as a professor of art history at Boston University, has been quite influential at home and abroad. And he has a deep affection for Shanghai, where he grew up in Sisi.
In a recent interview with the Oriental Morning Post Art Review, Bai Qianshen expressed his views on the relationship between calligraphy creation and education, book associations, exhibitions, etc. He believes that Chinese calligraphy is important to have a "self-entertainment" mentality.
● Art review: Let's start with the calligraphy exhibition, there are many calligraphy exhibitions in recent years, on the influence in Shanghai in recent years, it may be regarded as the national calligraphy seal engraving exhibition in Shanghai last year, you went to see it in Shanghai, I seemed to have some return to the meaning of the thesis at first glance, but I still feel that there are fewer things to taste, what do you feel?
Bai Qianshen: I saw the French book exhibition once 19 years ago, and I watched the national exhibition last year 19 years later. Like you said, at first glance, the style of regression theology is a little more obvious.
● Art Review: The return to Theology is a big topic, do you think this phenomenon has anything to do with the representative figures of Theology such as Mr. Bai Shuo and Mr. Shen Yinmo in Shanghai?
Bai Qianshen: There is no necessary relationship. The whole thing that looks down is that there are still a lot of good calligraphy and seal engraving exhibitions in the country. Geographically, it is also very extensive. Henan, Shandong, Beijing, Shanghai, Gansu... Both. Gansu and Shaanxi are also well written.
● Art Review: What do you think is the biggest difference from the calligraphy exhibition 19 years ago? Is there anything particularly salient?
Bai Qianshen: The main difference is that the external forms are becoming more and more abundant. The problem is that the forms look very diverse, but the feelings are particularly homogeneous. For example, Xiao Kai, the writing method is probably only that few, slightly deformed, the line of writing is the same, it seems that there are several styles of books, several popular things have always been there, and there are too many similar aspects.
● Art Review: What was it like to see the National Calligraphy Exhibition 19 years ago?
Bai Qianshen: The techniques at that time were not as mature as they are now, but the appearance was not necessarily less than it is now.
● Art criticism: I also feel that the current calligraphy exhibition pays more attention to the external form, paying more attention to visual effects, such as old, mosaic, grafting, etc., and some small letters are also framed into large sizes, which is difficult to see.
Bai Qianshen: Yes, Xiao Kai is hanging so high, he can't see it at all. Why there are so many calligraphy exhibitions now, I can't understand. Judging from the exhibition situation, the general level is not bad, and there are very few who are particularly outstanding. To be honest, now watching a lot of domestic calligraphy exhibitions, often tired of watching (I mainly look at some exhibitions from the Internet), the amount is too large, overwhelming.
Art Review: What problem do you think this reflects? For example, if you were looking forward to such an exhibition, what would it look like?
Bai Qianshen: Many calligraphy exhibitions now are much more interesting to play, and occasionally playing fun is quite good, but Xiao Kai writes so big that it has become a display behavior, and the decoration is too strong. It's a lot like some of the commodity packaging now, a small box of tea leaves, three or five rice dumplings, with such a large luxury box. Imbalance.
● Art Review: In fact, Chinese calligraphy, especially the theory of the study of the same vein, many of them are codexes between literati, but now calligraphy is basically attributed to the exhibition of the hall, which does bring a lot of problems, do you think this has a good impact on the development of calligraphy or a bad impact?
Bai Qianshen: It is difficult to say good or bad. Regarding the effect of the exhibition, we can think about it from another position to see if the works can be moved to the home to be exhibited, some things can be moved to the home, and some seem to be unable to move to the home to display.
● Art criticism: For example, those small letters that hang very high are actually suitable for placing in the study.
Bai Qianshen: Well, a bucket square, a fan, an album, a hand scroll, just right in the study. Although there have been hand-rolled exhibitions and album exhibitions, from the perspective of display, this form is too space-consuming. Put them into the exhibition, one after another, is to make you dizzy, and can not touch yourself, unlike looking at some ancient books, you look quietly, there are things that can touch you, and the current exhibition gives people the feeling of mostly techniques. See how the author turns his head and performs acrobatics.
● Art Criticism: Nowadays, many colleges and universities teach mostly technology, and there are not many humanistic things. For example, there are many works in the National Calligraphy Exhibition whose styles are relatively similar.
Bai Qianshen: Yes, there are too many technical things in calligraphy works now, and if you see one work, you may feel good when you see it by chance, but when all ten works are like this, you will feel very annoyed. In recent years, some small codexes from the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China on the auction market have been very popular. If you look at the codexes of the old literati, one by one, each codex seems to represent a person with a personality, and you seem to be able to see the temperament of the writer. We now talk about the pursuit of individuality all day long, the pursuit of half a day, compared with those predecessors, but it seems to have no personality.
Art Criticism: It's also the lack of real creation.
● Art Review: Interestingly, at last year's National Calligraphy Exhibition, the two winners in Shanghai were "New Shanghainese", or "Sea Drift".
Bai Qianshen: Have they read any books before?
● Art Review: I know that there is a former high school graduate, business, like to practice words in his spare time, write and play when he has nothing to do, see the news of this exhibition, he submitted, and as a result, who knew that he would participate in the award. Another appears to be a secondary school teacher.
Bai Qianshen: Here I would like to ask two questions. First, why should I ask about the educational background, because calligraphy education in colleges and universities has become more and more of a mainstream model over the years. If you don't enter a college or university, you can write better than a college calligraphy education, what is the significance of college calligraphy education? The second question is, what is the significance of the Calligraphers Association? In other words, people who don't have a degree in calligraphy and don't join your calligraphers association can actually write very well.
Art Review: Can you say something public about an organization like the Calligraphers Association?
Bai Qianshen: Speaking openly means that everyone must realize the limitations of the book association -- we must realize that it is a mass organization.
Art Review: Let mass organizations return to mass organizations.
Bai Qianshen: Isn't it enough to locate mass organizations?
● Art review: But the book association organization has an administrative level, in the context of the official standard, the real cultivators will not take the book association seriously, but as a public, many people may still care about the book association.
Bai Qianshen: In fact, the attitude towards the book association is whether to participate or not to participate. Don't think of it as the only option. I think calligraphy has developed to this day, first, do not be limited by the calligraphy education system; Second, don't be restricted by the Calligraphers Association; Third, don't be restricted by exhibitions.
● Art Criticism: "Oriental Morning Post Art Review" has done some discussion and thinking about calligraphy education and book associations since last year, such as the book association, of course, there are also well-written calligraphers, but there are also many well-written calligraphers who disdain to participate in the book association, and will not participate in various calligraphy exhibitions and competitions.
Bai Qianshen: I agree with this point, in fact, what matters is not what associations or exhibitions he participates in, but whether the art of calligraphy is a pure love for him from the heart, so that it is easier to produce results.
Art Criticism: A love from the heart – this is especially important. There is a very key word in Chinese painting and calligraphy is "self-entertainment", Ni Yunlin said that "the servant's painting, but the brush is sloppy, talk about self-entertainment" is a painting, can also be understood as calligraphy, Chinese painting and calligraphy should have been from the realm of the soul to experience and understand, and is not just a technology.
Bai Qianshen: So I think the tradition of "entertaining oneself" that Chinese literati used to say is correct, and in a big way, we originally talked about learning and learning.
● Art criticism: Yes, "self-entertainment" means self-enjoyment and less utilitarianism, which is the true tradition of Chinese painting and calligraphy.
Bai Qianshen: Now a large number of exhibitions are "entertaining", and the final exhibition is tired to see, and when you see the end, it is easy to ignore the real level. In ancient times, writing was also considered to be an important means of self-cultivation, and many people regarded the process of writing as self-amusement and as a process of self-cultivation, so they attached great importance to its spiritual side. If you talk to today's calligraphers about self-cultivation, how many of them can really do it?
● Art Criticism: This should be related to the current social climate.
Bai Qianshen: Really a little, for example, the influence of Guinness culture in China is too great, I have never seen any Guinness competition in the United States - we always like to talk about the world's best, so this calligraphy seems to be the most in the world. Calligraphy pays attention to the realm, and there is no necessary relationship with the size of the scale, and small characters can also be written in very imposing form.
● Art Review: Yes, just like Mr. Zhang Ruyi, his xiaokai is so small, but the momentum is still very large, the realm is large, and it is very open. But in comparison, some calligraphers write with a brush like a broom, but they can't hide their inner smallness.
● Art Review: Also, some organizations now like to regard calligraphy as a vigorous mass movement, and Mr. Zhang Hai is proud that he did a relatively good job of the mass movement of calligraphy when he presided over the Book Association in Henan.
Bai Qianshen: This is a characteristic of this era, and it has its role and significance, at least it is meaningful for the popularization of calligraphy.
● Art Review: Nowadays, calligraphy criticism is actually quite confusing, what do you think about this problem?
Bai Qianshen: Calligraphy criticism is still easier in terms of technique, the most difficult is the realm aspect - when really commented on, it is easy to hurt people, and calligraphy criticism is often associated with people. There used to be a saying that "a book is like a man." For example, if you say, "His words are very vulgar," then it is finished, which is equivalent to a direct evaluation of people. But people who can't see the vulgar disagree.
● Art criticism: This literary criticism, in fact, everyone still has a pole in their hearts, right?
Bai Qianshen: There is a scale, but it is difficult to directly criticize now.
Art Review: What do you think is causing this situation?
Bai Qianshen: If you criticize directly, invisibly, you will offend many people.
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