Sha Menghai
Among the ten calligraphers selected, Kang Youwei and Wu Changshuo were born in the 1840s and 1850s, while others such as Shen Yinmo, Yu Youren, Xie Wuliang, etc. were mostly born in the 1880s, and only Mr. Sha Menghai was born in the early 2000s. That is to say, among the top ten calligraphers of the 20th century, Sha Menghai was the youngest.
Sha Menghai calligraphy
Sha Menghai (1900-1992), formerly known as Wenruo, alias Shacun, Shi Huang, etc., served as the honorary director of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, the vice chairman of the China Book Association, and the chairman of the Zhejiang Provincial Book Association. A calligrapher can hold multiple social positions, which first of all depends on the social influence of the calligrapher and the achievements in calligraphy creation, so that Mr. Sha Menghai's achievements and status are very matched.
Sha Menghai is a generalist in art, whose artistic ability has both breadth and depth, and more importantly, his calligraphy links tradition and modernity, and has a key role in the transition from calligraphy to modernity.
Mr. Sha Menghai was born and raised in the beautiful Jiangnan, I don't know what role such an environment plays in the cultivation of his calligraphy style, but we can clearly feel that the style of his calligraphy is more inclined to "masculine" and "magnificent".
From the perspective of viewer's feelings, Mr. Sha Menghai's calligraphy history attaches importance to "momentum" and "strength". In the thousands of years of calligraphy history, the mainstream style of calligraphy has always been dominated by the elegant style of calligraphy dominated by the "two kings", but in a certain period of time, the trend towards a simple and thick calligraphy aesthetic was accidentally flashed. Sha Menghai's calligraphy, the visual impact of "majestic and vast" brought to us, is indeed shocking.
Sha Menghai's title "Daxiong Treasure Hall"
Mr. Sha Menghai's calligraphy is often eclectic with a pen. Different from ordinary people's exquisite use of pens, when Mr. Sha Menghai writes, the pen fluctuates and fluctuates, and sometimes even the belly and root of the pen are used, which is obviously a betrayal of the classic brushwork. Is it that Mr. Sha Menghai does not understand penmanship?
Mr. Sha Menghai uses the "brush pen" to express the texture of the line, which on the surface seems to be absurd, but in fact, the pen head has already "had hills and ravines in the chest" in the process of rapid rotation. Sha Menghai, who is extremely familiar with the history of calligraphy and has a deep understanding of the classic calligraphy of past dynasties, will not be unaware of the brushwork of the ancients, but it is just the strain he made in his brushwork in order to create the magnificence of his own calligraphy.
In contemporary times, the mainstream of calligraphy is to destroy tradition. Unlike Mr. Sha Menghai, many people in modern times use this to disguise their incompetence in classical calligraphy. In the realm of yearning for majestic beauty, Mr. Sha Menghai has never been disdainful of "pen and pen center" and "pen and pen pay attention to history", but his own learning is deep and highly cultivated, and he will not be chaotic under the banner of "innovation" like some people.
Sha Menghai is especially good at list books, full of golden stone qi, and in the performance of the masculine temperament of stele learning, he became the first person after Kang Youwei and Yu Youren. His calligraphy dares to take risks, uses bold and extreme pens, and shakes people's hearts.
In this regard, some people think that Mr. Sha Menghai's brushwork is incomprehensible, and think that as a generation of masters, why is the pen so absurd. If You compare Sha Menghai with Yu Youren, it is true that his pen is not sophisticated enough, but starting from how to solve the problem of jinshiqi in the integration of inscriptions, Mr. Sha Menghai's practice of sacrificing brushwork to seek the overall performance effect of calligraphy is also a useful attempt, and even a helpless choice.
Of course, Mr. Sha Menghai's calligraphy also has regrets - his calligraphy has been consciously or unconsciously, and his habits have been immortalized, such as the right shoulder towering from the calligraphy of his teacher Wu Changshuo. Throughout Mr. Sha Menghai's calligraphy in various periods, although it is constantly changing, the extension of the knot, the elongation of the apostrophe, and the inhibition of the left and right of the glyph are always in the same vein.
This makes his calligraphy always lack a subtle rhyme while having an external tension.