2008 Woodie Awards
Calligraphy not just fancy lettering
Jeff Sullivan
Issue date: 3/26/08 Section: News
03/26/08 - The word "calligraphy" in Chinese literally translates to "beautiful writing," and is a unique art form that has endured various styles and characters for thousands of years.
Professors Genyuan Jiang and Xiaodong Dai came from their respective universities in China yesterday to discuss the evolutionary process the writing form has taken.
Jiang is a scholar from the Zhejiang University of Technology, and professor Dai teaches at the Foreign Languages College of Shanghai Normal University.
Jiang and Dai both emphasized the importance of the individual in calligraphy styles, as a good number of scripts are unique to whomever wrote them, even today.
"Chinese calligraphy expresses the intellectual's creative and poetic emotions as well as his or her learnedness," Jiang said. "It is the energy of the work transmitted from the artist."
Jiang added that this is called spirit resonance, and gives the calligrapher a unique form of expression that is distinct from western alphabets, almost like a written dialect or accent.
Jaing's lecture discussed the "four treasures" of the study, which are the Hu brush, the Xuan paper, Hui ink and the Duan ink stone. Each of the four tools had at least a thousand-year history to it, especially the Hu brush, which dates back to 770 B.C.
The scripts can date back far further. The oracle bone script, also known as the shell and bone script, dates back to around the Neolithic period (8500 B.C.). It was inscribed on bones of all types, as well as turtle shells by means of a knife. Dai said some findings were cut three inches deep into the surface. Later in the period, other types of mediums, including bronzeware and stone also appeared.
Jiang described one of the study's most difficult styles, cursive script, as a loose, sketchy and most times improvised style, much like shorthand practiced today by journalists, secretaries and stenographers. Scholars studied stone, bronze or bone mediums to learn the characters when they started out, and then later developed their own skills and style.
Professors Genyuan Jiang and Xiaodong Dai came from their respective universities in China yesterday to discuss the evolutionary process the writing form has taken.
Jiang is a scholar from the Zhejiang University of Technology, and professor Dai teaches at the Foreign Languages College of Shanghai Normal University.
Jiang and Dai both emphasized the importance of the individual in calligraphy styles, as a good number of scripts are unique to whomever wrote them, even today.
"Chinese calligraphy expresses the intellectual's creative and poetic emotions as well as his or her learnedness," Jiang said. "It is the energy of the work transmitted from the artist."
Jiang added that this is called spirit resonance, and gives the calligrapher a unique form of expression that is distinct from western alphabets, almost like a written dialect or accent.
Jaing's lecture discussed the "four treasures" of the study, which are the Hu brush, the Xuan paper, Hui ink and the Duan ink stone. Each of the four tools had at least a thousand-year history to it, especially the Hu brush, which dates back to 770 B.C.
The scripts can date back far further. The oracle bone script, also known as the shell and bone script, dates back to around the Neolithic period (8500 B.C.). It was inscribed on bones of all types, as well as turtle shells by means of a knife. Dai said some findings were cut three inches deep into the surface. Later in the period, other types of mediums, including bronzeware and stone also appeared.
Jiang described one of the study's most difficult styles, cursive script, as a loose, sketchy and most times improvised style, much like shorthand practiced today by journalists, secretaries and stenographers. Scholars studied stone, bronze or bone mediums to learn the characters when they started out, and then later developed their own skills and style.