Cao Yu, a native of Peony District, Heze City, Shandong Province, works for the Caozhou Calligraphy and Painting Institute in Heze City. He studied calligraphy training center of The Chinese Calligraphers Association and the postgraduate course of calligraphy of Shandong University.
He is currently a painter of the Central Academy of Calligraphy and Painting of the Jiusan Society, a member of the Chinese Calligraphers Association, the vice chairman of the Shandong Calligraphers Association and the director of the Engraving Hard Pen Committee, a member of the Chinese Calligraphy and Seal Engraving Art Committee of the Youth Federation of the Ministry of Culture, a member of the Shandong Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a member of the Standing Committee of the Heze Municipal CPPCC, the chairman of the Heze Calligraphers Association, and the first outstanding young artist of Shandong Province.
His works have participated in the "Seventh National Exhibition of Calligraphy and Seal Engraving", "Fish and Water" National First National Double-Support Calligraphy and Painting Art Exhibition, "National First Large Character Calligraphy Art Exhibition", "National Fifth National Calligraphy Art Exhibition", "National First National Calligraphy Exhibition for Civil Servants", "Excellent Works of Members of the 30th Anniversary of the Founding of the China Book Association", "Chinese Spiritual Chinese Dream - Exhibition on the Theme Creation of Calligraphy Works of Socialist Core Values" and other national exhibitions, and have been collected by the "Great Hall of the People", "Central Party School", "National Academy of Administration" and other institutions. He has published "Ancient Rhymes and Present Feelings - Selected Calligraphy Works of Cao Yu", "Ten Arts of Chinese Calligraphy and Painting - Cao Yu Calligraphy Volume", "Wen Xin HuaiQing - Selected Calligraphy of Cao Yu" and so on.
The purity of the book
——Reflections on the creation of Cao Yuli's book
Yu Zhonghua
Although Brother Cao Yu was good at all kinds of bodies and had considerable achievements, there was no doubt that he was a calligrapher with the name of Lishu. The Lishu mentioned here, of course, refers to a kind of book style with characteristics such as wave painting and division of potential, which is different from the real grass seal line. Such a kind of lishu belongs to the usual sense of lishu, or it can be typed out of a computer. It is marked by the fact that it is different from or different from other calligraphy styles, in a sense this is a font, not a value feature in the sense of calligraphy.
My view may immediately lead to some people's confusion and criticism, because for most book students, learning lishu is ultimately about writing the thing that is "lishu". What is Arithmetic? In the eyes of ordinary people, Lishu is of course a book with the characteristics of Lishu, which is different from cursive, it is also different from Italics, and it is even different from Xingshu. Yes, lishu must not only be distinguished from other calligraphy, but also cannot be mixed with the characteristics of other calligraphy, especially the pen mixed with letters, such lishu is usually called a pure lishu. The first thing I would like to state is that some of the above understandings are mutually agreeable to me with both hands, and these demands can also be identified in Cao Yu's letter of passage. What I want to emphasize is that this only has the meaning of the font, and what we are pursuing is the purity of the calligraphy in the sense of calligraphy art.
This, in turn, involves the difference between font and book style. Regarding the difference between font and book style, the academic community has debated endlessly, and there is still no clear conclusion. The font here refers to the historical existence in the sense of Chinese character symbols, and different fonts represent different historical time and space. The book body refers to the modeling connotation displayed on the basis of the chinese character shape, and different book styles represent different formal meanings. The weight of the book is the shape, and the weight of the font is the meaning of the word. The book body is based on the grasp of the meaning of the font, that is, the book body shape can not ignore the specifications and requirements of the font, blindly move towards the composition of the strokes, and ignore the rules and limits of the text itself. At the same time, the book body can not only stay on the font, once completely bound by the font, the meaning of the book body will no longer exist, losing the unique meaning of the chinese characters. It is from this point of view that the purity of the book refers to the purity of form and connotation in the sense of the book, which contains three levels:
The purity of the Lishu is first reflected in the difference between the Lishu and other calligraphic styles in the historically existing calligraphic works. Standing at this angle, you will find that in the history of calligraphy, there are both standard types of Lishu such as "Cao QuanBei" and "Shi Chenbei", and at the same time there are inscriptions that are difficult to measure with Lishu font, such as "Zhang Qianbei", there are many words that do not have swallowtail wave paintings, if according to the requirements of Lishu font, "Shimen Song" is difficult to identify as Lishu, so at this time, Lishu does not have simple basic characteristics, but has a basis for difference from other specific inscriptions of the Fa Ti. It is not that the Lishu you write has the basic characteristics of the Lishu, but it means that you must be able to have enough recognition with other calligraphic Fa-ti, and any stroke of it cannot be blurred into the strokes of a certain Fa-ti in other books. As a result, the purity of the Lishu began to move towards a concrete historical reality, the Fa Ti. In other words, in the general sense of the author of the book, we judge whether he wrote a book of letters - it is enough to have the basic characteristics of the book, but further it requires the book to have a specific direction, pointing to which, which period, which post, and even which version, and so on. This is the second level referred to by the purity of the book. This level begins to point to art. Usually, a lishu that does not have a specific fa-ti point is a lishu in the conceptual sense of lishu, rather than pointing to specificity. A concept is not a way of thinking to grasp specific things, it is an idea that summarizes the common points of a class of things. Concepts are abstract and impersonal, and they grasp the universal.
Therefore, conceptual thinking fundamentally ignores the "special state" of culture and life, which is different from form, or weaker than concrete form, and therefore, it often becomes the antithesis of art. What art wants to express is the specific feelings and cognitions of the present, the here and now, and the person, and it points to the concrete, so we often hear that the criticism of the practitioner is "conceptual".
It can be seen from this that in the sense of font, the lishu belongs to the concept of writing, which belongs to the category of words, because the text refers to the universality of things. For example, "cup" refers to the commonality of all cups, which is a static way of existence, which can only describe the dynamic existence of a cup in a contextual context. The book in the sense of the book body points to a specific Dharma, which leads to the concrete, "this", not the other, is artistic, and the dynamic presentation of the unique situation. As far as the cup raised earlier is concerned, the cup I want to draw is this cup with a handle and a peony flower pattern, not the cup with a moon flower pattern, which has its irreplaceability and high recognition, which is the starting point of art. As far as the writing is concerned, what I am writing is the word "cup" in the "Ode to the Stone Gate", not the two words in the "Cao Quan Stele", of course, if I go further, it is the "cup" that I wrote today, not the "cup" Written yesterday, this is the "cup" of the "Shimen Ode" that "I" saw, not what "you" or "he" saw, etc., so that I stepped into the temple of art step by step.
The third level of purity is the intrinsic requirement in the cultural sense. Cultural significance is derived from the origin of culture, and the genetic inheritance brought about by the beginning of culture. As far as calligraphy is concerned, the cultural significance brings with it the thing of how calligraphy is calligraphy and how calligraphy is calligraphy, which we call the essence of calligraphy, and the cultural origin is the source of essence. In the public's impression, of course, the Lishu is Han li, if you go back to a hundred years ago, it refers to those Han monuments. Since the beginning of the last century, a large number of bamboo and wood Jian mu have been unearthed, thus adding a new thing to people's Lishu impression - Han Jian (of course, not only Han Jian, but also Qin Jian, Jin Jian and so on). The impression of these two types of Han Li is basically that the Han monument is thick and tidy, and the Han Jian is light and agile. Therefore, the result is that the Xi Han stele often passively or actively wants to add some Han Jian strokes for flexibility, and the Xi Han Jian is asked to join the thickness of the Han stele to increase the weather, it seems that we have surpassed the ancients and obtained a new height. Facts tell us that not only did the contemporary Lishu not surpass or catch up with the glorious Eastern Han Dynasty, but even if it was the Qing dynasty, we still had a long distance.
In the name of Lishu, there is already a clear inner requirement in itself, but our carelessness regards it as an unspoken object of existence. "Lishu" tells us about calligraphy, not anything else, and the other refers here to tablets, carved stones, and the like. "Affiliation" as a literal form includes a lishu and a deed. Everyone will be inexplicably surprised, because the term "lizhi" is unheard of.
Indeed, we usually use these concepts vaguely, such as the Lishu is all, it contains the Jianshu and the Han Stele, such a name is based on the material, of course, this is not impossible, but in detail, it is full of loopholes. What I want to say is that when the means of presenting words as entities are used as a basis: words have two ways to present words due to their different uses, one is "book" and the other is "engraving". Most of the books are narrative texts, mainly expressive and lyrical, reflecting an outpouring of emotion; what is carved out is a commemorative text, which is passed down for a long time and is not submerged. Therefore, the text of the book exists in the form of ink, and its carrier is mostly bamboo and wood Jane (paper has not been widely used in the Han Dynasty); and the engraved text exists in the form of carved stones, and its carrier is a cliff and a stone stele. Of course, the writing of the carved stone is also written first and then the stone is carved, but its writing is for the service of "carving", so the book here does not become a book. The book, because of the needs of the writer's expression, moves forward with the fluctuations of the writer's mood, deliberately swinging, the handwriting flows gently, showing the temporality of writing; engraving, because the content of the text needs to be passed on for a long time, naturally the law book is profound, thick and deep, and presents the spatiality of the composition. It can be seen from this that it is impossible to "enter the wood and divide into three points" when writing, otherwise it will hinder the expression of the mood, and it will of course be strictly rectified in stone, so that it can be passed on for a thousand years.
A book is a book, and a carving is a carving. Similarly, the Simple Book is the Simple Book, and the Han Monument is the Han Monument, and the two should not be confused. Those who study Han steles naturally want to be strict and profound, while those who write simple books must of course have a swing of intention and reveal their temperament. Only by distinguishing between the two can the Lishu be called the true Lishu, which is derived from the distinction between the beginning of writing and culture, the kind of person who confuses Han Jian and Han Bei, and wants to merge them into one like Lalang, the result can only be the result of non-donkey and non-horse, mixed and unclean, and hindering the further improvement and development of Lishu. This is the third level of purity.
Standing in the position of blindly pursuing modernization, the writer is potentially swayed by anthropocentrism, disregarding calligraphy itself, taking it as an object of their own arrogance and arbitrary fiddling, and personal style often becomes the main pursuit of the writer, so the arbitrary patchwork of calligraphy facts has become the first choice of everyone, thus seriously harming calligraphy and making calligraphy lose its cultural origin. Therefore, our immediate priority is not to "create", but to "tell", and it is our task to return to the calligraphy itself and purify the true historical form of calligraphy.
There are roughly two categories of Cao Yu brother's lishu works: one is the grand masterpiece derived from the Han Monument, the pen is in place, the strong key is strong, so that the sense of exhilaration of life; the other is the exquisite sketches derived from the Jian Mu book, exquisite and delicate, tactful and charming, and the viewer can feel the mood fluctuations of the writer. If you look closely at the works, you can see the specific provenance of each work, and it is pure and not contradictory. Personally, I think this is in line with the requirements of the development of calligraphy itself, which is a kind of work that continues the tradition. In his works, although there is no personality and style expected by ordinary people, in my opinion, the sense of purity in his works is the charm of Lishu.