Summary:
The Qin and Han dynasties were the most abundant and complex period of variation and derivation of Chinese calligraphy, and were an important stage in the history of calligraphy development. As an important part of Chinese culture, writing and calligraphy have undergone major changes and development in the Qin and Han dynasties, and with the evolution of Chinese character fonts from small seals to subordinates, grasses, lines and letters, calligraphy as an art has gradually matured. This had a profound impact on the history of calligraphy. The most important thing in the meantime is the change of the font and the high degree of achievement of the seal calligraphy.
Calligraphy is an art unique to the mainland. The Chinese script exists not only as a symbol of record language, but also as an art. People also pursue the beauty of its form when writing, making it an art that expresses national beauty, subjective consciousness, mood and feelings.
The Qin and Han dynasties were the most abundant and complex period of variation and derivation of Chinese calligraphy, and were an important stage in the history of calligraphy development. As an important part of Chinese culture, writing and calligraphy have undergone major changes and development in the Qin and Han dynasties, and with the evolution of Chinese character fonts from small seals to subordinates, grasses, lines and letters, calligraphy as an art has gradually matured. This had a profound impact on the history of calligraphy. The most important thing in the meantime is the change of the font and the high degree of achievement of the seal calligraphy.
Before Qin Shi Huang unified China, his writing style could be called the Great Seal, also known as the Zhenwen. After Qin Shi Huang completed the great cause of reunification, he implemented the system of writing and writing, stipulating that the small seal should be used as the standard font for unifying China. The production of small seals is an inevitable trend of simplifying the book style from complexity to simplicity. In the last years of the Warring States period, the writing used by the people had simplified the Shang and Zhou Great Seals to a certain extent, but the writing styles of the princely countries were inconsistent.
After the unification of Qin, Li Si and others carried out unified sorting and simplifying work in terms of writing, and summarized the style of the small seal, which was also called qin seal because it was the official standard script of the Qin Dynasty. With the downward shift of knowledge since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States period, Chinese characters broke the monopoly of a small number of historians in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the number of people using writing was increasing, and the socialization and popularization of writing increasingly required it to be simplified, so in order to meet this need, another font appeared in the Qin Dynasty, one by one, according to Xu Shen of the Han Dynasty, "Commentaries on the Interpretation of Characters and Prefaces":
The Qin Dynasty had eight types of writing:
One is the Big Seal, the second is the Small Seal, the third is the Inscription, the fourth is the Worm Book, the fifth is the Imitation Seal, the sixth is the Signature Book, the seventh is the Book of Death, and the eighth is the Book of Li.
Careful study, the Qin Dynasty actually only existed in the big seal, small seal, Lishu three types of books, after the Qin unified the country, the implementation of the same text, unified the six kingdoms of the seal book as a small seal, as the official published normative book style, Qin Dynasty calligraphy small seal is the official script of the Qin Dynasty. After the unification of the Six Kingdoms by the Qin Dynasty, it was stipulated that "the book is rectangular in the shape of a small seal, with a rounded pen, the structure is symmetrical, the pen gesture is thin and handsome, the posture is elegant and relaxed, and the main months are in official documents, carved stones, inscriptions, etc." The small seal works of the Qin Dynasty that have been handed down to this day include "Taishan Carved Stone", "Lang Which Carved Stone", "Fengshan Carved Stone", "Huiji Carved Stone", etc., which are said to have been written by Li Si. In addition, the daily writing style in the Qin Dynasty is not a standard small seal book like the Qin carved stone, but a relatively sloppy and straight seal book, which is close to the Lishu, and now it is called Qin Li, which is a book used daily by the people, and it is also a book used in the official documents of small officials. It further simplified the seal book, changed the curved pen to a square pen, and changed the font structure from round to square, improving the writing speed. At that time, most of the letters written in this font were written, and most of the writers were small officials of the same type, so they were called Lishu, and the Lishu of the Qin Dynasty was called QinLi.
The calligraphy ink of the Qin Dynasty includes the Shushu and the Jianshu. The Qin Jian unearthed in Hubei Yunmeng Sleeping Tiger Land, most of the writing belongs to the Lishu. However, some characters still retain the structure of the seal book, which is the ancient li in the changing of the seal. The glyphs have variations such as rectangular, square, and flat squares, the strokes are thick and simple, the structure is complementary to each other, and the calligraphy is neat and beautiful. Some of the characters unearthed from the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha, Hunan Province, belong to the seal book, and some of them are written in the Qin Dynasty. Most of these inkblots are relatively neat and can be used to study the structure of the early lishu and the characteristics of the pen.
According to records, the calligraphers of the Qin Dynasty included Li Si, Zhao Gao, Hu Wujing, Cheng Mi and so on. Li Si once wrote the "Cangjie Chapter", he took the Shi Zhen Da Seal and created the Small Seal, which had a great influence on the seal books of future generations. His calligraphy is rich in bone and beautiful. According to legend, the carved stones that Qin Shi Huang traveled around the country were written by Li Si. According to legend, Zhao Gao once wrote the "Ye Li Chapter" and Hu Wujing once wrote the "Erudite Chapter", both of which made certain contributions to the creation of the small seal. Cheng Mi had done work on the standardization of the Lishu.
In the Han Dynasty, the style of Lishu developed from a trickle to a large river, and Lishu replaced Xiaozhu as a popular style of official documents, and the history of Chinese calligraphy entered the era of Hanli. The emergence of Lishu was a major change in the history of Chinese calligraphy and even in the history of Chinese characters, which freed Chinese characters from the pictographic ancient script.
The early Lishu of the Western Han Dynasty was very close to the Qin Li of Yunmeng Qin Jian and appeared to be clumsy, so it was called Gu Li.
In the middle of the Western Han Dynasty, calligraphers of the Western Han Dynasty absorbed the advantages of the rigorous structure of inscriptions such as "Taishan Carved Stone" and "Yangling Tiger Rune" of the Qin Dynasty, as well as the advantages of the Qin Dynasty Lishu Shu dao square folding and easy to carve, and synthesized it into a new style of writing, called Han Seal. Its neat rules are better than the Qin Dynasty edict version.
Han seal works are mainly found in jin wen and certain stone carvings. Such as the "Chengshan Palace Canal Slope" of the fourth year of the Shenjue, the "Shanglin YuzhangGuan Tongjian" of the third year of the first yuan, the Songshan Qimu Temple, the Tai Room, and the Shao Room Three Stone Que. At the same time, the Han Dynasty was an era of vigorous development of calligraphy, and Lishu achieved great development, and during the Western Han Dynasty, Lishu became a common body of official documents. The early Lishu of the Western Han Dynasty was still influenced by Qin Li, appeared to be clumsy, known as Guli, until the late Western Han Dynasty did not complete the transformation, developed into a wave pick, wave, knot body with a horizontal trend of the present Li, also known as Han Li, the late Western Han Dynasty posture from the rectangular gradually changed to the flat side, the wave potential became more and more obvious, the Han Dynasty Lishu entered a mature period, usually this and the Lishu is called Han Li or Sub-Li.
In the Eastern Han Dynasty, the art of calligraphy flourished, and the seal, li, grass, line, and kai were possessed, but the Eastern Han Dynasty was still an era with Lishu as the axis, and Lishu was very popular and developed to the peak. , Han Li transformed into a gorgeous style. This was mainly caused by the influence of the Eastern Han Dynasty stele. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, the trend of tree monuments was prevalent, and aristocratic bureaucrats used them to praise their merits; The rulers of the Han Dynasty used inscriptions to inscribe Confucian classics and carry out indoctrination. And more calligraphy masters to write carved stones, so the representative works of Han Dynasty calligraphy are mostly seen in the Eastern Han Dynasty stone stele Han carved stele standing stone wind and its prosperity, mostly using Lishu, engraving fine, leaving a lot of monuments, dazzling, colorful, rich decorative fun Swallowtail wave pick in the Han monument has been developed, tending to gorgeous style, Lishu has been fully matured so far. The Hanshu was the heyday of Lishu, and the aesthetic style displayed by Hanshu represented the ideal realm of the development of Lishu. The emergence of Han Li is a turning point in the history of calligraphy, since then, the pen performance of calligraphy is no longer limited to the uniform circle and introverted of the seal book, but let the pen blade wave and the pick and kick, the characteristics of the brush are revealed one by one, and finally the development of the calligraphy is complex and the function of the brush is extremely effective.
The new style of writing that emerged after the Seal Wasscript was cursive. In fact, the origin of cursive writing is very early, according to the Jin Dynasty Wei Heng's "Four-Body Calligraphy": HanXing and cursive. According to the new archaeological data, it can be said that cursive writing has appeared in the Qin Dynasty, it occurred almost at the same time as Lishu, and the development of seal calligraphy to Zhuangquan is Lishu, and the development of cursive to Grass is cursive. Cursive writing is divided into chapter grass and present grass. The so-called chapter grass is the cursive writing of the Lishu used for the Official Records, and its words are not connected to the word, and the pen is similar to the subordinate. Also known as grass. Imakusa is an evolution of chapter grass, the font is more simplified, and the gestures are constantly sketched. The seal book was influenced by the Lishu and produced the Miao Seal. The chapter grass and imakusa derived from the Lishu have begun to be used more widely, and the interest in cursive has opened up a larger field for the art of calligraphy. The seal book was influenced by the Lishu and produced the Miao Seal. When it comes to cursive, we have to talk about a big zhang zhi, he is a calligrapher of the Eastern Han Dynasty, is the earliest master of modern grass in the mainland, known as "grass sage", Zhang Zhi's cursive has influenced the development of chinese calligraphy, brought unparalleled vitality to the book world, known as the Chinese calligraphy saint Wang Xizhi, middle-aged teacher Zhang Zhi, admired Zhang Zhi, think that cursive is not as good as Zhang Zhi.
The chapter grass and imakusa derived from the Lishu have begun to be used more widely, and the interest in cursive has opened up a larger field for the art of calligraphy. Many calligraphers and works on calligraphy theory also emerged in large numbers at the end of the Han Dynasty. In modern times, a large number of bamboo and wood janes of the Eastern Han Dynasty have also been unearthed, adding precious calligraphy materials to the treasure house of eastern Han calligraphy art. In short, the Eastern Han Dynasty is a brilliant in the history of the development of Chinese calligraphy
Rotten periods. In the two Han Dynasties, there were also xingshu
The prototypes of the archaeological excavations such as "Quicksand Falling Jane", "Yumen Guan Tunnel Sub-Xingjian", "Juyan HanJian", "Eastern Han Yongshou Second Year Urn" and other texts similar to today's writings abound. Liu Desheng, a native of Yingchuan at the end of the Han Dynasty, wrote xingshu, and it is said that xingshu was created by him, which is not accurate, in fact, Liu Desheng should be a great calligrapher famous for xingshu at that time. In addition, the Han Dynasty began to appear in scripted scripts, such as the Four Years of shenjue (6 BC).
1 year), Luo Zhenyu said: "For the indiscriminate burial of the present Kai. However, the real maturity and perfection of xingshu and calligraphy, including cursive writing, was after the Wei and Jin dynasties, and the entire 400 years of the two Han Dynasties was still the era of the prevalence of Lishu.
bibliography
Baidu Encyclopedia "Qin and Han Calligraphy"
Painter's Works Network "Achievements and Characteristics of Calligraphy Art in the Qin and Han Dynasties of China"
Art China "History of Calligraphy (II): Pioneering Qin and Han Calligraphy"
China Calligraphy Network "On the Art of Qin and Han Calligraphy"
Calligraphy History Network "Calligraphy History - Qin and Han Calligraphy (Part 1)"