To appreciate calligraphy, you must first understand the five qualities. There is a sixteen-character motto for appreciating calligraphy works: "First look at the expression, secondly look at the composition, thirdly look at the words, and fourthly look at the pen and ink."
Generally speaking, calligraphy works can be divided into five categories.
1. Fine products, or divine products. The biggest feature of this type of calligraphy work is that it has high taste and is both elegant and popular. Just like the Venus statue and Beethoven's music, no matter how outstanding the art master or the old woman selling vegetables, they are impeccable. It can go up to the hall and go down to the kitchen. For example, Wang Xizhi's "Orchid Pavilion" preface was enlarged and placed in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, and received unanimous praise from international friends. Placing it in a thatched cottage in the countryside still makes people feel relaxed and happy.
2. Good product, or immortal product. Most of these calligraphy works are deliberate works by great artists. A major feature of this type of calligraphy work is that it has elegant taste and outstanding personality, but it cannot be elegant and popular. Immortals are different from gods. Gods are supreme, but immortals each have their own ways. The Barefoot Immortal has the style of the Barefoot Immortal, and the Long-Eyebrow Immortal has the specialties of the Long-Eyebrow Immortal. This kind of calligraphy works often get praise from experts because of their distinctive features, skillful techniques, sophisticated composition, profound pen and ink skills, and no faults. However, laymen sometimes cannot understand them, so they generally cannot be appreciated by both refined and popular people.
3. Elegance. Yapin refers to human works, mainly referring to the calligraphy of literati with profound cultural heritage. The characteristics of this kind of calligraphy works are that they have elegant taste, free and unrestrained pen and ink, and they are written casually without any elaboration. Sometimes there may be one or two flaws in the calligraphy, but it does not harm the elegance. This kind of calligraphy works has a subtle personality, gentle momentum, casual structure, elegant knotting, and smooth pen and ink. This kind of calligraphy works are not as good as the exquisite works carefully crafted by professional calligraphers and painters in terms of momentum, composition, knotting and pen and ink, but they are better than the former in terms of emotional expression.
4. Popular products can also be called commodities. This kind of calligraphy work is characterized by mediocre taste and gorgeous pen and ink. This kind of calligraphy work is mainly of service nature, but as long as the content is suitable, the writer can sometimes express personal emotions. What I want to remind everyone here is that vulgarity does not mean that the works are bad, but that the taste orientation is different, that is to say, the objects served are different.
5. Miscellaneous items. Miscellaneous items refer to some calligraphy works that cannot be classified. Some works incorporate calligraphy into paintings, and it is not clear whether they are considered calligraphy or paintings. For example: write the word "shou" as a vivid monkey; write the word "dragon" as a dragon, with dragon horns and whiskers, and dragging a long dragon tail; write the word "tiger" At that time, the tiger's head, tiger's claws, and tiger's tail were all integrated into the characters, especially the tiger's tail, which was painted realistically with flying white brushwork. (Sun Hao) Extended reading on the beauty of harmony in calligraphy
Line is the most basic element in the composition of calligraphy images. The beauty or ugliness of lines is the most direct basis for people to judge the beauty or ugliness of calligraphy works. Throughout ancient and modern calligraphy, lines generally give people three kinds of beauty, namely masculine beauty, feminine beauty and neutral beauty. These abstract lines are hidden or exposed, fast or astringent, straight or curved, contrary to harmony, virtual or real, etc., which all constitute the aesthetic expression of calligraphy lines.
The masculine beauty of lines is concentrated in the "bone", "power" and "momentum" of the lines. If the lines have no bones, they will be weak, and if they are not strong enough, they will be lonely. "The only thing is to seek the strength of the bones, and the situation will come from itself" (Li Shimin's "Biography of Wang Xi"). The masculine beauty of lines gives people a specific concept, such as "powerful", "thick", "luxuriant", "strong", "dragon and tiger vibrating", "dagger drawn", "thousands of miles of clouds", "peak falling" "Stone", "Hundred Crossbow Hair", "Long Live Withered Vine", "Crashing Waves and Snow Rush", etc., the masculine and magnificent artistic conception is immediately present. So how is the masculine beauty of lines created? The implementation of specific movements such as direct exposure, rapidity, flying, and clumsiness of the pen can cause the appearance of line strength. The specific feeling of this strength is a masculine and magnificent sensory experience. Simply put, it is formed by decisiveness and speed. A result of "bone", "force" and "potential".
The feminine beauty of lines is concentrated in the "rhyme", "taste" and "interest" of the lines. It is a plain, desolate and quiet artistic conception, often described as "desolate, simple and distant", " To evaluate it with words such as "peaceful and elegant", "beautiful and charming", "sparse and beautiful", such as "Zhong Wang's traces are scattered, simple and distant, and the beauty lies beyond the pen and ink" (Su Shi's "After the Collection of Poems of Huang Zisi"), The specific expression forms are round, hidden, curved, gentle, smooth, etc., which is a kind of bookish style that is meaningful and subtle, elegant and graceful. The soft beauty of the lines lies in the ability to "lift" them with the brush. "Ti" and "press" are the most basic movements in calligraphy. "Ti" has "press", and "press" has "ti". "Ti" means "press", and "press" means "lift". , but different emphasis on "lifting" and "pressing" can create lines with different aesthetic expressions.
The two forms of masculine beauty and feminine beauty are not completely opposite, but are dialectically unified. This is reflected in the contradictory unity of the brush, because perfect works all contain such things as curve and straight, hidden and The dialectical unity of contradictory elements such as exposure, squareness and roundness, breakage and connection, slowness and speed, dryness and moistening, movement and retention, quickness and stoppage, flatness and side. Only in this way can we achieve unity of emotion and reason, moderate emotions, and thus achieve a spiritual state of "peaceful ambition, neither excitement nor violence, harmonious spirit, and free spirit."
This expression of the dialectical unity of lines precisely satisfies the aesthetic ideal of Chinese calligraphy aesthetics advocating neutrality; only calligraphy works composed of calligraphy lines with the beauty of neutrality can be called immortal classics. The best example of achieving the ideal state of the beauty of harmony is the calligraphy of the Jin Dynasty, especially the calligraphy of Wang Xizhi, which expresses peace and nature, implicitness and euphemism, a balance of hardness and softness, and perfection. It has always been a model for future generations to learn from.
The beauty of neutrality has become the most direct terminal feeling standard for judging calligraphy works. The expression of the beauty of neutrality lies in the harmony of brushwork, the harmony of structure, and the harmony of composition. "Don't want to be too fat with your pen, as fat will make the shape dull; don't want to be too thin, as thinness will make the shape withered; don't want to show too much sharpness, otherwise the meaning will be unruly; don't want to hide it deeply, otherwise the body will be weak; don't want to go up. "Big and small, don't want to be high on the left and low on the right, don't want more in front and less in back." This passage by Jiang Baishi in "Sequel Book of Books" comprehensively summarizes the neutralization of brushwork, emphasizing the coordination and balance of the opposite sides, fat and thin, and small. Exposed, hidden, up and down, left and right, how much, so that both sides of the contradiction have their own restraints, transcending opposition and conflict, and achieving formal unity.
When using a pen, you should also pay attention to its roundness and smoothness, without exposing edges and corners. In order to achieve the realm of "leisure, leisure, roundness and beauty", it is advocated to use the pen in a restrained manner, and should not be indulgent, curved and straight, hidden and exposed, square and round, broken and connected, withered and moist, traveling and remaining, fast and astringent, flat and flat. The opposites must be unified with side and so on. Don't use the pen too fast, not too slow, not too flat, and not too sideways.
The beauty of neutrality is reflected in the structure, which pays attention to the dialectical unity of density, back and forth, odd and straight, etc. Sun Guoting condensed the research results on structural beauty into one sentence, "violate without violating, be harmonious without being different", that is, seek unity in opposition and seek change in unity. For small fonts, the strokes should be spread out, changing from small to large; for large fonts, the strokes should be condensed, and from large to small; for sparse characters, the dots and dashes should be fat, which can turn sparse into dense; for dense characters, the dots and dashes should be thick. Thinness can change density into sparseness. After this treatment, the problems of disparity in size and uneven density caused by the font itself are eliminated, and the overall beauty of harmony and unity is achieved.
Zifa, that is, the layout method of the entire character, was also called "white cloth in divided spaces" or "white cloth in divided rows" by the ancients. The connotation of the beauty of composition is extremely rich. The harmony of beauty of composition is manifested in the coherence of Qi and stillness, movement and stillness, connection and discontinuity, uniformity and chaos, call and response, origin and inheritance, union and harmony, beginning and end, text and title, The unity of opposites among factors such as character spacing and line spacing, the most important ones are "guest and host" and "virtual and real".
The Ming Dynasty Jie Jin’s "Chun Yu Miscellanies" discussed, "In an article, although all desires are good, there must be one or two words that reach the peak, like fish and birds with scales and phoenixes as the main ones, so that "People play with interpretation, but cannot quote." This means that when writing a piece of calligraphy, one always wants to write every word well and strive for perfection, but if every word is really "good" and can be seen at a glance, it will lose its art. It is charming, so there must be "one or two words that reach the peak" in the composition, like a dragon among fishes and a phoenix among birds, playing a leading role and refreshing and eye-catching role. Only such works can make people endlessly interesting. In calligraphy, the character that plays a leading role is called the "subject character". The subject and object should be clear and take care of each other, act according to the situation, and avoid each other.