Yang Shoujing's book "The Earth Is Like a Union" Collected by the Hubei Provincial Museum
This year marks the 180th anniversary of Yang Shoujing's birth. On February 26th, the "Calligraphy Art of Yang Shoujing", jointly sponsored by Hubei Provincial Museum and Wuhan Art Museum, opened in Halls 4 and 5 of Wuhan Art Museum, Hubei Province. "The Paper, Ancient Art" (www.thepaper.cn) learned from the Wuhan Art Museum that the exhibition exhibited a total of 45 works and some published documents and pictures, including 40 calligraphy works by Yang Shoujing in various periods, including the manuscripts of "Commentaries on Tablets", "Commentaries on Posts", "Xueshu Shuyan", and 5 works by Wu Changshuo, Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Yuzhao and other friends who had close contacts with Yang Shoujing. Yang Shoujing and Pan Cun, "Yang Shoujing's Influence on the Japanese Book Scene", and "Yang Shoujing's Circle of Friends" are sorted out and presented.
Exhibition site
Fan Feng, director of the Wuhan Art Museum, said at the opening ceremony that Yang Shoujing came out of Hubei region, a famous university in the late Qing Dynasty and early Minchu, and his main achievements are reflected in historical geography, typology, epigraphy, calligraphy theory, etc. He has written more than 80 books in his lifetime, nearly 40 million words. In addition, he is also an important calligrapher in the history of calligraphy in the Republic of China, and he is praised by the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty as one of the three universities of the late Qing Dynasty. "Today, when we comb through Yang Shoujing's calligraphy and re-understand Yang Shoujing's academic value, we all feel the importance of calligraphers' calligraphy and calligraphy, and all the figures who occupy a place in the history of calligraphy are scholars who are full of poetry and books."
Yang Shoujing
Yang Shoujing (1839-1915), born in Yidu, Hubei Province, with the family name Kaike, the name kai, changed his name to Shoujing, and in his later years called himself the old man of Linsu. He was a scholar of public opinion, gold stones, calligraphy, spring coins, books, and epigraphic bibliography in the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. He wrote as many as 86 kinds of works in his lifetime, and was known as "the first beginner in the late Qing Dynasty", and his representative work "Water Commentary" is a monument in the history of Li Studies. Luo Zhenyu, a master of traditional Chinese studies, once honored Yang Shoujing's "geography", Duan Yujie's "primary school", and Li Shanlan's "arithmetic" as the three "absolute learnings" of the Qing Dynasty.
Publications on Yang Shoujing's writings were also displayed at the exhibition site
When he was a teenager, Yang Shou respected the order of his grandfather and dropped out of the school, but he "did not quit reading at night", through continuous self-study, he participated in the county examination at the age of 19, and the first place in the first re-examination of the initial examination and the first place in the five provincial examinations. Since then, Yang Shoujing has entered Beijing many times to take the examination, although he has not achieved meritorious fame, but in the process he has gathered like-minded scholars and Jinshi calligraphers and painters, including: Wu Changshuo, Zhang Yuzhao, Zhang Zhidong, Liang Dingfen, Pan Cun, Li Shuchang, etc., who exchange knowledge and reward each other, which makes Yang Shoujing's academic vision gradually rich. After middle age, Yang Shoujing was desperate for his career and concentrated on writing, devoting all his energy to personal academic research.
Yang Shoujing's Book of Liang Wu's Commentary on Zhong Xuan Shu Heng Pi, Hubei Provincial Museum Collection
From 1880 to 1884, Yang Shoujing traveled east to Japan, and the more than 10,000 Chinese historical stele he carried with him opened a new door for the Japanese book industry, reversed the single thesis pattern of the Japanese book industry, and created a new era of simplicity and majesty with the "North Stele" as the mainstay. Yang Shoujing stayed in Japan for only four years, but his influence was extremely far-reaching, and he was called the "father of modern calligraphy" by the Japanese calligraphy community. Although he has made great achievements in calligraphy, Yang Shoujing is not a professional calligrapher. According to incomplete statistics, Yang Shoujing wrote 86 kinds of works in his lifetime, involving many disciplines such as epigraphy, historical geography, typology, and calligraphy.
Yang Shoujing calligraphy
Yang Shoujing's book "Several Huts and Four Screens" collected by hubei provincial museum
Zhang Wenbo, curator and director of the exhibition department of Wuhan Art Museum, said that in this exhibition, we hope to reflect Yang Shoujing's life more comprehensively through his calligraphy works. "Yang Shoujing has lived in Hubei for 27 years and in Wuhan for 12 years, and it can be said that he spent an important stage of his life in Hubei." During his tenure as a teacher in Huanggang, he vigorously promoted education and revived the style of study, and taught and educated people and wrote many books during his tenure at Lianghu Academy and Cungu Academy in Wuhan. In his interaction with Pan Cun, we saw his traditional virtue of 'respecting the teacher and re-teaching, and always remembering the teacher's kindness'; in his eastward journey to Japan, he spread the idea of steleology, rescued the ancient Chinese historical books, spared no effort to cut down on food and clothing, and was called 'the father of modern calligraphy' by Japan, and is still praised today. Yang Shoujing was fortunate to meet Wu Changshuo, Zhang Yuzhao, Zhang Zhidong, Duan Fang, Liang Dingfen, He Ruzhang, Li Shuchang, Pan Cun and a large number of like-minded scholars and Jinshi calligraphers and painters. ”
Yang Shoujing's book "Liver and Lung Penglai Lian" collected by Hubei Provincial Museum
Yang Shoujing's book "Shan Gongjing Festival Lian" is collected by hubei provincial museum
In terms of calligraphy, Yang Shoujing is good at true, grass, subordinate, line, and seal, but the most distinctive thing is to push his line. His protégé Xiong Huizhen called Yang Shoujing "a calligraphy passed down from generation to generation, straight to the Han and Wei dynasties, and unparalleled in the world". Although it is a bit of a reputation, it can still be glimpsed.
When talking about Yang Shoujing's position in the history of modern calligraphy, Zhang Wenbo said, "Yang Shoujing is also an important calligrapher and calligraphy theorist in the history of calligraphy in the Republic of China, and the biggest feature of his calligraphy theory is that he has his own very clear views, and no one has ever followed the clouds, which is reflected in the "Commentaries on Tablets" and "Commentaries" written by the 29-year-old and 30-year-old. The "Commentaries on Steles" and "Commentaries on Posts" put forward the idea of 'Chongbei' 5 years earlier than Liu Xizai's "Outline of Art and Book", and 21 years earlier than Kang Youwei's "Guangyi Zhou Shuangyi". Yang Shoujing is different from them in that while promoting the idea of stele, he also put forward the 'simultaneous lifting of stele posts', and today it seems that Yang Shoujing is more objective and more historically far-sighted than Liu Xizai's 'zun stele suppression' and Kang Youwei's 'zun wei despise tang'. The 73-year-old "Xueshu Shuyan" written to Japanese student Mizuno Motonagi is the most important and vivid witness in the history of Sino-Japanese calligraphy and cultural exchanges. ”
Yang Shoujing's book "LiYe Dexian Lian" collected by Hubei Provincial Museum
It is reported that the exhibition will last until April 7.
"The Great Master of Books: The Art of Calligraphy by Yang Shoujing"
(The pictures and texts are from the Wuhan Art Museum)