There are five main styles of calligraphy in China, namely, seal script (including big seal script and small seal script), official script (including ancient script and modern script), regular script (including Wei Bei and block letters), running script (including running script and cursive script) and cursive script (including Zhang Cao, Xiao Cao and Cao Cao).

second, history:

China's calligraphy has a long history, with the evolution of calligraphy style and fascinating calligraphy art. From Oracle Bone Inscriptions and the bronze inscriptions to the big seal script, small seal script and official script, to the Yan script, cursive script, regular script and running script in the Eastern Han Dynasty, Wei Dynasty and Jin Dynasty, calligraphy has always exuded unique artistic charm.

From hieroglyphics to Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the Spring and Autumn Dynasties, and the handwriting of Zhu Mo, a simple silk in the Han Dynasty, the statutes of Tang Kai, the Song people's respect for meaning, the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, and the dispute over inscriptions in the Qing Dynasty.

3. Script:

1. Seal script

Seal script is divided into two categories: big seal script and small seal script. Dazhuan mainly refers to the ancient characters of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Zhong Dingwen and six countries in Shang and Zhou Dynasties. Xiao Zhuan is a legal script issued after Qin unified China, which was popular in Qin and Han Dynasties. China characters with a long history sprouted as early as ancient times, and symbolic characters appeared as early as 5 BC. Although its writing function has not been freed from the simple function of recording pictures, its relationship with China characters has been obvious.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions, also known as "Qiwen" or "oracle script", refers to the script carved on tortoise shells and animal bones during divination in the Yin and Shang Dynasties. This kind of writing is the oldest and relatively mature one in the history of calligraphy in China.

Zhong Dingwen. Zhong Dingwen, also known as "Zhong Ding Style", "Bronze Inscription" or "Bronze Inscription", is a writing carved on bronze wares such as bells, ding, plates and reeds in Shang and Zhou Dynasties. The word concave is the paragraph, and the word convex is the knowledge, which is a three-dimensional text expression.

Oracle bones and Zhong Ding have relics in Shang and Zhou dynasties, but in terms of calligraphy characteristics, Oracle Bone Inscriptions is the representative of Yin and Shang characters and Zhong Dingwen is the representative of Zhou dynasty characters.

The evolution from Oracle Bone Inscriptions to Dazhuan is the first major reform of writing. With the system, it is more unified and much more convenient to use. The big seal script is the seal script, which is basically similar to Oracle Bone Inscriptions in form, including Shi Guwen and so on. The stone drum belongs to the State of Qin, and Guo Moruo has a study of Shi Guwen, which has been discussed in detail, mainly because Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Zhong Dingwen haven't changed the calligraphy style before Xiao Zhuan, and Shi Guwen is the oldest stone carving known in China.

Xiao Zhuan, or Qin Zhuan, was an official script issued to the whole country after Qin Shihuang unified the six countries (221 BC). At that time, Li Si, the prime minister, called for a unified script. On the one hand, he abolished the ancient prose and regional complicated characters used by the six countries. On the other hand, he simplified and reformed the common script of the Qin State (which was handed down by Zhou Xuanwang Taishi, belonging to the big seal script) and became the small seal script. For the sake of distinction, the forefathers called Shua Zhuan as Da Zhuan and Qin Zhuan as Xiao Zhuan. Because the big seal script is an inheritance and joint relationship, some characters are similar and the same, and the simplification is relative and overall. Because of the feudal empire established by Qin Shihuang, it was clearly stated that Xiao Zhuan was the world's popular script, and because Xu Shen collected all Xiao Zhuan in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the "Shuo Wen Jie Zi" compiled by him has been passed down to this day, so Xiao Zhuan has become an important intermediary tool for studying, understanding and spreading culture in ancient China. Xiao Zhuan has made great contributions to the popularization and development of China culture. The cultural relics handed down from Xiao Zhuan in Qin Dynasty include Stone Carving on Mount Tai, Stone Carving on Langyatai, Stone Carving on Langyashan, and words carved on imperial edicts and Qin Quan. It is said that they are all written by Li Si, and they are also standard examples of seal script method. The font of Xiao Zhuan is extremely standardized, with a unified writing method on the radical. The strokes are euphemistic, tortuous, even in thickness, round and muddy in style, balanced and symmetrical in white, long and narrow in shape, tight in upper part and cheerful and stretched in lower part, giving people a sense of combining rigidity with softness, hearty and handsome. Oracle bones are beautiful, Jin Wengui is muddy, Xiao Zhuan is still soft, and the script is called Jian Jian. Xiao Zhuan uses a pen, "it seems to be the strangest thing in common, but it is easy but hard to achieve" (Wang Anshi's language). The pen for seal script also emphasizes various methods such as turning, stopping, pausing, pressing, lifting, lifting and holding. The turning point pauses, emphasizing the connotation but not revealing, and the rhythm of pressing, lifting, getting up and living is expensive without trace.

official script prevailed in Han dynasty, but there were few seal scripts, mostly inscriptions and tablets. During the Three Kingdoms period, Cao Wei preserved a kind of "three-body stone sutra", among which Wu wrote seal script with some achievements. After that, real calligraphy (regular script) rose, and all the calligraphy schools tended to regular script. Li Yangbing was the only expert in seal script writing in the Tang Dynasty, and more and more people wrote seal script in the Song and Yuan Dynasties. There were also many books on seal script carving, seal printing and storytelling. Zhao Mengfu, a famous calligrapher, has handed down inscriptions and seal scripts. Li Dongyang in the Ming Dynasty and Deng Shiru in the Qing Dynasty were great masters at that time. With their magnificent brushwork and elegant bearing, they learned from Chinese steles and made innovations, which changed the rigid and thin jade-ribbed body since the Tang Dynasty. In the late Qing Dynasty, Wu Xizai, Wu Dacheng, Yang Yisun, Fan Yongqi, Ding Foyan, Zhang Binglin and others all had many inscriptions and writings on seal script. In addition, we can look at Kangxi Dictionary, Duan Zhu Shuo Wen, Wen Meng Qiu and the dictionary of seal script published in recent years. In the Spring and Autumn Period, when writing seal script, one end of the seal script was smashed and dipped in paint with a cane (there was no brush at that time), so there was no obvious brush stroke and the strokes were all the same thickness.

2. Official script

After Xiaozhuan became popular all over the world, it gradually showed its disadvantages in writing. Because the strokes of seal script are complicated, it is troublesome to write. It is said that Cheng Miao, a jailer at that time, was imprisoned for his crime. He simplified the strokes and structures of the big seal script and changed the circle of the seal script strokes into a square fold. It's easy to write and the speed can be faster.

official script was used from the Qin Dynasty to the Western Han Dynasty to the Three Kingdoms before it became mature and popular. But its shape has changed and beautified from time to time. The official script of the Western Han Dynasty still maintained the legacy of the Qin Dynasty, and by the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, especially, it tended to be neat and delicate. The knot is flat and flat, and there are waves in the strokes (Si in Chinese characters), which forms the basic form of han li. From the Jin and Tang Dynasties to modern times, although all kinds of scripts, especially regular script, prevailed, official script was still widely circulated. It was because of the variety, diverse styles and strong artistry of the official script structure in the Han Dynasty that it always won people's love.

han li is a unique achievement of calligraphy art in the Han Dynasty. The size, structure and brushwork of fonts vary endlessly, and each has its own wonderful features. Han li occupies a very important position in the development of calligraphy, inheriting the rules of seal script in the previous dynasty and opening up the style of regular script in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties and Sui and Tang Dynasties. There are many stone carvings left in the Han Dynasty, which are valuable heritages of Chinese calligraphy. . In addition, there are many Han Dynasty tablets and tablets unearthed so far, most of which are eulogies. In terms of the size of the characters, the largest is the jumping mountain and cliff in Zhejiang, and the characters are larger than the ruler; The smallest is "Yang Sanzhi", and the inscription is three or four points square. In addition, the ink on the remnant stone and the bamboo slips in Han Dynasty also showed han li's brushwork and style.

China's calligraphy has developed into official script and entered the stage of innovation. Compared with the stereotyped official script, the shape of Xiao Zhuan changed from long and narrow to flat, the strokes changed from a symmetrical arc pen to a straight pen with a combination of thickness and precipitous posture, and the twists and turns changed from a continuous circle to a square corner where the pen and the pen broke, and the pictographic meaning of the characters mostly disappeared. The formation of official script laid the foundation for the later cursive script, model script and running script, and opened up a broad road for the popularization of Chinese characters and the development of calligraphy.

Usually, people call the early official script "Qin official script" or "Ancient official script", which shows that it still retains the meaning of seal script. The bamboo slips of Qin Tomb in Shuihudi, Hubei Province are the representative works of "Guli".

3. Cursive script

Cursive script includes two kinds: Zhangcao and Jincao, which have their own influences and schools.

The early cursive script evolved from official script and was named "Zhangcao". It is generally believed that it is a simpler style than Lishu for writing chapters or articles of association. Zhang Cao changed the writing style of Li Shu, which was horizontal, flat and vertical, and the pen was intermittent, and became a font with a round turn, alternating thickness and shape inspection. There is still a wave on the right side of the word, which is the characteristic that it retains the official meaning and is different from the present grass.

According to legend, Zhangcao was created by Huang Menling's historical tour in the Han and Yuan Dynasties. His "urgent chapter" (the passbook of the book, etc.) has been passed down to this day, and later generations named it "Zhangcao" because of its "chapter". There is also a saying that Emperor Zhang of the later Han Dynasty liked Du Du's cursive script and told him to write it in cursive script when he played this chapter, so it was called "Zhangcao".

Xu Shen's Preface to Shuo Wen has an explanation that "there are cursive scripts in Han Dynasty". Wei Heng's "Four-body Calligraphy" also said: "There is a cursive script in Hanxing, and I don't know the author's surname." The words of the above scholars explain the relationship between Zhangcao and Lishu and the age of creation from different angles.

As for the origin of the name "Zhangcao", it can also be considered that "Jincao" came into being later, and the former form of "special" cursive script was called "Zhangcao" to distinguish it. It seems that the ancients called it "Jinli" in regular script, and called the official script between Qin and Han dynasties "Guli"; With Li Si's seal script, the seal script is called "big seal script". Therefore, the name "Zhangcao" is derived from "Urgent Chapter", which is relatively easy to explain.

Any kind of writing style must go through natural gains and losses, which is an inevitable phenomenon in the development of fonts. It was circulated among the people, perfected and finally fixed. So from a certain point of view, it can't be created by one person. At most, it is just a systematic arrangement by someone, and it can only be called someone's "synthesis".

The application of Zhangcao is to dissolve the official script and make it simple. As for the use of pen, it still follows some brushwork of official script. Especially at the end of the "Si" painting, it is very obvious. However, other strokes are basically the embryonic form of the later running script, and many characters have been entangled with (even silk) strokes, which created the continuous brushwork of cursive script, and also created conditions for the transition from official script to regular script, which played the role of bridge and media.

Zhang Zhi's Zhang Cao was the most famous in the later Han Dynasty, and the modern grass also evolved from him. He writes very fast because he is skilled in writing. Zhang Huai's 26 Book Broken said: "The book of Zhang Cao, the difference between words, Zhang Zhi becomes modern grass, increase its flow rate." Pulling out the buds and connecting them up and down, it is the end of each word, but the beginning of the next word ... "This paper expounds the difference and relationship between this grass and Zhangcao.

The brushwork of the official script in Zhangcao, such as the horizontal direction is still upward, and the left and right waves (left and right) are distinct, while the round pen and some lingering bands are common in today's official script. That is, the luck method of "Qi has Fiona Fang, and the law also makes it turn". In short, when writing Zhang Cao, it should be as simple as a Li, and the brush strokes will rotate the grass now. This is the most basic brushwork of Zhangcao. "Continued Book Spectrum" said: "Generally, cursive scripts are taken from Zhang Zhi, Huang Xiang, Suo Jing, etc., while Zhang Cao is disintegrated and the writing is active." It is pointed out that when writing, it is necessary to be upright in brushwork, instead of taking advantage of evil and seeking balance in flying like this grass. The brushwork has the origin of official script and simple artistic conception.

According to legend, the origin of modern grass was changed from Zhang Cao by Zhang Zhi in Han Dynasty. At that time, calligraphers highly praised Zhang Zhi and called him "the sage of grass".

Because this grass evolved from Zhangcao, which is the "source" of this grass, the predecessors advocated that learning this grass must start with learning Zhangcao, learn the grass method first, and master its laws. Now it seems that you don't have to learn Zhang Cao to master the rules of cursive script. It was convenient for Han Daoheng, a Ming Dynasty, to write "Songs of Grass and Rhyme". He wrote the main radicals, usages and differences between radicals in a five-word phrase, which clearly explained some rules in cursive structure and brushwork, and there were block letters for comparison, which was easy to remember, such as "Yun" and "Yan". When the two radicals were different, they used "a little square is water, and empty selection is what they said". Another example is the structural characteristics of Shuo Zi. Taking "shame" as an example, it is "ashamed to see sheep stepping on fields", that is, the word "shame" is composed of "sheep" above and "fields" below. Although this post can't be all-inclusive, it is completely possible to introduce people.

From the Han Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, it is said that this grass originated from Zhang Zhi, but it has its own characteristics and factions because of its different styles. From the physical point of view, predecessors roughly divided it into three different styles.

First of all, there are the Da Cao and Kuang Cao schools represented by Zhang Zhi, Zhang Xu and Huai Su, which are characterized by their continuous momentum and unrestrained brushwork. The ancients called Zhang Zhi's cursive script "a book", which means continuous writing like a stroke. His cursive script is not continuous throughout, but we can all see the relationship between the front and the back, and the spirit of consistency.

Zhang Xu learned from Zhang Zhi. There are two kinds of posts written by Zhang Xu in Ge Tie, which are similar in brushwork and structure to Zhang Zhi. Zhang Xu, a native of Wu in the Tang Dynasty, was good at cursive writing and addicted to alcohol. Every time he got drunk and called for crazy walking, he wrote, or dipped his hair in ink, and when he woke up, he thought he was a god and could not get it back, so he was called "Zhang Dian" in the world, also known as "Cao Sheng". When literate in the Tang Dynasty, the world regarded Li Bai's poems, Fei Min's sword dance and Zhang Xu's cursive script as "three unique skills".

One of Huai Su's posts in Ge Tie is similar in style to the other two, but it is quite different from his famous post "Self-introduction". And the "self-narrative" post is really the masterpiece of Huaitie. When Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka visited China in 1972, Mao Zedong received him and presented him with a hardcover "Huai Su's Self-Narrative".

Huai Su's word hides the truth. There are four small seal characters "Hidden Truth and Preface" in front of the Autobiographical Notes. He is a native of Changsha, Hunan Province, whose original surname is Qian. He has been a monk since he became a monk in his childhood, and his date of birth and death cannot be tested, probably in the middle of the Tang Dynasty. Self-narration Post is one of the most important works in the history of Chinese calligraphy, and it is recorded in books such as Baozhang to be interviewed and Book History. The characters belong to wild grass, and the center is mostly used. The stroke thickness has not changed much, and it has been innovated by combining the brushwork of seal script. Strong and tactfully; In terms of lines and zigzag structures, the big, the small, the oblique and the positive echo each other, and they are unrestrained and smooth, and they are all wonderful in cursive script. His posts, like Li Bai's poems, are a kind of classical romantic art, so rich in the beauty of national form, not formal, but enthusiastic, cheerful and lively. For example, the water in the high gorge falls down, and its momentum is particularly majestic. In the Qing Dynasty, Du Yan wrote poems and called them "crazy monks" and "sage of grass". It is an excellent calligraphy art heritage that is worth learning and inheriting by future generations.

Huai Su's great achievements are mainly the result of long-term hard study and practice. He was instructed by Yan Zhenqing, and he visited Chang 'an and Luoyang to observe some "simple works". On the basis of learning from his predecessors, he created and developed himself. According to historical records, he used to make lacquer plates and lacquered boards, practiced on them, wiped and wiped them, and even worn them through. He buried his bald pen and piled it into a mound, which was called "Pen Tomb". For Huai Su, calligraphers of later generations admired him and tried their best to imitate him.

In addition to the two posts mentioned above, there is also the Bitter Bamboo Shoots Post, which is highly praised by the past dynasties, with more than ten words scribbled, which shows its spirit. The Song Dynasty's Inscription and Postscript of Haiyue recorded that "Tang Priest Huai Su narrated himself, and Hangzhou Shen Shi once carved a version". It can be seen that Huai Su's "Self-Narrative Post" was noticed by people at that time in the Tang and Song Dynasties, and it is also known that there was a great demand for calligraphy steles at that time. In the Song Dynasty, Mi Fei, náo and Xianyushu were also fond of making wild grass.

followed by Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi's "Wang Ti" cursive script: they have five volumes of posts in Pavilion Posts, Wang Xizhi's three volumes (6-8) include 159 posts, and two volumes (9-1) * * * 76 posts are presented, most of which are cursive. As far as cursive writing is concerned, the brushwork of the "two kings" is thinner than that of the two, and it is more fresh and beautiful. There is only Seventeen Posts in Xihe (hence the name "Seventeen Posts" because the first post in the post has the word "seventeen"). One is pure cursive script, which is Wang Xizhi's masterpiece and was collected by people in the Tang Dynasty. In addition, Aunt's Post, Early Moon Post and Funeral Post are also vivid. Wang Xizhi reformed the remains of Zhang Cao in the cursive script at that time, changed the calligraphy style in Zhong You which had great influence at that time, established his own style, and absorbed the folk style to create the "Wang School cursive script".

today's grass of Xizhi was the most popular in the Southern Dynasties and the early Tang Dynasty. Monk Zhiyong of Chen and Sui Dynasties was the descendant of Wang.