Wen Duan Honggang
Art appreciation is a very complex aesthetic activity, which refers to a comprehensive process in which the appreciator perceives, thinks, appreciates, understands, and recreates a work of art.
Art appreciation is not a simple matter, for the appreciator, must have a relatively rich life experience, artistic literacy, cultural knowledge and aesthetic ability, the appreciation of artworks, must have a high aesthetic value and aesthetic connotation, can stimulate the appreciation of the good feelings, can touch its heartstrings, stimulate the appreciation of the exploration continues.
In fact, all things called art have more or less aesthetic commonalities, but aesthetic commonalities cannot take care of everyone's preferences and interests. After all, thousands of people have thousands of faces, and it is difficult to reconcile them.
Take calligraphy appreciation as an example, some people like Wang Xizhi's "Lanting Collection Preface" and Zhao Ziang's "Luo Shen Fu" and other "beautiful" calligraphy, some people prefer "magnificent" calligraphy such as Wei Bei and Yan Zhenqing's "Yan Qinli Tablet", and some people like Huang Tingjian's "Songfeng Pavilion Poems" and other "beautiful" calligraphy, and some people are keen on the "clumsy beauty" calligraphy style of Xu Wei, Wang Duo, Fu Shan, Zheng Banqiao and others.
Of course, there are more than the above four types of calligraphy, and some calligraphy is often high and low, and only a very few people can appreciate it. This type of calligraphy is usually regarded as "high-class" calligraphy in circles, but in the eyes of ordinary people, it is considered "ugly" and its artistic value is skeptical.
For calligraphy "Xiaobai", good calligraphy has some commonalities, for example, the font is standardized and upright, the strokes are symmetrical and straight, the chapter is natural and smooth, the form is beautiful and decent, and the overall view gives people a beautiful and beautiful, regular, and easily recognizable feeling. Of course, this is also the traditional aesthetic concept in calligraphy, and most people identify with it.
If the quality of calligraphy is evaluated by such aesthetic commonality, then only the "beautiful" type of calligraphy, the popular pavilion style in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and even the contemporary "printed style" calligraphy represented by Tian Yingzhang can enter the eyes of calligraphy "Xiaobai", and other types of calligraphy are completely worthless outliers in their eyes.
The aesthetic concept of calligraphy novices has a lot to do with their vision or appreciation, and appreciation ability is mainly supported by cultural accomplishment and life experience.
In Zen Buddhism, it is proposed that there are three realms of Zen meditation: at the beginning of Zen meditation, the mountains are mountains and the water is water; Zen has enlightenment, the mountains are not mountains, and the water is not water; after enlightenment, the mountains are just mountains and the water is just water.
If the three realms of Zen meditation are applied to the appreciation of calligraphy, it can also explain the problem.
Ordinary calligraphy lovers have just come into contact with calligraphy, there are not many calligraphy tablets that have been seen, there are not many calligraphy masters who can be contacted, and there are only a handful of calligraphy works that have been read, and even how to hold the pen and move the pen are not good, and the cognition of calligraphy basically stays at the surface of the "identification level", that is, only according to the glyphs to distinguish the characteristics of the "five major calligraphy", can understand the common traditional Chinese characters, and evaluate the quality of a calligraphy, often only pay attention to whether the font is beautiful and beautiful, whether the glyph is easy to recognize, and whether the chapter layout is pleasing to the eye.
After all, people who are new to calligraphy have a lot of dealings with easy-to-understand fonts such as regular script, line script, pavilion style, and printing style, and to a certain extent, they have formed a "fixed thinking" and think that good calligraphy is this kind of decent appearance. If the calligraphy you see changes slightly, and the shape of the font is slightly beyond your acceptance and cognitive ability, you will reject them.
This is the first realm of appreciating calligraphy: looking at the mountains is the mountains, and the water is the water.
With the gradual improvement of the "discernment ability" of ordinary calligraphy lovers, their horizons have gradually broadened, and they have seen the calligraphy of some famous masters throughout the ages, and have a certain ability to judge the quality of calligraphy, and they feel that they are amazing. They may even have a blind confidence in themselves, thinking that what does not meet their taste is wrong.
In the words of a popular folk saying, this kind of person is "a bottle does not want to be, half a bottle is a bottle".
People who are truly knowledgeable and capable are very modest wherever they go, do not show their dew, and often ask questions without shame and learn from others with an open mind. And those who know a little bit and have a little bit of success are often complacent and like to show off wherever they go.
To put it bluntly, this kind of person is still a novice in calligraphy, still staying in the subjective aesthetic preference and aesthetic stage, only paying attention to the external beautiful form of calligraphy, and ignoring the inner artistic atmosphere and emotional appeal of calligraphy, thinking that elegant and beautiful, charming and dignified, chic and handsome calligraphy is good calligraphy.
It is precisely because of this concept that their perception of calligraphy has also become biased and narrow, and they often regard the simple and ancient, strange and wild, dignified and sluggish calligraphy as "inferior works" that cannot be put on the table.
This kind of person often comments on the works of famous artists, and the evaluation of Yan Zhenqing's "Manuscript for the Sacrifice of Nephews", which is known as "the second book in the world", is "messy and sluggish, full of paper", Xu Wei's calligraphy is "scribbled and bizarre, debauchery and wild", and Zheng Banqiao's calligraphy is "crooked and twisted, and the streets are paved with stones".
Some people even labeled the "Manuscript of the Sacrifice of Nephews" as the "originator of ugly books".
The full name of "Sacrifice Nephew Manuscript" is "Sacrifice Nephew Gift Praise Doctor Ji Mingwen", which is a sincere eulogy written by Yan Zhenqing to his nephew in 758, the full text is a total of 234 words, written with a line of writing mixed with cursive, using a lot of "seal brushwork", the turning point of the line is smooth and round, not revealing the edge, the overall view, the charm is natural, and the personal emotions are vividly displayed in the calligraphy lines, which is the representative work of "Radiant Beauty" works in the history of Chinese calligraphy.
When Yan Zhenqing created the "Manuscript of the Sacrifice of the Nephew", it was difficult to hold himself in the depths of the feelings, and the emotional consciousness dominated the writing of the brush, and he did not care about the external forms such as knots, chapters, penmanship, and layout, even if the ink on the pen was used up, he also subconsciously wrote down, and inadvertently created the effect of "dry pen", and the whole formed a contrasting relationship between the shade, light and heavy, virtual and real, and the urgency, and the personal emotional ups and downs and the rhythm and rhythm of the lines were combined into one, so to speak, "The Manuscript of the Sacrifice of the Nephew" It is a natural work, with extremely high artistic value, and calligraphy novices can't appreciate it at all.
Similarly, Xu Wei and Zheng Banqiao's calligraphy is also very individual, with exaggerated brushstrokes, not paying attention to conventional brushwork, and is outstanding in momentum and impact, giving people a sense of wild and flamboyant.
The calligraphy works of several of them are too high in the aesthetic realm, giving people the feeling of spring and snow, and the aesthetic cultivation and aesthetic ability of ordinary people cannot reach that level at all, and they can't see the charm at all. In addition, their works are too different from the traditional aesthetic concept of calligraphy, which is also an important reason for their disacceptance.
When an ordinary calligraphy lover has seen too many people and entered the ultimate realm of "seeing the mountain or the mountain, looking at the water or the water", he found that the pool of calligraphy is bottomless, it is broad and profound, all-encompassing, even if the same calligraphy work, with different moods can also interpret different beauty, not to mention those works of thousands of people.
Only after experiencing the glitz can one see through the essence of the flashiness. How can a novice calligrapher who has only practiced calligraphy for a few days say irresponsible things about those calligraphy masterpieces that look up to the mountains?