Page 352 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

ART IN CHINA 1450-1550

Sherman E. Lee

CALLIGRAPHY

Ode to the Pomegranate and Melon (cat. 284), remained the basic form of Chinese writing cake or stick of soot were affected by its binding
with calligraphy by Wang Ao and painting by until the present day. In later centuries cao shu adhesive and by the addition of substances that
Shen Zhou, poses the basic problem in Western became an art form, subject to infinite varia- modified its "color" — from cool to warm, from
understanding of Chinese painting. The callig- tions even to the point of illegibility (kuang cao blue to red-brown tones of black and gray.
raphy of the poem occupies most of the space shu, crazy cursive), and the province not of pro- The brush was the most amazing of the tools
and is signed by the famous scholar-official. saic administrators and merchants but of for writing, variously flexible, huge to tiny in
Notwithstanding the justified fame of the inspired and/or drunken literati or ecstatic Chan size, able to hold a a considerable reservoir of
painter, Shen Zhou, his painting is not signed priests. Semicursive (xing shu), a looser and less ink, able to discharge it in the finest hairline.
but only sealed, and it occupies less than a third formal version of regular script, with some link- The hair, fur, and bristle used for brush tips
of the paper surface. Clearly the calligraphy and ing of strokes within a character, came into gen- came from rabbits, deer, horses, goats, and pigs.
the poem it expresses are more "important" eral use during Northern Song (960-1127), and The skillful selection and use of ground, ink,
than the painting. How did this come about in the Northern Song style of xing shu saw a con- and brush made possible a flexible, subtle, and
China? siderable revival during the Ming. powerful technique capable of producing the
Intentions and circumstance combined to Merely memorizing thousands of characters widest possible range of calligraphy, expres-
make this the case. Just as thoughts — moral, and their meanings required years of study; sively suited to the mood of a text or the feel-
historical, practical, and aesthetic —were skillfully writing them required lifelong dedica- ings of the writer. Significantly, these tools of
expressed through letters and words in the tion and practice with tutors or esteemed the calligrapher's trade were the same tools used
West, in China they were expressed through models —whether originals, copies, or rubbings by the painter, with the addition, often, of color.
characters ultimately derived from pictograms. of stone engravings after brushed originals. To And the discipline of writing characters com-
These characters, throughout their many per- read easily was obviously a prerequisite for edu- plex in themselves and visually related to the
mutations over time and mediums, retained a cation and for advancement as scholar and offi- other characters in the text was comparable to,
certain pictorial nature, whether in the form of cial. To write well was equally, though less and often identical with, the discipline of pro-
oracle-bone inscriptions (jia gu wen, first obviously, a prerequisite to one's standing as a viding the structure of pictures.
engraved c. 1500 B.C. on bovine or cervid scapu- gentleman-scholar (wen ren). According to It is not surprising, then that the critical lit-
lae or on tortoise plastrons), or cast bronze ves- Confucian teachings writing was the moral act erature on calligraphy, beginning as early as the
sels with inscriptions in seal script (zhuan shu, of a man fulfilling his responsibility to society second century A.D., should anticipate the
so called from its much later use in carved seals, at large as embodied in the emperor and to his slightly later criticism of painting. Striking
but first appearing on bronzes of c. 1300 B.C.), particular family and clan, past, present, and poetic and metaphoric descriptions of the
or in the form of characters fluently brushed in future. Writing revealed one's character and appearances and qualities of writing provide the
ink, which we know to have been common from individuality. two most important of the Six Canons of Paint-
the second century B.C. Over time they may The materials of writing, no less than its ing of Xie He (c. A.D. 500):
have lost their directly pictographic appearance, philosophical and moral significance, were of
but they acquired an abstract pictorial character. serious importance to the influential minority -L. Sympathetic responsiveness of the
spirit
vital
Every Chinese character is a composition that studied writing. The standard ground for
within itself, made up of as many as twenty- calligraphy was paper of many kinds and tex- 2. Structural [bone] method in the use of
the brush
four brush strokes. It is also a single unit, to be tures, made from mulberry bark, bamboo fiber, (Translation by Alexander C. Soper)
arranged with other comparable units in mean- or hemp, plus some rarer, more exotic mixes.
ingful sequence, usually in vertical order, top to Paper, like silk, could be sized or unsized, hard Both of these canons derived from concepts
bottom, then right to left. The form of the ear- and smooth or soft and absorbent, and became
liest extant brushed characters, in use by early the preferred ground for the calligrapher. From about calligraphy and music involving resonance
Eastern Han (A.D. 25-220), is called li shu, the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) the gentlemen- and vibration and the induction of these from
of creation into the
movement
the
object of
"clerical script," the direct ancestor of later scholars also preferred paper as the ground for
forms, to which it is clearly comparable. Com- their new style of "written" painting, whose creation and from object to beholder. All com-
merce, and the civil administration and military true subject was brushwork and whose true mentators on calligraphy recognized the moral
also the
and instinctive nature of creativity but
defense of a large empire, led in Eastern Han to theme was the nature of the artist. Silk, which
the development of an abbreviated script, had earlier been the preferred medium, contin- need for models from history and for rational
quickly written and easily read, called cao shu ued to be used mostly by the court and "profes- organization. The earliest of these commen-
taries on calligraphy sets the tone for subse-
(cursive script); and a compromise between the sional" painters.
angularity and horizontal emphasis of // shu and Ink, too, was a subtle and complex matter, a quent criticism:
the elongated, curving cao shu produced kai substance capable of embellishing the messages In writing first release your thoughts and
shu f regular (or standard) script, which has of the writer. The characteristics of the basic give yourself up to feeling; let your nature do
TOWARD CATHAY 351