Page 167 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts
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Fig. 7. So«g Huizong (Zhao Ji; 1082—1135,
r. 1100-1126). "Poem on Peonies." Ca. 1100—26. Detail
of an album leaf, ink on paper. Palace Museum, Taipei.
calligraphers. Just as Huang Tingjian felt compelled Fig. 8. "Geyang ling Cao Quan bei. " Dated to 185 CE.
to poke fun at his friend Wang Shen, many later
writer's presence or personality, and this happens
critics felt a compulsion to dismiss the most readily with calligraphy that is particularly
unconventional aspects of Song calligraphy as distinctive. To give an extreme example, one
indulgent and heterodox. Certainly, "ideas" tend to twentieth-century author goes so far as to read
manifest themselves at the expense of the classical physical as well as behavioral traits from the
norms of beauty evident in both Jin and Tang
calligraphy of Northern Song writers: Mi Fu was
calligraphy. The educated class of scholar-officials,
who were the primary practitioners of calligraphy, "tubby"; Shu Shi, "fatter, shorter and careless in
took it as their incumbent duty to represent the nature"; Huang Tingjian, "tall, lean and obstinate";
state, tradition, and orthodoxy. Excessive expression Emperor Huizong (r. 1100—1126), "handsome, slim,
of one's individuality was at best irrelevant to this meticulous, and somewhat effeminate" (fig. 7). "We
responsibility, at worst contradictory. By unhappy can even affirm that he [Huizong] was slow and
coincidence, the Song dynasty came perilously measured of speech," the author goes on to write!9
close to total collapse just one generation after the If it does nothing else, this imaginative critique
great individualist calligraphers of the Northern presents one positive aspect of Song ideas: the
Song. For those who truly believed in the opportunity to establish so personal an imprint on
the tradition that later viewers would be inspired to
—expressiveness of calligraphy its ability to reflect imagine what one was like.
—inherent truths the idiosyncrasies of Song "ideas"
were symptomatic of the graver ills that ultimately
led to the loss of the northern half of China in 1127.
Despite such reservations, most, if not all, PARAMETERS OF INNOVATION IN THE LATER
calligraphers wished to develop singular styles of TRADITION
calligraphy that would distinguish them as "Resonance," "methods," and "ideas" are vague
individuals and serve as the evidence from which labels, but they are useful for designating three
others would read their characters (or "understand different aspects of Chinese calligraphy: naturalness
associated with spontaneity, skill and practice
their sounds," as an old saying goes, in reference to associated with tradition, and personal expression.
By choosing these terms to epitomize the three
expressive music). Certainly one of the most great epochs of writing that preceded the
enjoyable aspects of viewing calligraphy is the
intangible pleasure that stems from the sense of the
CALLIGRAPHY 165
