A Line in Motion

A Line in Motion-Book Format

2009-08-19T11:54:00.025-04:00

Abstract - text

Lan Ting - text

Time, Space, Calligraphy and Architecture - text

01: A Landscape Continuously Unfolding - text

02: Lessons from Old Masters

Linguistics - text

Written Form as Poetry - text

Calligraphic Style - text

Graphic Design - text

A Reservoir of Knowledge - text

03: Dynamics

Calligraphic Space: A Function of Accumulated Time - Text

04 Conclusion - text

Getting Started

2009-08-17T21:04:00.001-04:00

In May of 2005 I landed in Shanghai, on my way to a job working for a local architecture office. After slogging through check points, I made it to the arrival gate, where I met my aunt, uncle and their friend. While my aunt and I joked about our common fear we would not recognize each other, their friend manically recorded our reunion with a camera. With my uncle’s help we hoisted my luggage into the trunk, and the four of us drove into the city for dinner. The restaurant was like a hotel for dining, where service attendants wove in and out of private suites carrying food, beverages, dirty plates, and cutlery. The elevator stopped on the tenth floor. We were guided through a long corridor finished with gold wallpaper. More of uncle’s friends were already waiting in our suite. I sat as the guest of honour and watched platters of steaming vegetables, bubbling soups, fish and meat coated in glistening sauces appear and, eventually cover the surface of the lazy susan. As the night wore on, I – no longer able to resist fatigue – began to respond simply with ‘yes’ and ‘no’ combined with hand gestures.

“That’s so funny!” one friend exclaimed. “I’ve never seen anyone move so much when they talk!”

“That’s what Westerners do,” said my uncle. “They’re always very emphatic when they talk.”

I was horrified. My natural movements had become a topic of interest. In China, where I am camouflaged, one raised eyebrow or a simple bob of the head could completely give me away.

My boss was a small man, who dressed in black and always wore a pair of large, round, acrylic framed glasses. Everyone at the office called him Lou laoshi. He kindly arranged an apartment for me, on the 24th floor in a building by a park. It was a two bedroom suite – white walls, spare furnishings. An empty fish tank divided the dining area from the living room, my balcony facing a light well. It wasn’t much of a view. Directly across from the neighbour’s balconies, vertical pipes ran up the walls and horizontal pipes tapped into each unit. The apartment belonged to my boss’s friends who were overseas. I was their house-sitter for the summer. All the hot water in the apartment depended on the successful ignition of the gas water heater in the kitchen, a wall mounted metal box. I’d never seen one before. My uncle showed me how to light it.

“First push the button,” he said. “Hear that clicking sound? That’s the gas ignition. Count to seven and turn the knob. To check that it works, just turn on the hot water tap.”

A surge of gas ignited at a spark inside the box.

“See that? It means you’ve done it right. Oh, don’t forget to turn it off when you go to work. We don’t want any gas leaks while you’re away.”

Every morning, I would get a breakfast crepe on my way to work. An ah-yi standing before a coal fired drum, would spread batter onto the hot metal cook top, break an egg, sprinkle green onions, pickled vegetables, and deep fried dough sticks, then roll the crepe over with a trowel. I’d coupled this feast with a glass of fresh soy milk. 160 Anshan Road was the gate number for a complex of residential buildings. The architecture office was in building number eight on the fourth floor. Building eight was almost an annexed property of Tonji University. There was an architecture book store on the third floor, and two practices run by professors downstairs. Lou laoshi also taught at Tongji. The office was originally a two bedroom suite. One bedroom was converted into the private office, the other, the model room and general storage. There were nine of us, two principles and seven employees. My first project was a schematic design of a house on Fuxing Road, a property walled around an ancient tree that grew in the middle of the lot. My boss had intended to show the client sketch models for their first design meeting. I began my job working alone in the model room. I had been in Shanghai for about three weeks. Still trying to find my bearings, I enjoyed the solitude. The room was equipped with a foam cutter, a CNC router, and boxes of cardboard and packaging foam. There was a table for outdated models, discarded ideas, and rejected schemes. Scattered about the room were pieces of paper crumpled between cardboard and foam, or stuffed in boxes. There was writing on them. Calligraphy to be exact. I asked who wrote them and was told that Lou laoshi had long dabbled in the calligraphic arts. I mentioned that I had practiced calligraphy.

“Oh, that’s interesting. I have brushes here if you like to try.”

Weeks later my boss was asked to show a visiting Spanish architect where to buy antiques. He invited me to join them. We drove past the outer ring of the city where paved roads turned into gravel lanes. Rows of squat double storey warehouses replaced the concrete towers. Re-bar piles lined the streets, along with terracotta wares and columns of rubber tires. We came to a stop in front of a building of no distinction. In the foyer, there was a wooden scroll table and two yoke back chairs on display. The real storehouse was a concrete shell with a wood plank mezzanine. Everything was raw, splintered, dusty and unpolished. But almost every corner of the building was stuffed with objects for sale. Baskets stacked to the ceiling. Paths barely wide enough to weave through, separated the rows of painted drawers, carved bed frames, chairs, statuary, and pottery. The Spaniard lit a cigarette, walked around, and asked if all the pieces were original. She didn’t buy anything that day. On our way to the car, Lou lasoshi glanced at the price for the yoke back chair and scroll table in the foyer.

“$2000 RMB! So cheap!” he said. “There’s no room for it in my house…I’ll put it in the office. It will be my calligraphy table.”

The summer of 1997, my parents, my brother and I returned to China. I was thirteen and didn’t like the idea of spending my summer before high school in a strange land and, in a sense, getting to know my Chinese family. We took a few tourist trips – we toured the Great Wall and Forbidden City; we floated down the Wu Yi Mountain valley in a bamboo raft. But most of the time was spent commuting between my aunt’s house and my grandmother’s house. I learned Chinese landscape painting that summer. My teacher was skeptical. Although I had painted watercolours before, “this,” he said, “was entirely different.” Perhaps he thought that my Western upbringing crippled any inborn ability to understand Chinese culture. Once I started to progress, perhaps beyond his expectations, he never mentioned my (in)experience again. Instead, he suggested that I practice calligraphy.

“But I don’t know the language,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter; it will help you become a better painter.”

We returned to Canada with a bundle of shuan paper stuffed in the trunk, several volumes of landscape painting manuals, and two calligraphy books. I kept up the painting and wrote calligraphy for a few months. Then, like most of my projects, the paper, the brushes, the ink stone moved into our basement, unfinished.

At first, I’d sit at the scroll table out of novelty. The chair wasn’t particularly comfortable and the table was too high for regular writing. But there was always ink and a brush on it. One day, I took a piece of newspaper and wrote a few characters.

“Wah! Ling ah, ling ah!” exclaimed my boss.

In Shanghai-ese, “ling-ah” stood for something good or clever. At first I only had the patience to write a couple of characters. My wrist felt strained after just a few strokes. But I kept returning to that table and I continued writing. A few words turned into few pages. Eventually, I’d spend a half hour or more after lunch devoted to calligraphy. Although I wasn’t “working,” no on questioned the thing that I substituted for the work.

I am always struck with fear before I write. When I first learned to draw, confronted by a blank page with a pencil in my hand, I would, as if by instinct, panic. I fought between the urge to draw and the fear of doing it wrong, so my father usually initiated the process. He drew the first line, and then assured me that there was nothing to fear and that the eraser fixed all mistakes. My father kept a pencil sketch he drew of a lion that stood between tall reeds in the savannah. He copied the image from a book, and it was the only drawing he would ever show to others. I too copied the same drawing. He always liked my version better, and used to say that I had a natural talent for art – which he worked very hard at.

“You know that if you memorized one Chinese word a day, that’s three hundred and sixty five in a year. Basic literature only demands comprehension of around a thousand words. It would only take a few years, less even. You have the background.”

My father liked to boast about my calligraphy to his friends. His description of my work usually started with “well she’s illiterate, but her writing is very beautiful.” It seemed perverse that I, when compared to a Chinese person from the mainland, am the better calligrapher. The culture was mine when I chose to participate in it. To my art teacher, my boss, and my father, my calligraphy was a curiosity. But I rather enjoyed the absurdity that my works signify. Oddly enough, the longer I had practiced calligraphy, the more often I wondered what the words meant. Sometimes I’d come across a line of text in a book or in a caption, and the image would register as a character that I had repeated in various styles or struggled to perfect in my calligraphy. Little by little, my memory bank grows from the characters that challenge me in the writing process.

At thirteen I was first introduced to Chinese painting and calligraphy. At twenty-one calligraphy became a common place between my Western and my Chinese culture. It wasn’t that I had it “figured out” but, somehow, equipped with the knowledge of this particular cultural tradition, China was less of a mystery. Now at twenty-four, I’m about to return. I’m not sure how I will react or how the place will react to me. But it will be good to slide back into that yoke back chair, place my hand on the scroll table, pour out some ink and start writing.

Abstract

2009-08-17T21:02:00.001-04:00

This is a graphic account, showing various spaces found in a work of Chinese calligraphy, using, for analysis, the work of contemporary calligrapher Noriko Maeda, historical examples by Wang Hui, Wang Xizhi, Wen Cheng Ming, Dong Qichang and Li Chun’s treatise on calligraphy, The 84 Laws.

Chinese calligraphy is a spatial practice: a sensibility combining graphic design and kinesis. The Chinese character is a line graph centered within an imaginary square and written in a prescribed way using rules of stroke order, ensuring that the lines of a word are added systematically, and in the same order each time the word is painted. In Chinese calligraphy, the hand moves in the x- and y-axes – horizontally, vertically, laterally, diagonally – and the z-axis – up and down in relation to the paper. Stroke order ensures that no move is repeated successively. When a brush makes contact with a hard surface, the tip flexes, and the brush responds to a downward force; in this way, a brushstroke is a record of a hand gesture. Going beyond a two-dimensioned graphic, the brush makes active the up-and-down axis, the z-axis; writing is a gesture that operates in three dimensions: as one writes, the hand inscribes a physical space, moves circuitously over a spot while pushing and lifting the brush.

But the Chinese character is also a descriptor of time. The five styles – Hsiao Chuan, Li, Tsao, Chen, Tsing – represent the evolution of the character form in its relation to the timing of the strokes. The calligrapher’s art is in his control of timing: in essence, knowing when to stop, when to go, and when to turn. Environmental and emotional circumstances affect the calligrapher’s sense of timing, so that every piece of calligraphy is unique, specific to the moment of its creation.

A brush character is not a simple graphic, but rather, it is a notation of movement, mapping the passage of the hand over the page. A piece of calligraphy demonstrates a hand and brush in motion, the product of a moment’s creativity at a specific place and time.

Lan Ting

2009-08-17T21:01:00.001-04:00

It was a wet November morning, my last day in Shaoxing, when I visited Orchid Hill Park. I entered the park and followed a winding path that cut through a bamboo grove, with the sound of raindrops lightly tapping my umbrella. Bamboo shadows patterned the slick stone paving under my feet and the path led me to a small pavilion situated at the edge of a lily pond. The pavilion was raised upon a platform three steps high and four stone columns supported its sweeping gable roof. Inside, there was a stone tablet that read “Lan Ting.” During the Spring Autumn Period, at the foot of a hill, a pavilion filled the spot where orchids once stood. And so, it was named Lan Ting, or the Orchid Pavilion. In the spring of 353, Wang Xizhi and forty-one of his friends and family gathered at Lan Ting. For the literati, spring was a time of renewal, a time when the return to nature washes away the grime of winter. Wang and his group played a game by the pavilion. They floated cups of wine down the stream, drank and wrote poetry. Wang wrote the preface for this group of poems titled “Lan Ting Shu,” a work that many consider to be a masterpiece of Chinese calligraphy. Looking at the fabled pavilion, I remembered thinking, “this is it, where was the stream or the hill?” The significance and meaning of this place was now marked only by two words. Except for the inscription, the building was simple and ordinary. I had come chasing the place that inspired a masterpiece. I had also come looking for clues that might close the gap between my present and that spring day back in 353. I wanted inspiration, but nothing remarkable happened.

Time, Space Calligraphy and Architecture

2009-08-17T20:59:00.002-04:00

Order and Inflection

Chinese calligraphy – the art of brush writing – is not unlike a performing art: a calligrapher in partnership with a brush. Like a dancer, the calligrapher’s hand moves rhythmically in a serpentine path across a stage of paper. The boundaries of the word are marked by a hand in motion; a space is inscribed. A prescribed order for the brushstrokes and a fluid but rigorous brush technique allow for a variety of letterforms. The rules and the training, do no disguise the human presence. Mistakes, or digressions are both opportunities. In writing, the calligrapher constantly adjusts his movements based on the emerging circumstance of the letterform. The final form is a synthesis of planned and unanticipated parts, of system and digression, of order and inflection. The technique neither ignores nor pacifies the unexpected. Instead, the letterformat – stroke order and style – leave the calligrapher free to invest his work with emotion and expression.

The calligrapher Wang Xizhi was perhaps the greatest brush performer. For millennia, his written works have charmed emperors, scholars, and common men. His most prestigious work, “Lan Ting Shu,” written at a small pavilion located near the city of Shaoxing, made the architecture of that building world famous. The Orchid Pavilion, became a setting for a great performance. The event – a drinking party among forty-one friends and family members – the feelings evoked – camaraderie, love of the surrounding landscape – are beautifully preserved in Wang Xizhi’s lines. In his calligraphy, the words and the spontaneous, varied expressive letterform work together to evoke a moment, a place, and the sense of the party. Today, thousands of people come to Shaoxing to share that same space. They believe that the calligraphy, in its form, describes a space and a moment. They come to confirm that belief.

One cannot hope to design spontaneity, but one can design a charged environment – a stage that inspires spontaneity.

Calligraphy is deceptively spontaneous. The finished product – especially in the style of cursive script – is fluid, chaotic, and random, but each part, even at the scale of a single stroke is choreographed, intentionally made. Calligraphy makes the most of the fluid characteristics of brush and ink. Fluid lines seem to mimic the energy and appearance of nature. In China, even things found in nature are deliberately altered and positioned. The constructed experience is no less true than a natural one, a constructed nature is no less suspect. Deliberate intervention, in other words design, makes an object or a circumstance’s inherent qualities visible. The best design comes from understanding the material, its characteristics and context, then leaving room for the unexpected to creep in.

Montage and Scanning

Each word within a finished piece of calligraphy is self-contained, an independent spatial experience. The words have a specific meaning, they describe a particular rhythm of movement, and on the page they are separated from each other across the space of the paper. The finished word of calligraphy is a field, ranked and filed, of spatial experience.

The words in a Chinese text are arranged vertically, and one reads by scanning each column from the top down, starting from the right side of the page. The experience of reading brush-drawn Chinese depends on jumps from one field (of idea, experience) into the next. The reader participates in this experience: the connections between two terms are found in the gaps and the reader does the connecting. Continuous narratives do not exist and they are perhaps not necessary.

The way calligraphy and Chinese landscape painting represent space challenges the traditional sense of space as a continuous line from the eye to the horizon. Chinese space is perhaps more appropriately described as “spacing.” “Space” is a static condition whereas “spacing” is a an active process. Eastern aesthetic practices deliberately make gaps. In calligraphy, the inked stroke is balanced by the paper untouched. In a painting, a scene shifts abruptly from a position up close to a position in the distance; motifs can suddenly appear then disappear. If we do not align spaces in one narrative, if we scan separate fields and make the leap between them, what type of space are we dealing with? Spacing is a liberating act because it breaks the convention of having everything “fall in line.” Time isn’t the “line keeper.” A multitude of circumstance exist simultaneously. The past is mutable, things have happened, can happen again. Circumstances are judged pragmatically, choices are made based on usefulness rather than on provenance. Within a piece of calligraphy, words written in Standard style can morph into a Cursive style, depending on the purpose at the moment.

Movement – the sense of forward motion – reigned in by a few rules, is what keeps this spatial strategy from becoming unnavigable. Motion propels the leaps from one field to the next. Chinese writing isn’t well-behaved. The form can change radically. Chinese art or space doesn’t follow a single arc; there are always several narratives running in parallel to the main story. Things unfold, then disappear, then reappear.

For the Chinese, the events of the past provide valuable lessons for solving problems in the present. The shape of the future, however, is pliable.

As a architect, I’ve always associated clarity with reduction. Calligraphy is incredibly clear even when it is complex and expansive. Any attempt to reduce the art strips it of its potency. Rules clarify. The creative act should be open ended. Instead of making rules that predict and determine an end, perhaps we should design them instead to decipher existing circumstances, to add to the field, to find new patterns.

A Landscape Continuously Unfolding

2009-08-17T20:56:00.002-04:00

The Renaissance established the codes of traditional Western perspective. A specific geometry, originating from a line at the viewer’s eye level, constructs a third dimension according to one or more fixed vanishing points placed along that line. Perspective thus establishes a precise point in space to which all other points relate. Space is here defined by points, straight lines and planes. Perspectival art renders space uniform, where the subjects are framed and fixed in position. In contrast to this code, Chinese art uses black outlines to draw the subjects and a variety of tones to produce details. Motifs are repeated and the subject matter often extends past the picture plane. Chinese calligraphy, moreover, focuses strictly on line work. As Chinese art and graphic expression is, in essence, a graphic of two dimensions, it questions the visual representation of depth and space.

Hanging in the National Palace Museum in Taipei is “Countless Peaks and Vales,” an eight foot high scroll from 1693 by Qing Dynasty artist Wang Hui. A prominent and gifted painter of the 17th Century, Wang Hui first made his reputation by copying old masterworks. Drawing on past influences he writes: “I must use the brush and ink of the Yuan to move the peaks and valleys of the Song, and infuse them with the breath-resonance of the Tang. I will then have a work of the Great Synthesis.” The Song Dynasty saw the rise of the scholar literati class and marked the beginning of monumental landscape painting. During this period, painting became a mode of personal expression. The literati painters began composing the landscape to show natural orders, which they believed were missing in active society. Painting of the Yuan and Ming Dynasty moved away from literal representation. Instead, the calligraphic lines themselves carried the life of a landscape. Wang’s mentor, Dong Qichang, stressed: “If one considers the uniqueness of scenery, then a painting is not the equal of real landscape; but if one considers the wonderful excellence of brush and ink, then landscape can never equal painting.” Thus, Wang Hui’s style is a combination of detailed rendering and evocative calligraphic brushwork.

In “Countless Peaks and Vales,” the colour palette is black, grey and the natural buff of the paper itself. The subject is a river gorge – a typical landscape in the regions south of the Yangtze River. The skillful placement of water and rocks divides the picture plane into various zones. The repetition of mountain summits, shaped like spearheads, from the top of the scroll downwards, draws the eye to rest near the center of the picture. Here the cliff face lies bare, its ridges scattered with a fine stubble of shrubs. In the top half, the mountain pass is most visible from the left-hand side. It is a close view in elevation and takes up two-thirds of the scroll. Into the distance, the peaks decrease in height as they gradually disappear behind the mist. Four long lines of calligraphy at the top right of the scroll mirror seven short lines of text at the top left. Rock and water intersect at the very center while, to the far left, a stream carves through the mountain, eventually tumbling over an edge. From the far right, a river rushes in and two fishers paddle against its current. There is a sudden change of scale as though the eye sees the scene from above. Clusters of trees line the river’s edge and two villages appear in view, one village beside the river, the other tucked inside a valley. The river, following an arcuate path, divides the bottom portion into halves. On the left bank a second waterfall appears where the route of flowing water continues on as a dry path. Two travelers, one young and one old, trek up the mountain. Pines and gnarled conifers surround a monastery on the right bank and three monks stand at the shore. Several trees to the left of the monastery interrupt the river’s flow, where once again water intersects with rock so that the river becomes a quiet stream. Behind the monastery, two travelers on horseback round the corner on a second mountain trail. At the scroll’s bottom left corner, conifers and pines command the most attention and here there is a contrast between trees that stand upright and trees that bend over. Behind the trees is a raised pavilion on an island and a small footbridge which links the island to shore. None of the major motifs in “Countless Peaks and Vales” exist in fixed states. Water flows through the veins of rocks and around the base of mountains as boats skim along its surface. Plants grow in crevices and people meander along paths. Various motifs coexist seamlessly, while various permutations of rock, water, trees and people create a broad range of compositional possibilities.

Among the variety, there is a strong sense of unity in “Countless Peaks and Vales.” The exact and focused placement of each element depends upon a counterpart so that each element has its rightful place in relation to the other elements. As such, Wang’s painting resists visual fragmentation and expresses unity. Overall, the painting tells the story of mountains that stretch far into the distance and of a river that is packed with charming vignettes along its shores. And yet, if one considers only one-half or one-fifth of the overall work, another story unfolds. From the bottom-most section, a scholar and his two pupils stand at the head of a bridge. Both students carry supplies, while their teacher points his staff towards a place across the water. Directly behind them, a stream appears, its water rushing towards the quiet bay. A large rock screens the trio’s destination – the pavilion, although one assumes that there are stairs leading up to the top. A boat heads away from the shore, as reeds and trees sway towards the right. The bending plants thus show that the oarsman is rowing against a headwind. Two people rest in the pavilion, perhaps waiting for their friend. One man gazes at the peaks in the distance, while the other admires the rocks before him. The story continues its progression, moving from right to left. The bridge suggests both a path and a destination and while the upward gaze of the scholar extends the scene beyond his immediate context, the wind resists the fishers’ efforts of moving upstream. These motifs do not follow the usual conventions of scale and distance. Objects vary in size and level of detail, even if positioned in the same zone on the scroll. The trees in front of and behind the small pavilion are significantly larger. In this way, Wang Hui seamlessly relates one condition to another. Although the lower section is but a fragment of the overall painting, there is nonetheless a complete story.

The representation of variety and unity has great significance in Chinese art. Chinese aesthetics is rooted in Daoism and nature is a popular subject in Chinese painting. Not only does nature, or ziran, represent all elements of the natural world, it also means “of itself.” As such, the natural world is self-generating: it is a matrix of elements that interact to cause change. This matrix also has its rhythm, a constant flux which passes between active and passive states. The Daoist believed that every object, animate or inanimate, possesses qualities “of itself.” True wisdom is that which recognizes and follows the flows of nature’s rhythms and then leaves things as they are. There is no distinction between natural and artificial or between large and small. In the same way, landscape painting and garden design use this rhythm in their organization of space. The Chinese garden, for example, is a world of artifice, but all elements, nonetheless, follow natural processes. It is also a tightly organized journey, where a small space expands by mere suggestion and the sense of place is framed as an accumulation of experience. The garden expresses a narrative, as its serpentine path reveals each scene in continuous progression. Well-designed gardens control both pace and view. Professor Chen Congzhou of Tongji University divides Chinese garden design in two categories: those intended for “in-position viewing,” and those intended for “in-motion viewing.” “In-position viewing” situates the viewer at a platform or pavilion in order to admire a scene in elevation. “In-motion viewing,” on the other hand, anticipates the viewer’s promenade along narrow paths that thread their way between rockery and buildings. Curving paths can disorient the viewer and hide important settings and destinations from view. Furthermore, all the elements used in the garden act as suggestive forms. Rock sculptures remind the visitor of majestic mountains, while ponds and streams represent lakes and rivers. One element becomes suggestive of the other because both belong under the same cosmology. The end of the journey marks a point of reminiscence for the visitor, a point where the accumulation of scenery suggests the natural landscape “of itself.” For the artist, visual or spatial accuracy is not important, whereas the expression of natural rhythms and the spirit of the subject are essential. According to this representation of the natural world, brush art captures vitality in the painted form by using technique and strategic composition.

Shi (势) is an ambiguous term that means both “position” and “potential.” It thus represents the rules and the effect caused by these same rules. The two definitions are intertwined, since things arranged in a specific position generate a potentiality. In The Propensity of Thing, Francois Jullien uses the dual meaning of shi to argue that Chinese logic is never formed a priori. A sinologist and philosophy professor at the Université Paris VII Denis-Diderot, Jullien writes:

The originality, according to Jullien, stems from the fact that no configuration of forms is perfectly static; rather, all actions require form to take effect. In other words, Chinese artists and poets “produced a particular configuration of the dynamism inherent in reality.” Following this notion of dynamism, calligraphy, painting and poetry all tell stories in parallel, simultaneously describing the present as the events unfold.

Chinese paintings and calligraphy are not on permanent display, as they use delicate materials such as silk or paper. Instead, they are kept in storage and brought out for viewing. The paper comes from a bamboo pulp that can be cut into separate sheets or made into a roll. Once the painting is finished, the artist mounts it over a linking paper and coats it with a paste that waterproofs the surface. The scroll exists in two formats: the handscroll and the hanging scroll. Handscrolls are horizontal compositions, typically nine to fourteen inches high with variable widths. To view a handscroll, one begins from the right-hand side and unrolls the painting, one shoulder-width section at a time, a rhythmic action which requires re-rolling one section before moving on to the next. Hanging scrolls, in contrast, are vertical compositions that range between two to six feet high with variable widths. A hanging scroll is suspended from a cord at the top and viewed after the painting is hung. Jullien describes the logic behind this format as follows:

The scroll format encourages continuous narratives and even the process of creating the scrolls follows this logic. The artist completes the work in stages. With long scrolls, the painter composes each section separately and then assembles them to create the completed work. There is little interest in boundaries here, as motifs in one scene might extend beyond their context and move towards and into neighbouring sections. There are also no visual breaks. Instead, scenes combine so as to never disrupt the pace or tempo of the overall work. Because of this, great paintings can sustain multiple viewings, for the scenes always reveal new surprises. Viewing itself follows the logic of lived experience to which Jullien refers. While the first viewing establishes the overall narrative, subsequent viewings reveal finer subplots. As a result, the main characters, motifs, paths and journeys come into contact with minor characters and alternative routes. Likewise, through the process of viewing, the viewer comes into contact with a physical sense of time that is marked out by the act of rolling and unrolling. The scroll format invites this kind of kinetic interaction.

Change is a fundamental part of Chinese landscape painting, since it uses the precise assemblage of forms to express movement. There are rarely straight lines in a Chinese landscape painting. Even architecture cannot escape the influence of curves and dynamic composition. Straight columns support sweeping roofs that, in return, mirror the motion of currents and streams that are never far from the scene. Curved lines best illustrate organic forms—the lines are serpentine, rarely limited to a single arc. Chinese painters impart life to their subjects using a strategy that Jullien calls “functional bipolarity.” From opposition comes desired effect. In this way, the curve is the opposite of the straight edge, but the combination of contrasting qualities creates a tension that is visually dynamic. For example, undulating lines represent a cascade, but on every line an arc springs from a common point, in alternating directions, facing left and right. The resultant effect describes both the motion of the water and the structure that causes the movement. In other words, the rock gives shape and direction to the flow of the water and the water animates the rock. It is this combination of angular and smooth edges, and alternating orientation, that creates the sense of movement. The straight elements are structural, while the curved elements are suggestive of life. Another way artists create visual dynamism is by combining and repeating similar motifs. Guo Hsi, a painter from the Song Dynasty, writes:

The change of appearance caused by the varying degree of distance from the object is figuratively known as ‘the change of shape with every step one takes.’ . . . Thus a single mountain combines in itself several thousand appearances.

The repetition of elements in a painting is significant here, since the scattering of trees, rocks, bodies of water, boats, villages and people carries with it a unified logic of dynamism. Like “a single mountain” that unites “several thousand appearances,” views of the same object, at various distances and on different levels of detail, collapse together on one picture plane. Moreover, suggests Jullien, a painter may group “pines, cedars, old acacias, and old juniper trees in clumps of three or five, in such a way as to emphasize their shi.” Every tree possesses a shi that expresses its propensity for developing a unique form. Indeed, closer inspection and direct comparison reveal obvious differences in shape, height and posture. Differences create harmony, not dissonance. Ultimately, shi is a unifying force, “for in China, a painting is only really worthy of its name when it represents the totality of things.” Shi is a term that represents the vital energy, a natural logic that shapes form and propels change in all objects, whether animate or inanimate. “Functional bipolarity” and variation are artistic devices that enable the viewer to perceive the vital energy—a life force in the painted form. To that end, the artist stays true to the essence of his subject and furthers a unifying quality, without simply replicating elements in the painting.

Linguistics

2009-08-17T20:55:00.000-04:00

Linguistically, Chinese words are categorized as one of six types: pictogram, ideogram, semantic combination, extended meaning, phonetic borrowing, and semantic-phonetic combination. Pictograms are literal representations of living things and inanimate objects. The character for “broom” (fu-帚) is a conventionalized diagram of a ceremonial broom. Ideograms are characters that symbolize an idea or action, since it is possible to discern a disposition from the character’s appearance. The words for “up” (shang-上) and “down” (xia-下) show an upward pull and a downward push. New characters can result from an arrangement of pictograms and ideograms. For example, the word for “return” (gui-歸) is a combination of “broom” (帚), the word “stop” (zhi-止) and a diagram that represents the meat offering given out before the troops’ departure. In this way, “return” not only describes an action, but also becomes synonymous with ritual. Furthermore, there are groups of characters that have different configurations and pronunciation but share a common semantic root. These words, by extension of a common symbol, also share a similar logic of meaning. When “broom” (帚) is used as a symbolic root, words such as “clean” (sao-掃) or “soak” (jin-浸) expand their meaning to describe both the tools used and the ritual context from which they stem. Some characters evolve when the sound of one word is applied to another without consideration for meaning. “Righteousness” (yi-義) is a homophone of the word for “meaning” (yi-意). A word relies on one component to indicate sound and another to symbolize meaning. The word “ant” (yi-蟻) combines “righteousness” (yi-義), the phonetic root, with a diagram that means insect. Characters in European languages are phonetic symbols, insofar as sound carries meaning. Chinese, on the other hand, condenses sound and meaning into a visual construction. This is of historical significance:

Thus the language has retained its visual format. It is important to write correctly and legibly, but historically, it was paramount that one also wrote beautifully.

Written Form as Poetry

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In his book, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, Ernest Fenollosa, a former professor of philosophy at Tokyo University and curator for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, uses linguistic analysis to illustrate the poetic potential of Chinese characters. Fenollosa was one of the earliest promoters of Asian art in North America. Ezra Pound, his literary executor, compiled and published the book in 1920, two years after Fenollosa’s death. Fenollosa’s analysis assumes that Chinese is strictly a pictorial language. His methods are not universal, because Chinese symbols trigger both the memory of sound and meaning. However, Fenollosa correctly noted the absence of grammatical separation in Chinese language. He says that “In reading Chinese we do not seem to be juggling mental counters, but to be watching things work out their own fate.” Meaning evolves through a specific arrangement of words and, as such, poetry describes the relation of things. As Fenollosa explains, “poetic thought works by suggestion, crowding maximum meaning into the single phrase pregnant, charged and luminous from within.” Metaphor is a device that bridges the visible and tangible with the phenomenal and intangible. Accordingly, great poetry shows, in a concrete manner, the exchanges that occur between things; pictograms themselves act as visible signs of elements interacting. For Fenollosa, “poetic language is always vibrant with fold on fold of overtones and with natural affinities, but in Chinese the visibility of the metaphor tends to raise this quality to its intensest power.” Chinese language arises from a logic of lived experience and dynamism – the logic of process. In this context, Chinese characters are never sole descriptors of things (nouns) or actions (verbs). Fenollosa writes:

A true noun, an isolated thing, does not exist in nature. Things are only the terminal points, or rather the meeting points, of actions, cross-sections cut through actions, snap-shots. Neither can a pure verb, an abstract motion, be possible in nature. The eye sees noun and verb as one: things in motion, motion in things, and so the Chinese conception tends to represent them.

For example, an eye above a pair of legs represents the character “see.” Thus, the act of seeing describes an eye (noun) in movement (verb). In a sentence such as “man sees horse,” “man” is two legs converging to a point, “see” is an eye propped above legs, and “horse” is a head perched on four legs. According to this logic, the man with moving eyes sees the horse. Fenollosa argues that a the significant function of a Chinese character reveals itself only when in direct relation to a specific order with other words. This is only possible because a Chinese character is simultaneously an object and a verb – a thing and the thing in action.

Calligraphic Style

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Chinese language developed over a period of 5,000 years and creation myths served as the first documentation of the written form. In the Legendary Period, a time before recorded history, there were three emperors: Fu Hsi, Shen Nung and Huang Ti. Fu Hsi, the “ox-tamer,” created the bagua, more commonly known as “the eight trigrams.” The symbols consist of both continuous and broken lines. Three continuous lines symbolize heaven, three broken lines symbolize earth, and six variations of broken and continuous lines describe wind, water, mountain, thunder, fire, and lake. The trigrams represent more than 1,471 ideas and objects, but there is no concrete evidence that Chinese language was founded on this system. In Chinese Calligraphers and Their Art, the author Chih-Mai Ch’en speculates that the literal representation of objects and ideas preceded abstraction. It is likely that pictograms existed before the bagua. The second emperor, Shen Nung, created a numerical system using knotted string. It is possible that the brush technique of “return” was inspired by knots, but, without proof, these assertions remain conjectures. On the other hand, the third emperor, Huang Ti or the “Yellow Emperor,” is considered the ancestor of the Chinese. While Fu Hsi and Shen Nung are mythical figures, Huang Ti may have actually ruled between 2697-2597 BC. Furthermore, his minister, Ts’ang Chieh, is often credited as the inventor of the first writing system. Ch’en describes how Ts’ang Chieh developed his system:

After studying the celestial bodies and their formations and the natural objects surrounding him, particularly the footprints of birds and animals, he came to realize that things could be told apart by devising different signs to represent them.

This story of origins shows an evolution that is an essential part of the history of Chinese calligraphy. And yet, the earliest concrete evidence of a literate culture came from a period between 2205-1766 BC, a period in Chinese history known as the Shang Dynasty. The Shang “Oracle Bones” consist of 100,000 artifacts engraved with pictograms. The writing is arranged vertically, but each word differs in orientation and size. Collectively, 1,300 characters make up this language, Chia Ku Wen, and they reveal a first attempt at pictorial abstraction. A period of disunion followed the Shang Dynasty; this was a time when feudal states and principalities operated independently. Written language, like the state of governance itself, developed in a scattered way until the Qin Dynasty that ruled from 221-207 BC. Under the unified rule of Emperor Qin Shih Huang, a standardized writing system evolved and came into use. All the characters were reconfigured to follow a uniform orientation, size and rectangular shape. This system became the first calligraphic style, known as Hsiao Chuan.

With the beginning of a new system for writing, the preferred tool changed from a stylus to a brush. Writing Hsiao Chuan with a brush took time and patience. The stroke composition was complex, and yet, at the same time, the character needed to have the appearance of a carved line. The process of calligraphic writing hid the tip of the brush inside the stroke so that a new writing instrument was not necessary. In this way, Chinese calligraphy created a new style of writing that suited the flexibility of the brush. Li Shu was first used by clerks within Emperor Qin Shih Huang’s court. This style reduced the number of strokes in a word, allowed for fluid brush movements and added emphasis on the points, both entry and exit, in a stroke. When the Han people succeeded Emperor Qin Shih Huang, they adopted Li Shu as the official court script. However, because Li Shu restricted brush and hand movements, Tsao Shu evolved as a script whose characters keep “the basic structure of the character in Li Shu, compromise on its formality, allow it to run wild and free, meet the demands of time.” Since Tsao shu traded legibility for speed, it necessitated a compromise in the form of a new style, Chen Shu. Chen Shu is a culmination of Hsiao Chuan, Li Shu and Tsao Shu: it buries the brush tip inside the stroke and adopts a simplified pictographic form with exaggerated line variation. Chen Shu also exploded the Chinese figure into eight stroke types. T’se, lo, nu, yo, tse, lueh, cho, and chih are aesthetic variations on horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. T’se and yo describe the most pleasing ways for writing short strokes, lo and nu for horizontal and vertical lines, and tse, lueh, cho, chih for different kinds of diagonal lines. The word yong or “eternity” is comprised of all eight strokes. A manual, titled The Eight of Laws of Yong, described the requisite movements needed for each stroke. Today, when a student begins calligraphy training, the first character he or she learns is yong. Chen Shu is presently the standard Chinese script. The last calligraphic style invented is Tsing Shu, a style which in large part resembles Chen Shu, but which occasionally links brushstrokes together. Chinese calligraphers today practice the five major styles, Hsiao Chuan, Li Shu, Tsao Shu, Chen Shu and Tsing Shu.

Graphic Design

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In the fifteenth century A.D., the calligrapher Li Chun wrote an essay titled “The Eighty-Four Laws.” Li determined eighty-four typical situations for creating good form. For each case, Li used four examples, each written by famous calligraphers, showing the types of adjustments necessary when making dynamic but balanced form. Li focused the eight component strokes individually, showing the variety of line spacing, line weight and the trajectory angle. Li also identified four composite character types: left-right, left-middle-right, top-bottom, and top-middle-bottom. The composite type determines each component’s proportion, scale, and position, along with line spacing, line weight, and stroke orientation and adjustments follow as needed. Li’s analysis alternates between the overall appearance of the character and its stroke components. In fact, he observed that many characters look best as simple geometric shapes such as squares, rectangles, trapezoids and circles. Moreover, singular character form and composite character form present different challenges. The integrity of a singular character form often depends on the precise rendering of one dominant stroke, whereas size and spacing, along with line modifications, affect composite character forms.

Law 1: Sky Covers

The top covers the bottom entirely. In this law, the top is clear and the bottom is turbid.

Law 2: Ground Carries

The bottom supports the top. In this law, the top is light and the bottom is weighty.

Law 3: Concede Left

The left side is raised high, while the right side is hung low, if the right side possesses a modest appearance.

Law 4: Concede Right

The right side dominates, while the left side is suppressed, if at first the left side looks unassuming.

Law 5: Divide Boundary

Assume that left and right are equal, with neither side yielding, as if they were two people standing side by side.

Law 6: Even Three

Assume that the center is straight and upright, and made stronger if the left and right greet the middle.

Law 7: Two Parts

Divide in half, compare lengths, add a little and spare a little.

Law 8: Three Stops

Divide into three sections, then estimate how far or near the sections are to one another, in order to arrange the stops.

Law 9: Occupy the Top

The top is broad yet drawn clear, the bottom is narrow yet drawn turbid.

Law 10: Occupy the Bottom

The bottom is wide yet drawn light, the top is narrow yet drawn heavy.

Law 11: Occupy the Left

The left side is big yet drawn slender, the right side is small yet drawn thick.

Law 12: Occupy the Right

The right side is wide yet drawn lean, the left side is narrow yet drawn fat.

Law 13: Occupy Left-Right

Left and right are lean yet long, the middle is fat yet short.

Law 14: Occupy Top-Bottom

The top and bottom are wide and slightly flat, the middle is narrow but not long.

Law 15: Occupy the Center

The center is wide and large, but drawn light, the two ends are narrow and small, but drawn heavy.

Law 16: Bowing Gou’s

The top possesses a narrow but short gou stroke, the bottom possess a large curve and a long gou stroke.

Law 17: Four Equal Corners

The upper two corners are level, and the bottom two corners uniform. This law avoids a limp back and bent foot.

Law 18: Open Two Shoulders

The shoulders open up, and the feet are drawn together. This law avoids straight legs and relieved shoulders.

Law 19: Draw Evenly

Black and white in pleasant unison.

Law 20: Crisscross

Three parts afraid of obstructing each other.

Law 21: Sparse Arrangement

In Sparse Arrangement, the pie stroke must show; if it does not, then the word appears coy.

Law 22: Precise

Precise words are drawn tightly, not loosely scattered and wide open.

Law 23: Hanging Pin

Hanging Pin words do not use Vertical Stroke, because the Vertical Stroke reduces vigour.

Law 24: Vertical Stroke

Vertical Stroke words do not use Hanging Pin, because the Hanging Pin looks unstable.

Law 25:Top Leveled

The Top Leveled word is smaller on the left, but never misaligned.

Law 26: Bottom Leveled

The Bottom Leveled word is smaller on the left, but never out of position.

Law 27: Top Wide

For the Top Wide word, the bottom cannot be big and only a slight, elongated square is beautiful.

Law 28: Bottom Wide

For the Bottom Wide word, the top is long and narrow and a short, compressed square is good.

Law 29: Subtract Na

A na stroke is subtracted, because if it is not, then the dominant na is difficult to see.

Law 30: Subtract Gou

A gou stroke is subtracted; otherwise, the dominant gou stroke lacks form.

Law 31: Concede Heng

For Concede Heng, draw a long, yet unburdened, horizontal stroke.

Law 32: Concede Upright

For Concede Upright, the shu stroke is straight and does not lean.

Law 33: Reined in Heng

For Reined In Heng, there is no potential, or shi, when the stroke is level.

Law 34: All leveled

For All Leveled, simultaneously rein in the strokes.

Law 35: Vertical Po

The po stroke of Vertical Po, only delights in a hidden head and a gathered tail.

Law 36: Horizontal Po

The po stroke of Horizontal Po first needs an extended neck and broad chest.

Law 37: Vertical Ge

The ge stroke of Vertical Ge only fears losing strength from bending.

Law 38: Horizontal Ge

The ge stroke of Horizontal Ge particularly dislikes stiff, straight, flat hooks.

Law 39: Wrong Foot

The gou stroke of Wrong Foot must envelope two dian strokes.

Law 40:. Prop Up

The pie stroke of Prop Up must intersect at midpoint.

Law 41: Head

Like 曾, the top is opened and the bottom is closed.

Law 42: Feet

Like 其, the top is closed but the bottom is opened.

Law 43: Rectangle

A Rectangular case likes its four sides straight and wide.

Law 44: Short Rectangle

A Short Rectangle values level and open shoulders.

Law 45: Build Separate Gou

For Build Separate Gou, the gou stroke is added separately, otherwise, the stroke looks tired and undifferentiated.

Law 46: Weighty Pie

For Weighty Pie, the pie stroke conveys the curve, not committing the fallacy of looking like a row of teeth.

Law 47: Assembled Dian

The appropriate orientation of each dian stroke of Assembled Dian does not resemble a row of masonry.

Law 48: Arrangement of Dian

The dian stroke of Arrangement of Dian uses variation, without resembling scattered chess pieces.

Law 49: Striving Vertical Gou

A Striving Vertical Gou is not suited for enveloping; otherwise, the word will not look square.

Law 50: Bounded Gou

A nu or vertical stroke is not suited for a Bounded Gou; if used, the word won’t fill out.

Law 51:Middle Gou

A Middle Gou is beautiful, as it merely relies on an upright disposition.

Law 52: Ample Gou

For Ample Gou, the most charming disposition inclines towards upright.

Law 53: Outstretched Gou

An Outstretched Gou aims only for a bent, outstretched form.

Law 54:Yielding Gou

A Yielding Gou must know its form exists upright, with its extension bent back.

Law 55: Left Droops

With Left Droops, the right side must not be too long.

Law 56: Right Hangs Down

With Right Hangs Down, the left side alone is short.

Law 57:Cover Below

For Cover Below, the left and right sides divide equally.

Law 58: Advantage Below

For Advantage Below, the two sides are valued and displayed equally.

Law 59: Vertical Wan

The wan stroke of Vertical Wan is long, only afraid of resembling a wasp’s waist or a crane’s knee.

Law 60: Horizontal Wan

The wan stroke of Horizontal Wan dislikes being short, for it is not a crane’s knee or a wasp’s waist.

Law 61: Vertical Pie

The pie stroke of Vertical Pie especially dreads being short; and yet it worries about resembling a rat’s tail and a bull’s head.

Law 62: Horizontal Pie

The pie stroke of Horizontal Pie favors being slightly long and is only afraid of resembling a bull’s head and a rat’s tail.

Law 63:. Successive Pie

According to the law of Successive Pie, the lower stroke’s head faces the upper stroke’s chest.

Law 64: Disperse Water

According to the law of Disperse Water, the bottom stroke’s edge responds to top stroke’s tail.

Law 65: Fat

Fat words are slightly fat, but not so much that they end up looking bloated.

Law 66: Thin

Thin words are trim and the form opposes looking dry and weak.

Law 67: Scant

Scant words by nature are arranged sparsely; hence, use ample, robust strokes.

Law 68: Close

Close words are tightly arranged and comfortably outstretched.

Law 69: Stack

Stacked words overlap, again and again, but the point of overlap is positioned evenly.

Law 70: Accumulate

Accumulated words, always invariably complicated and disorderly, seek wholeness within the disorder.

Law 71: Slant

Slant words incline to one side as appropriate.

Law 72: Round

Round words naturally like circular enclosure.

Law 73: Oblique

Despite being Oblique, the word in essence possesses uprightness.

Law 74: Straight

Straight words are upright; their four corners are not oblique.

Law 75: Weighty

In a Weighty case, the bottom is necessarily large.

Law 76: Side By Side

In a Side By Side case, the right is necessarily wide.

Law 77: Long

A Long case primarily dislikes shortness.

Law 78: Short

A Short case does not seek length.

Law 79: Big

For a Big case, the words are already big, and its components are amassed cleverly.

Law 80: Small

Small cases are small, but value an ample and austere appearance.

Law 81: Facing:

Although Facing cases greet, hands avoid touching feet.

Law 82: Back Away

The Back Away case is already turned around, but the central artery of the word is unobstructed and free flowing.

Law 83: Alone

Alone words are drawn isolated, and only worry about becoming flighty, dry and thin.

Law 84: Single

Single cases are alone, slightly weighted, handsome, light and long.

A Reservoir of Knowledge

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The overall appearance of Chinese words has transformed significantly and visibly throughout history. Every change reflects a change in the state of Chinese society. Perhaps, for this reason, calligraphy remains an important cultural treasure. Calligraphy and Power in Contemporary Chinese Society is a study that unearths the influence of calligraphy on the average person who lives in contemporary China. Through a series of interviews with calligraphers, scholars and average citizens, the author Yuehping Yen discovered that many people still believe that words embody ancient knowledge. She writes:

The process that Yen describes is evident when considering the official script of the Qin Dynasty, Hsiao Chuan. For example, the script’s archaic appearance simultaneously alludes to the ancient cultures that invented language, and symbolizes the unification of the Chinese empire. Chinese characters also incorporate information of past calligraphic techniques. As Yen states:

To write Hsiao Chuan, the calligrapher buries the brush tip and applies firm but even pressure to the page. As such, the brush movement mimics the slow motion of chiseling into a hard surface—the brush literally carves into the paper with this motion. Each calligraphic style possesses a unique combination of stroke arrangement, rhythm, pressure and speed, but at no point are the techniques mutually exclusive. In fact, new forms reinvent old techniques. For example, Hsiao Chuan requires a large amount of restraint to hide the flexible nature of the brush, whereas Tsao Shu liberates the brush across the surface of the page. In this way, Hsiao Chuan respects an orderly structure and Tsao Shu is preoccupied with spontaneity. In both cases, however, brush control is paramount. In the former case, control is visible through the uniform line spacing and thickness and in the latter case, control is visible at the pivot point between strokes. Rigid ends are necessary counterpoints to fluid lines in between. The technique that stops the momentum of a moving brush is constant; the differences are in stroke lengths, speed and pressure.

Calligraphic Space: A Function of Accumulated Time

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The brushstroke itself is a potent, reduced form. In The Path of Beauty, Li Zehou, a scholar of aesthetic philosophy, calls Chinese characters “significant forms.” A significant form “incorporates elements of both imagery (generalized simulation), and expressiveness (of emotions).” Li argues that the reader perceives phenomena in the written form. For Li, lines are like music notes and “what one perceives in the lines is not a series of objects in space but rather an epoch in time.” Line connects the motion of the hand, it is a visible record of time passing. A brushstroke channels the strength and fluidity of the writer’s hand and as Li suggests, makes his emotions visible. As a graphic, Chinese letter form simulate objects, actions and sounds, and the brush, injects the life in the form.

Motifs are literal representations: the viewer can easily anticipate cause and effect. When a person is near a bridge this naturally suggests that he will cross it. Landscape painting arranges motifs to create tension and induce the propensity for action. In calligraphy, brushstrokes are the motifs and each stroke carries within it a certain tension that is visible. There is a correlation between hand movement and the brush trace left on the page. As Francois Jullien writes:

The Chinese art of calligraphy can be considered a prime example of dynamism at work within a configuration because, in the case of each ideogram copied, a particular gesture is converted into a form, just as a particular form is equally converted into a gesture. In this schema the figure produced and the movements producing it are equivalent.

This schema, as Jullien suggests, embodies the tension inherent in the brushstrokes, for the very fact of their being. To create tension, the calligrapher must also disrupt repeated movements, but always with a strict adherence to the precise rules which exist in calligraphy. Each character is inscribed within and centred on an imaginary square. Unlike Western writing, where movement is unidirectional from left to right, the Chinese calligrapher goes on to build the character stroke by stroke within the imaginary square. The centre of the square marks the axis of reflection, rotation and union. The calligrapher first locates the centre, his initial strokes mark boundaries, followed by lines that are filled in to complete the character. One always begins from top to bottom and completes the left side before the right side. Not one move is repeated successively: a horizontal motion is followed by a vertical or diagonal motion. Every stroke begins and ends in the opposite way of its intended path. Tension is thus initiated by the constant alternation of brush movement. Calligraphy skillfully adjusts character composition, entry, follow-through and exiting of every stroke to appear poised for action. Not surprisingly, water never pools over calligraphy paper. The longer the brush remains still, the larger the ink blots. The faster the brush moves, the less the ink is absorbed by the paper. Since every type of brush movement follows some semblance of a “pause-pull-pause” pattern, ink opacity varies within a line. These variations describe the duration, speed and pressure of the brush in motion. If a line of uniform width is considered one visible unit of time completed at average speed, then important changes–difference in line thickness, ink opacity, and stroke spacing, in comparison–show rhythmic variation. Calligraphy skillfully modulates standard rhythms and speeds. Learning stroke order always precedes developing character recognition. Those versed in Chinese language can detect force, rhythm and speed in calligraphic writing. Those who practice calligraphy are training their sense of timing.

Although good calligraphy demands absolute mastery over motor skills, there are several limiting factors that make every work unique. The calligrapher is forbidden to go back and alter a completed stroke. The brush tip is soft, so that it is impossible to produce a uniform bead of ink across the paper. The paper is handmade, so that every sheet differs in thickness and absorbency. The calligrapher’s state of mind and the physical setting that surrounds him all affect the outcome of the finished work. Sun Qianli’s treatise on calligraphy states:

. . . Because one writes at a given time, circumstances will provide either discord or harmony. When there is harmony, the writing flows forth charmingly; when there is discord, it fades and scatters.

In this way, every line trace is specific to the immediate moment of its creation. With every stroke, the calligrapher imparts a mood or tone that reflects the physical and emotional circumstances surrounding the creation of the work. Chinese characters are significant forms and, as such, they are highly suggestive. Lines can reflect the author’s joys and sorrows. A handscroll titled “Calligraphy in Running and Cursive Script” written by Dong Qichang in the Ming dynasty translates as follows:

In the third month of the guimao year, I was in Suzhou at the Cloud Shadow Mountain Studio. Outside my window it was raining, and I had nothing to do. My friends Fan Erfu, Wang Boming, and Zhao Mansheng dropped by to visit. We sampled some Tiger Hill tea and ground [some fresh] Korean ink. Then I tried out a new brush, writing with abandon and all quite at random.

The first section, “In the third month of the guimao year. I was in Suzhou at the Cloud Shadow Mountain Studio. Outside my window it was raining, and I had nothing to do. My friends Fan Erfu, Wang Boming, and Zhao Mansheng” is written in Tsing Shu. Tsing Shu is characterized by simplified characters and occasional linkages between strokes. The words in the passage are generally uniform in size and spacing. The line work follows a consistent range of thicknesses. Horizontal strokes are parallel to each other, while vertical lines maintain a sense of uprightness. In the second section, “dropped by to visit. We sampled some Tiger Hill tea and ground [some fresh] Korean ink. Then I tried out a new brush, writing,” all the characters are larger, and a few columns were filled by only one word. The author no longer follows the rules of periodic uniform spacing and every character is composed of more loops and swirls. At times an entire column of characters is written with one continuous line. The third part reads: “with abandon and all quite at random.” All characters are reduced to gestures. The brush is dry, and each line is written with haste. Writing “with abandon” suggests the least restraint in brush work, the freest use of paper space, and the most reduced attention to character legibility. Most importantly, the transformations explained through the story complement the execution. While the handscroll is a record of an ordinary event, the gradual conversion of the lines imparts fresh imagery to the content.

Another example of this significance of forms is the story of Wang Xizhi’s masterpiece “Lan Ting Shu” or the “Orchid Pavilion Preface.” In the spring of 353 AD, Wang Xizhi, the sage of calligraphy, and forty of his friends gathered at Lan Ting, near Shaoxing.

According to Wang Hsi-chih [Xizhi], the place was surrounded by lofty mountains and steep slopes, lush forests and bamboo groves, with a clear brook gushing through, giving reflections to the left and the right. It was a fine day in early Spring. The air was clear and the breeze was soft. After a few rounds of drinks, Wang Hsi-chih [Xizhi] composed an essay commemorating the occasion which he wrote down ‘on paper made of the silk cocoon with a brush made of mouse-whiskers.

The piece is praised for Wang’s skilful combination of power and variation. “The character 之-zhi (a preposition, meaning ‘of’) appears twenty times but not two of them are identical.” “Lan Ting Shu” was subsequently copied by numerous accomplished calligraphers. Wang himself rewrote the piece several times. However, none could compare to the original. Beautiful scenery, great company, joyous spirit, an experienced hand–all of these elements culminated in an instant surge of inspiration that is evident in the form and arrangement of characters. Such conditions could not be recreated. That is why the original is valued above all other versions.

Calligraphy incorporates another dimension – time. Out of respect for historical significance, technique changes according to the chosen style. The essence of brilliant writing is the calligrapher’s control of timing. Rhythm is a measure of ruptures in a unit of time. Musical rhythms are written as beats within a section of time. Brush technique is rhythmic, the general pattern is pause, pull, pause and repeat. In calligraphy, the beats are rendered as dots on a line. Lines and dots are visual counters, combined they create graphic interest and show the passing of time at various speeds. Because calligraphy values honest reflection of good technique and no stroke is ever reworked; there is a transparency between the gesture and the resultant form. A moment of inspiration can elevate the significance of technique. Every piece is unique. Chinese calligraphy is not only a way of recording images, it is a way of telling time.

Conclusion

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Chinese calligraphy is pattern recognition: each word is a symbol of meaning and movement. Those who admire calligraphy enjoy the art for its content and for how it is technically executed. The changes in line weight represent a passage of time. The prose draws an imaginative space, the brushstrokes construct a graphic space, and the visible variation of line reveals the rhythm of movement over a time. The brush adds a vertical dimension to writing, and the brushstroke is a two-dimensioned trace of movement in three axes. The brushes accentuates and aestheticizes the dynamic sequences.

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Since Mao’s revolution, Pinyin has been a part of Chinese education. Pinyin – Mandarin Chinese written with Roman characters – is a phonetic system that preserves the graphic character of written Chinese in the age of automation. The typist makes the pictograph by typing the appropriate symbol for a particular sound.

There are over 50,000 words in the Chinese language and a literate person uses around 3,500 everyday. Traditionally, students learned vocabulary by reciting and writing words. Memorization was inevitable, and the regular use of the words reinforced the memory of them. The keyboard however, has altered the relationship between the mind, the eye, the ear and the hand. The article“櫓벌蝎랬狼안空,” (Chinese Writing Needs Saving) in the June 15, 2008 issue of the North American-based Chinese periodical Ming Pao Daily News reported that school children in China, when asked to handwrite a word from memory, executed poorly. Their handwriting was messy; many students did not know stroke order, and some left out important strokes. The article suggested that typing circumvents the rules for recording Chinese. The current generation is forgetting a basic skill of the language itself.

Whereas Pinyin was introduced a half century ago and word processing is a popular communications tool in the last decade, handwriting, more specifically calligraphy is a skill that was developed and practiced for over two millennia.

Calligraphy is an education in itself, an art that combines rules and intuition. The art of the line uses the Four Treasures of a Scholar’s Study: the brush, the paper, the ink and the ink stone. The brush is the recording device which uses paper for preserving and exhibiting the recorded information; the ink is the medium and the ink stone helps prepare the medium.

For over 2000 years Chinese writing has been recorded with a brush. Tsuen-hsuin Tsien, the author of Written on Bamboo and Silk; the Beginning of Chinese Books and Inscriptions, observed that brushes were discovered on archeological sites dating back as far as the 1600 B.C., when oracle bones were made, but the general Meng T’ien, in the third century B.C. was credited for making the first brush. The chisel, the stylus, and the brush coexisted in history, but by the Qin Dynasty in the third century B.C., brushes became the most popular writing tool.

Paper was invented in the second century A.D. by Ts’ai Lun. This achievement, mentioned in the official history of 25-189 A.D., the Tung-kuan Han-chi, stated Ts’ai Lun’s motives for inventing paper as making a material less cumbersome than bamboo tablets and less expensive than silk. “He initiated the idea of making paper from tree bark, old rags, and fishing nets.” Paper catalyzed the propagation of written texts, and after the fourth century A.D., “Paper has been in use everywhere.”

The ink stone is a well and a mill; the calligrapher grinds an ink stick (compacted charcoal powder) while he adds water. There isn’t a prescribed formula for mixing ink. If the mixture is viscous, the brushstroke risks looking dry, and if the mixture is dilute, the brushstroke risks looking bloated. Experience is the only measure, one knows when the proportion is right by the smell of soot coming from the mixture and the oily sheen on the surface.

Mastery over the four treasures is at the basis of Chinese arts and literate culture.

The calligrapher Wang Xizhi once said, “paper represents the troops arrayed for battle; the writing brush, sword and shield; ink represents the soldier’s armour; the ink slab, a city’s wall and moat; while the writer’s ability is the chief commander.” To win in battle, the commander deploys each part tactfully, but the skill of maneuvering brushes, paper, and ink in the fight for beauty is difficult to master. Brush writing is an unnatural exercise: the arm is raised and level with the table, fingers pinch the brush shaft, and the hand is at right angles to the arm. With the brush, the calligrapher must maintain consistent surface contact while conveying a sense of rigidity in a fluid medium. Brushing a line, the hand moves in a rhythmic pattern in two kinds of movement: the broad sweep and the pause; they occur in succession. The calligrapher anchors the brushstroke with dots by initially pressing the brush down, and then pulls the brush across the page to make the line before pressing down again to make a final dot. This way of brushing a line place emphasis on controlling the “up and down” movement of the instrument while it moves across the page. A brushstroke becomes a topographic map of the force and the speed of the hand; the harder one pushes down, the more ink is deposited at that moment.

To complicate matters, the lines of a Chinese word are added in a circuitous fashion. The “structure” of a character form depends on the stroke order of that word, the order that prescribes a way of moving. Stroke order prevents continuous motion in one direction. With this disruption of movement, the hand returns to a vertical position at the start of each new stroke. The brush distributes ink evenly from the vertical position, and from this point it is easy for the hand to pivot in any direction.

_________________

Calligraphy is ruled by the tools, the materials, the styles, the brush-hand positions, the basic techniques, the stroke types and the stroke order, but the most brilliant pieces have been done by individuals on the edge of control, with minds oscillating between consciousness and delirium. Their well-trained hands still moved precisely, but guided by emotions rather than reason. In short, brush technique is not the subject, it is the vessel that helps channel everything else into a visual format.

There are no shortcuts to mask a calligrapher’s inexperience. One cannot plan spontaneity. Juggling aesthetic and kinetic factors in the moment of writing takes a lifetime to master. A calligrapher is at the mercy of time. By all accounts, Chinese writing and calligraphy should be extinct.

Every notable poet and painter was an excellent calligrapher.

_________________

What does a future hold for a practice that is the antithesis of speed and consistency?

Historically, good calligraphers were civil servants. Until the twentieth century, the Chinese imperial system was controlled of a class of ruling civil servants and the Civil Service was the most respected profession. Mandarin is the official Chinese dialect, and it was once known as Guanyu, or the language of officials. The Oxford English Dictionary defines Mandarin as “a form of Chinese language formerly used by officials and educated people,” and as, “an official in any senior grades of the former imperial Chinese civil service.” A Mandarin was a high official who entered public service by passing a series of exams, the Jinshi exams. The candidates were tested on their knowledge of the Five Confucian Classics, the Four Books, and the Six Scholastic Arts, and the Jinshi exams were open to anyone. Successful candidates usually came from the upper class, those who had the means to hire tutors. Although only a handful of people from obscure backgrounds ever rose to this position, it was literacy, not social class, that represented the ticket to social mobility. In the examination room, armed with a brush, everyone was equal. The Mandarin title was a reward for the candidate’s scholastic efforts, and there was a presumption that those who prevailed would be intelligent, moral magistrates.

The tradition endures culturally, if not in practice. A literate person has wenhua: “text transformed.” Text is a vehicle for individual transformation. Writing imparts knowledge; the mind acquires the intelligence to discipline the body. Training in calligraphy asks that the student to check his pride and assume his teacher’s hand, tracing, copying his master’s calligraphy, and over time, learning how the image corresponds to the motion of the hand. Calligraphy requires a clear head, a steady hand, and a calm heart; practice (perhaps by definition, tedious) is indeed tedious and frustrating; many students abandon the craft. Historically, the rewards for prevailing were a title of distinction and a better life. Presently, the reasons for continuing are not as clear, although every Chinese official knows how to write at least one slogan or phrase with a brush. It is a popular Chinese belief that learning calligraphy cultivates diligence, humility and patience, and that the written form is a true indicator of character.

In stories of calligraphy, personality is said to be mirrored in the letterform Yanti, a variation on the Standard style (Chen Shu) was invented by Yan Zhengqing. Yan Zhengqing was a loyal civil servant of the Tang Dynasty. His brushstrokes are weighted, his words are uniform in size and arranged in a perfect grid. Yanti is unwavering and stable, which perfectly complemented Yan’s personality.

Slender Gold was a style of calligraphy invented during the Song Dynasty by the Emperor Huizong. The emperor’s handwriting was light, whimsical, and delicate. Huizong was famous for investing in the arts and neglecting his army. Huizong abdicated the throne and brought on the fall of the Song Dynasty. Handwriting analysis may reveal certain truths but more importantly, the stories describe Chinese values. The examples warn against self-indulgence and they support a balanced education; calligraphy teaches various lessons on balance. At every stage of a calligraphy lesson, from preparing the materials to executing the product, the student is cultivating his awareness of the edge. But, whether the ink is too thick or a vertical stroke is crooked, he learns the skills (materially and visually) that will restore balance.

According to professor Lothar Ledderose of the University of Heidelberg, a written language needs to meet two requirements: first, the script reflects speech, and then, second, it is easy to learn, read and write. Ledderose believes that Chinese script meets his terms because it is a repeatable modular system. For him, the written form is a hierarchy of “elements,” “modules” and “units.” The element is a brushstroke, the module is a semantic component, and the unit is a single character. Ninety percent of Chinese words are combinations of semantic modules and many words share the same component, often called a radical. With enough vocabulary, one can guess at the meaning and sound of an unfamiliar word based on the pattern of symbolic combination.

The appearance of Chinese script has changed significantly. The language has been standardized many times. The most recent debate is whether Simplified Script is really easier to learn. Simplified Script (a program that began in the 1950s when the government hoped to promote literacy by making Chinese writing less complicated) is taught and used today in mainland China. Strokes were subtracted from words, and many letter forms were reconstituted based on phonetic similarity. In The New York Times Room for Debate Blog on May 2, 2009, Eileen Cheng-yin Chow and Hsuan Meng both believed that the decision was a political statement; school children in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where the program is not enforced, boast some of the highest literacy levels in the world, and experience no difficulty in learning the Traditional Script. Chow, an associate professor of Chinese literary and cultural studies at Harvard University, argues that Simplified Script purges the language of variation, subtlety and wit, and Meng, a columnist for the World Journal Weekly feels that it is difficult to fully understand historical texts without knowing traditional writing. On the other hand, as the language evolves, the Simplified form is considered by Chow as one natural outcome. Building a case for Simplified Script, Professor Eugene Wang at Harvard University observed that, “The running- and cursive -hand in traditional Chinese calligraphy is a radically simplified form.” And in one important way at least – stroke order – the form is less significant than the practice.

In many respects stroke order is the active link between the old and new letter forms. The memory of a word is as much about how one writes it as it is about how the word is recognized. All Chinese writing follow stroke order. They are also the rules that keep a calligrapher’s timing. The Cursive script was present when Hsiao Chuan was the official script. The Simplified script is largely based on the cursive hand. The route of movement for the hand remains constant, regardless of the style. Of all the visual components that were lost, the space inscribed by movement is, in most cases, preserved.

Brush writing’s endurance is a testament to its efficiency. Calligraphy’s distinctive reputation may, in the end, save the craft. Mao Zedong, during the Cultural Revolution, protected calligraphy above the other traditional arts. The title of official newspaper for the Communist Party - The People’s Daily, was written by Mao in cursive hand.

Calligraphers today are still highly regarded, not simply because the skill takes a long time to cultivate, but because the art is timeless. Writing that is two thousand years old still looks and feels current. Brush writing is an integral part of Chinese iconography, and as a culturally distinct art, calligraphy is attracting new audiences in the West. This western interest renews the tradition.

_________________

In calligraphy, I found a two-dimensioned art that communicates depth without perspective, but I was most pleased as I discovered the time of calligraphy. While the drawn word – the character – is two dimensioned, the word itself describes four. Not only is there a figure and a ground, a body and a void, but there is also an account of force, of speed, and of the passage of time. The moving hand inscribes a physical space, as it draws the brush through three axes. The written Chinese character remains a code inscribed in motion.

With many reforms, the Chinese language is still a graphic system. The tools have changed and the people have adapted new techniques for recording this graphic form. The keyboard and computer software are again changing the way Chinese people are recording their language. Although calligraphy is not essential for education, handwriting is absolutely necessary. One truly knows Chinese when he can recognize the word, use it in context, and write it by hand. The word is truly committed to memory when the body and the mind both remember it.

Abstract - Again

2009-05-11T07:55:00.001-04:00

I really hope I got it right this time...

Chinese calligraphy is a spatial practice, and a calligrapher’s spatial sensibility combines graphic design and kinesis. This thesis devises a graphic system that act as a guide for showing the various spaces found in a work of calligraphy. Graphic space or the figure-ground, is analyzed using the work of contemporary calligrapher Noriko Maeda, and Li Chun’s treatise titled The 84 Law’s. The Chinese character is a line graph centered within an imaginary square and written in a prescribed way using a rule called stroke order. This rule ensures that the lines of a word are added systematically. Chinese writing involves moving the hand in various directions: horizontally, vertically and diagonally. Stroke order ensures that no move is repeated successively. When a brush makes contact with a hard surface, the tip flexes. The brush is always responsive to a downward force, in this way, a brushstroke is an imprint of a hand gesture. The brush makes active the vertical plane or the z-axis; writing is a gesture that operates in three dimension. As one writes, the hand inscribes a physical space, moves circuitously over a spot while pushing and lifting the brush. But the Chinese character is also a descriptor of time. The five styles: Hsiao Chuan, Li, Tsao, Chen, Tsing represent the evolution of the character form. The calligrapher’s art is his control of timing, in essence, knowing when to stop, when to go, and when to turn. Various environmental and emotional factors affect the calligrapher’s sense of timing, therefore, every piece of calligraphy is unique, specific to the moment of its creation. A character written with a brush is not a simple graphic, rather, it is a movement notation. A piece of calligraphy is a route map showing a hand and brush in motion, it is an example of a moment of creativity at a specific time and place in history.

Traditional vs. Simplified

2009-05-04T13:41:00.004-04:00

From the New York Times "Room for Debate" section

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/chinese-language-ever-evolving/

How a Computer Might Respond

Norman Matloff is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, and is the author of KuaiXue, a software tool for learning Chinese.

The original rationale for simplification was to accelerate the learning process. But is this necessary today, given China’s much improved economic and social conditions? There may be no easy answer.

What’s certain is that converting from the simplified characters, or jiantizi, to the traditional characters, fantizi, would be a huge task, affecting everything from school textbooks to government documents to online systems. Automation of that process would present serious technical challenges.

The trouble stems from fundamental differences in the two character sets. The simplification process of the 1950s sometimes resulted in two different traditional characters becoming identical in simplified form. For instance, the traditional characters 發 (”develop”) and 髮 (”hair”) are both written as the simplified character, 发. When the software sees the latter, it must guess which of 發 and 髮 is intended. Typically the guess is made by analyzing context. Sometimes, the software can produce the occasional howler. A passage describing “loss of face” might be translated by the computer as loss of 麵 (”noodles”) rather than loss of 面 (”face”)!

So while most of the process could be automated, especially with more fine tuning in the software, much work would need to be done by hand as well.

Mandarin

2009-04-28T19:20:00.008-04:00

As defined in the Oxford English Dictionary:

mandarim (1514; also mandarin) menteri (see MENTRI n.) or its etymon Sanskrit mantr (see MANTRI n.). Compare French mandarin counsellor (1581), Chinese literary language (1603), and in fig. (and ironic) use denoting an influential person from the early 19th cent.; Spanish mantelines, plural (1590 in the source translated in quot. 1589 at sense 1a), Mandarines, plural (1590 in the source translated in quot. 1604 at sense 1a). In form mandorijn after Dutch mandarijn, mandorijn (1596).

The change of t to d in Portuguese is perhaps due to influence from Portuguese mandar to order.

The Sanskrit word was the usual term for a counsellor or minister of state in pre-Islamic India. It was widely adopted in South-East Asia, and especially in the Malay-speaking states. The Portuguese were the first to apply it to Chinese officials, for whom the Chinese term was gun (see KUAN n.).

1. a. An official in any of the senior grades of the former imperial Chinese civil service. Also (more generally): a similar official in any East Asian country. Now hist. Mandarins were chosen by examination, and there were nine grades, each of which was distinguished by the material from which the round ornament or ‘button’ (see BUTTON n. 1g) on top of the official headgear was made.

b. An ornament (typically made of porcelain) representing a seated figure in traditional Chinese costume, with a head which continues to nod for a long time after being shaken. Now chiefly hist.

c. A person (esp. an official) who commands considerable power or importance (freq. one perceived as reactionary and secretive); (spec. in the United Kingdom) a leading civil servant.

2. In form Mandarin.

a. The form of the Chinese language formerly used by officials and educated people generally; any of the varieties of this used as a standard language in China, spec. the Northern variety, which forms the basis of putonghua (see PUTONGHUA n.). Cf. earlier mandarin tongue n. at Compounds 1a and KUO-YÜ n. An important early European study of Mandarin was Francisco Varo's Arte de la Lengue Mandarina (1703), the earliest published grammar of any spoken form of Chinese.

b. colloq. Any obscurantist, esoteric, or exclusive variety of a language.

What's My Revelation?

2009-04-23T10:42:00.004-04:00

A conclusion shouldn't just summarize what you've done, take time to reflect on the things you've learnt as a result of doing the thesis. A conclusion should open new questions, propel further discussion.

With that said, I'm revising my conclusion again. It's hard making the thesis transparent (architecturally) when I am still not sure what the architectural argument really is or how it matters...

Chinese Gardens

2009-04-13T13:11:00.005-04:00

Chinese gardens are a mix of framed vignettes and colliding elements. The garden space contracts and expands. These were taken from Yu Gardens in Shanghai. The place is pact full of tourists but they gathered in the open areas, this left the narrow passages undisturbed for the most part. You can walk the entire garden in about an hour but you could spend days exploring the hidden paths behind rocks and gathering different views offered. Many of the views reminded me of "Countless Peaks and Vales." I don't think there was a master plan for designing a Chinese garden. As far as I can tell, cartesian geometry and platonic forms don't exists in this realm. It's most definitely a precise accumulation of forms built around experience. There's nothing didactic here nor are there follies, some sections are disorienting but I feel an overwhelming sense of totality when I'm there. Every element is put to work in making this space.

Signs

2009-04-12T14:34:00.005-04:00

I had hoped that my analysis of calligraphy would provide a guide for understanding Chinese architectural arrangement. On my trip to China this past fall I've documented street signs, their particular configuration and arrangement in various cities. The vertical proportion are a function of the Chinese word. What's interesting for me was that instead of mounting the signage above the door of each shop, Chinese signs are hung perpendicularly from building facades. A cluster of them in a sense, flattens the streetscape.

Shanghai

Fuzhou

Hong Kong

Toronto

A Real Calligrapher

2009-04-09T09:13:00.003-04:00

I've been going to Noriko Maeda sensei's home every Tuesday night as part of my research. The class is a gathering of sociologists, physicists, engineers and architects of all ages and nationalities. We sit at a long table, each person equip with an ink stone, ink stick, paper and paper weight and for an hour or so we write, talk about food, and occasionally mention calligraphy. Maeda sense is a tremendous talent, her sense of humour and wisdom immediately puts everyone at ease. She made calligraphy fun.

Check out more of her work here

Glossary

2009-04-06T09:01:00.002-04:00

A list of terms used in the thesis

Calligraphy,书法 Shu Fa
Shu: book, document, style, write
Fa: method, law, magic, the Way
There is a specific ‘fa’ for every style of calligraphy

Stroke Order
The predetermined pattern of stroke placement for a Chinese character

Semantic
Meaning in language

Radical
Units of meaning, usually a reductive character form

Pictograph
A diagram of living things and objects
e.g. Fu (Broom) is a diagram of the ceremonial broom that splash wine over the altar

Semantic Combination
A new word as a result of pictograph combinations
e.g. Gui (Return) is a combination of the ceremonial broom and the meat offering prior to the troops’ departure

Ideogram
A character symbolizing the idea of a thing without indicating the sequence of sounds in its name
e.g. A position or direction such as Shang (Up) or Xia, (Down)

Phonetic Borrowing
Apply the sound of one character to another without the consideration for meaning.
e.g. Wo (First person “I”) is a borrowed homophonous of Wo,(A Saw)

Semantic Phonetic
A character that relies on one component to indicate sound and the other component to indicate meaning
e.g. Yi (Ant) is a combination of the phonetic yi (righteousness) and the semantic radical for insect

Extended Meaning:
Characters with different configuration and pronunciation but a shared logic because of a common semantic unit
e.g. Fu (Broom), Sao (Clean), Jin (Soak)

Chinese Character:
A configuration of forms that stands as both a symbol of meaning and sound, and incorporates all parts of speech

Significant Form:
“Incorporates elements of both imagery (generalized simulation), and expressiveness (of emotions).” (Li, 38)

The Laws of Form (as defined by Li Zehou)
rhythm,
rhyme,
symmetry,
balance,
continuity,
intermission,
overlapping,
singleness,
thickness,
density,
repetition,
intersection,
complexity,
consistency,
change,
unity.

Calligraphic Styles
Hsiao Chuan or Xiao Zhuan
Small Seal Script, 221-201 B.C.

Li Shu
Clerical Script, 221-201 B.C.

Chen Shu or Zhen Shu, Kai Shu
Standard Script, Block Script 70 A.D.

Tsing Shu or Xing Shu
Running Script, 220 A.D.

Tsao Shu or Cao Shu
Cursive Script, 45-33 A.D.

Calligraphic Strokes
Ts’e or Dian
A spot or a motion similar to slant

Lo or Heng
A horizontal stroke or a motion similar to bridle

Nu or Shu
A vertical Stroke or a motion similar to strive

Yo or Gou
A hook or a motion similar to spring

Tse or Ti
A diagonal stroke that starts from the bottom left to upper right or a motion similar to whip

Cho or Pie
A short diagonal stroke that starts from the upper right to bottom left or a motion similar to peck

Lueh or Pie,
A long diagonal stroke that starts from upper right to bottom left, or a motion similar to skim

Chih or Na
A long diagonal stroke that starts from upper left to bottom right, or a motion similar to tear

Sentence Structure
Agent Act Object

Agent is a thing poised for action
Act is what passes between
Object possess latent action

Transitive
In grammar, are verbs that take a direct subject or object. The meaning of transitive verb is incomplete without the object.

Intransitive
In grammar, are verbs that describe states and do not take a subject.

Metaphor:
“The use of material images to suggest immaterial relations.” (Fenollosa, p26)

Shi:
Position and potential

The meaning as position derives from the character as an ideogram, “which is believed to represent a hand holding something, a symbol of power to which the diacritic radical for force (li) was later added. Xu Shen thinks what is held in the hand is a clod of earth, which symbolize something put in position or a “positioning.” (Jullien, p267)

The meaning as potential comes from phonetic borrowing, “in terms of its spatial connotation, corresponds to the word shi, which its temporal associations in the sense of “opportunity” or “chance.”(Jullien, p267)

Position
A configuration or arrangement

Potential
Opportunity that arise out of the tension created between elements within the configuration

Conclusion-Revised

2009-04-05T10:40:00.002-04:00

The only definitive advice I’ve ever gotten was “practice, practice, practice.” Until I can write without recalling the word in my mind or having to think of how I should do it, I remain a student of the craft.

Calligraphy is a tedious, repetitive craft that uses wet, unforgiving materials. While the premise is basic, the rules simple, juggling aesthetic and kinetic factors in the moment between strokes is not. Control of timing separates the master from the novice. The rhythmic structure of each style relates directly with form. The gesture of the archaic style is different from a contemporary style. A stroke is stark bare, a hand gesture for all to see. There are no easy tricks or shortcuts that masks a calligrapher’s inexperience. In this thesis, my calligraphy was carefully selected; for every successful case there were pages and pages of failures and mediocre results. Whereas the historical examples were successful, every stroke, every word and every sentence rendered beautifully on the first try. A true master is a painter and a poet. Calligraphy after all is a communications art and utility greatly influenced its development. In Feudal times, literary talent and a beautiful hand could transform a man’s life and elevate his social status. Every notable poet and painter was also an excellent calligrapher. A masterpiece makes space, traverses time and distance by suggestion on multiple levels: the tangible, the ephemeral, the poetic and the literal. Style choices speaks for the occasion of the writing. Each piece is unique, affected by the author’s physical and mental condition at the moment of creation. Prose shape imaginative space, brush strokes and color blocks construct graphic space, the hand, the brush and the paper interact inscribing a physical space. All these combined, collapses time, motion and space.

Calligraphy is a matrix of stroke types assembled in a predetermined order. The brush moves in three coordinates: x, y and z-axes. Calligraphy is also a harmonious combination of serial patterns and personal touches. Contradiction is calligraphy’s definitive characteristic, simultaneously rigid and fluid. ‘Change’ is a transfer of states and brush technique shifts from one gesture to another. There are rhythmic variations within a calligraphic line. Two types of movement: the broad sweep and the pause exists simultaneously, causing friction between momentum and inertia. The distance between pauses represents time and the various stroke widths indicate speed. This reciprocity of opposite conditions is best defined as ‘shi,’ a term used in numerous strategic manuals. ‘Shi’ represents a dynamic logic, where a position is defined by the most advantageous outcome.

In this present age, brush writing is obsolete. Most people prefer using a pen or a keyboard. In China however, a skill set that includes calligraphy immediately boast one’s public image. Mao Zedong saved brush writing over other traditional arts during the Cultural Revolution. A single word by an established artist is a pricey commodity and historical relics are worth many times more. Calligraphy equals value. When hard work and good fortune intersect, magic happens, but these are rare occurrences. Thus, a few written words turn men into sages, and transform obscure places into extraordinary finds. Brush calligraphy is also popular in Japan and Korea. As a culturally distinctive craft, brush art is also attracting new audience in the West. A renewed interest in calligraphy by a Western audience outside of the intellectual circle keeps the tradition alive.

To me, Chinese is still a foreign language. But calligraphy feels like an old friend. I’m not sure what exactly keeps me practicing, maybe it’s the pursuit of my “Lan Ting” moment, or the community of people associated with the craft, or maybe, it is simply that I find comfort in working without the pressure of ever finishing.

Thesis April '09: Full Text + Final Layout

2009-04-05T09:27:00.036-04:00

Landscape format, 145 pages double sided

Outline

Abstract

Introduction

full text

o1: A Landscape Continuously Unfolding

full text: part 1, part 2

02: Lessons from Old Masters

full text: Linguistics, Form as Poetry, Calligraphic Style, Graphic Design, Graphic Design (a), A Reservoir of Knowledge

03: Dynamics

full text: Calligraphic Space: A Function of Accumulated Time

Conclusion

Dancing Calligraphy

2009-03-31T14:32:00.009-04:00

This is a contemporary dance company based in Taiwan called Cloud Gate Dance Theater. The group combines martial arts and contemporary dance in their choreography. This is a clip from "Xing Cao" the first of three dance performances inspired by calligraphy. I found this clip enlightening, the movement emulates both the hand and brush.

I think it would be nice addition in the thesis but I don't know what to do with it, or where it fits or if I have time to play around with it.

Revised Thesis Structure

2009-03-31T11:57:00.001-04:00

Abstract: 1 page, 260 words

Lan Ting: 2 pages, 200-250 words + photograph

Part 1: A Landscape Continuously Unfolding

Aesthetics & Shi: 8 pages, 500 words words + diagrams

Countless Peaks and Vales: 10 pages, 2000 words + diagrams (in with text)

Diagrams of Peaks and Vales: 14 pages diagrams + text

Timeline: 2 pages

Part 2: Lesson from Old Masters

Linguistics: 2 pages, 350-400 words + diagrams (in with text)

Form as Poetry: two pages, 445 words + diagram (in with text)

Calligraphic Style: 3-4 pages, 775 words + images (in with text)

Materials: Hand - Brush, Ink-Paper, 4 pages, diagrams, images + text

1 blank page + character ‘yong’ - 永

Stroke order of Yong: 2 pages, diagram + text

The Eight Laws of Yong: 4 pages, diagram + text ( 8 strokes + laws taken from reference book)

A Beginner’s Struggle: 4 pages, diagram + text (various stroke, figure/ground errors)

Graphic Design: Li Chun’s 84 Laws: 30 pages, 150-200 words (1 page text introduction, 28 pages diagrams + laws translated by me)

Graphic Design: Multiple Characters: 8-10 pages diagrams + text

A Reservoir of Knowledge: 4-6 pages, 375-400 words + diagrams (in with text)

1 blank page + character ‘hua’ - 花 in 5 styles

Stroke order of Hua: 2 pages, diagram + text

Rhythmic difference between Hua’s: 2 pages, diagram + text

1 bland page + character ‘hua’ - 花 in 3 cursive variations

Stroke order of Hua: 2 pages, diagram + text

Rhythmic difference between Hua’s: 2 pages, diagram + text

1 blank + quote: As in calligraphy, it is necessary to emphasize a contrast so that one term prepares for the other; not simply so that the one throws the other into greater relief but also so that the former necessarily cries out for the latter to follow it all the more forcefully precisely because the balance needs to be restored and a harmonious arrangement maintained through compensation. - Jullien

Stroke Order: 8 pages, diagram + text (general cases)

Front and Back: 2 pages, diagram + text (differences in pressure seen on paper)

Ink and Paper: 2 pages, diagram + text (ink and paper in ‘section’)

1 blank page + ‘Wu’ - 無

Diagram of writing ‘wu’: 6 pages, diagrams + text (sequence in plan, elevation/section)

Diagram of writing ‘zhong’: 4 pages, diagrams + text (sequence of writing with broom)

Calligraphic Space: A Function of Accumulated Time: 4-6 pages, 1500 words + diagrams/images (in with text)

1 fold-out page of calligraphy by Dong Qichang 

Part 3: Conclusions

2-4 pages, 550 words

Lan Ting - Revised

2009-03-31T11:11:00.003-04:00

'Wetter' but is it better?

I visited Orchid Hill Park on a November morning on my last day in Shaoxing. I entered the park following a winding path that cuts through a bamboo grove, the sound of raindrops lightly tapping my umbrella. The path was paved with stone slats and the slick surface was a wet wash of branches and shadows. The path led me to a small pavilion perched before a lily pond raised on a platform three steps high, the sweeping gable roof raised by four stone columns. At the center was a stone tablet inscribed with the words “Lan Ting.” During the Spring Autumn Period, a pavilion was built at the foot of a hill where once there were orchids planted. It was named Lan Ting, the Orchid Pavilion. In the spring of 353 Wang Xizhi and forty-one of his friends and family gathered here. For the literati, spring was a time of renewal when one returns to nature and washes away the grime of winter. Wang and company played a game floating cups of wine down a stream, drinking and writing poetry. Wang wrote a preface introducing these poems titled “Lan Ting Xu,” considered the masterpiece of Chinese calligraphy. Looking at the fabled pavilion I thought: this is it? Where was the trickling stream? The lofty hills behind? Had it not been for the inscription, the building was simply ordinary, the place’s significance verified by two words. Was that enough? I came here chasing the beautiful place I sensed in Wang’s writing. I came searching for clues connecting the present to that spring day in 353. I wanted inspiration. No one noticed. I guess calligraphy gods don’t like rain either.

Abstract + Intro

2009-03-30T12:39:00.006-04:00

I'm playing around with a few options for the Introduction. I can't decide if I like the first layout or the second better. Any advice?

Abstract - Revised

2009-03-30T11:32:00.003-04:00

This is in response to a question about what my thesis is:

In this thesis, the Chinese writing system: from tools, technique, movement patterns to compositional tendencies across the five calligraphic styles are analyzed using line drawings, notations, video, and stop action frame grabs. The line is the fundamental component of Chinese brush calligraphy. It is an impression left by a brush moving rhythmically over an absorbent white paper. The hand, brush, ink and paper interact in three dimensions: the x, y, and z-coordinates. Each Chinese character is a stand alone graphic inscribed within an imaginary square. The hand moves circuitously over one spot, the lines are strategically placed in a predetermined order, building a Chinese word. Calligraphy is a spatial practice. A calligrapher’s spatial sensibility combines graphic knowledge with kinetics. Movement and time are important themes in Chinese art, there is no single point of view, only elements arranged serially unfolding localized vignettes. The stroke and the paper represent the figure and the ground - a graphic space in the x-y direction, designed to convey dynamism. ‘Change’ is a transfer of states and brush technique shifts from one gesture to another. There are rhythmic variations within a calligraphic line. Two types of movement: the broad sweep and the pause exists simultaneously, causing friction between momentum and inertia. The distance between pauses represents time and the various stroke widths indicate speed. This reciprocity of opposite conditions is best defined as ‘shi,’ a term used in numerous strategic manuals. ‘Shi’ represents a dynamic logic, where a position is defined by the most advantageous outcome. A brush is flexible, ensuring that surface contact between it and the paper are in constant flux. The hand pushes the brush into the paper, from an upright stance on the z-axis, and the paper responds, soaking up the ink. The harder the hand pushes, the darker the stroke. The stroke is a measurable trace of a hand’s force and direction of movement. But the Chinese character is also a descriptor of historic time. Brush calligraphy is a two thousand year old practice, and Chinese characters in its present form incorporates all past forms and techniques. Style choices reflect the purpose of the work and the artist’s personal preferences. Furthermore, various environmental and emotional factors influence the piece’s overall effect. A piece of calligraphy is a route map showing the hand and brush in motion and a relic from a moment of creativity at a specific time and place in history.

The 84 Laws - Translated

2009-03-28T22:33:00.005-04:00

I'm waiting on some friends of mine to verify that my translations are sound/makes sense.

My favourite ones: #46, #48, #59, #82

天覆 (Sky Covers)：要上面盖尽下面，法宜上清而下浊。 The top covers the bottom entirely, in this law, the top is clear and the bottom is turbid.
地载(Ground Carries)：要下而载起上画, 法宜上轻而下重 The bottom supports the top, in this law the top is light and the bottom is weighty.
让左 (Concede Left)：须左昂而右低，若右边有谦逊之象。 The left side raised high while the right side hangs low, if the right side possess a modest appearance.
让右(Concede Right)：宜右耸而左平，若左边有固逊之仪。 The right should dominate while the left side is suppressed, if the left side originally appears unassuming.
分疆 (Divide Boundary)：取左右平而无让，如两人并相立之形。 Assume that left and right are equal, neither yielding, as if two people mutually standing side by side.
三匀 (Even Three)：取中间正而勿偏，若左右致拱揖之壮。 Assume that the center is straight and upright, made stronger if the arched left and right greet the middle.
二段(Two Parts)：要分为两半，较其长短，微加饶减。 Divide in half, compare lengths, add a little, spare a little.
三停(Three Stops)：要分为三截，量其疏密，以布均停。 Divide in three sections, estimate how disperse or close to arrange the stops.
上占地步 (Divine Top)：要上面阔而画清，下面窄而画浊。 The top is broad yet drawn clear, the bottom is narrow yet drawn turbid。
下占地步 (Divine Bottom)：要下面宽而画轻，上面窄而画重。 The bottom is wide yet drawn light, the top is narrow yet drawn heavy.
左占地步 (Divine Left)：要左边大而画细，右边小而画粗。The left side is big yet drawn slender, the right side is small yet drawn thick.
右占地步 (Divine Right)：要右边宽而画瘦，左边窄而画肥。The right side is wide yet drawn lean, the left side is narrow yet drawn fat.
左右占地步 (Divine Left-Right)：要左右瘦而俱长，中间肥而独短。Left and right are lean yet long, the middle fat yet short.
上下占地步 (Divine Top-Bottom)：要上下宽而微扁，中间窄而勿长。The top and bottom are wide and minutely flat, the middle is narrow and not long.
中占地步 (Divine Center)：要中间宽大而画轻，两头窄小而画重。The center is wide and large but drawn light, two ends are narrow and small but drawn heavy。
俯仰勾 ( Bowing ‘Gou’s’)：要上盖窄小而钩短，下腕宽大而钩长。 The top possess a narrow but short ‘gou,’the bottom possess a large curve and long‘gou.’
平四角 (Four Equal Corners)：要上两角平，而下两角齐，法忌挫肩垂脚。The upper two corners are level, and the bottom two corners uniform，this law avoids a limp back and bent foot.
开两肩(Open Two Shoulders)：要上两肩开，而下两脚合，法忌直脚卸肩 The shoulders open up, and the feet are together, this law avoids a straight legs and relieved shoulders.
匀画 (Draw Evenly)：黑白喜得均匀。Black and white in pleasant unison.
错综 (Criss-Cross) ：三部怕成犯碍。Three parts afraid of obstructing each other.
疏排 (Sparse Arrangement)：疏排之撇须展，不展则寒乞孤穷。In Sparse Arrangement, the ‘pie’ stroke must show, if not, the word resembles a lonely poor in the cold. *
缜密 (Precision)：缜密之画用蹙，不蹙则疏宽开散。Precision word is drawn tightly, not sparse, scattered and wide open.
悬针 (Hanging Pin)：悬针之字，不用中竖，若中竖，则少精神。Hanging Pin words do not use Vertical Stroke, because the Vertical Stroke reduces vigor.
中竖 (Vertical Stroke)：中竖之字，不用悬针。若悬针，则字不稳重。 Vertical Stroke words, do not use Hanging Pin, because the Hanging Pin looks unstable.
上平 (Top Leveled)：上平者，其小者在左，而莫错方隅。 The Top Leveled word, is smaller on the left, but never misses the border. *
下平 (Bottom Leveled)：下平者，其小者在左，而勿差地位。The Bottom Leveled word, is smaller on the left, but never mistakes the ground position. *
上宽 (Top Wide)：上宽者，下面固然难大，惟长趁而方佳。 For the Top Wide, while the bottom cannot be big, only a slight elongated square is beautiful.
下宽 (Bottom Wide)：下宽者，上面已是成尖，用短蹙而方好。 For Bottom Wide, the top is long and narrow, a short, compressed square is good.
减捺 (Subtract ‘Na’)：减捺者宜减，不减则重捺难观。 A ‘na’ stroke is subtracted, if not the dominant ‘na’ is difficult to see.
减钩 (Subtract ‘Gou’)：减钩者宜减，不减则重钩无体。A‘gou’ stroke is subtracted, otherwise, the dominant ‘gou’ stroke lacks form.
让横 (Concede ‘Heng’)：让横者，取横画长而勿担。For Concede ‘Heng,’draw a long yet unburdened horizontal stroke.
让直 (Concede Upright)：让直者，要直竖正而勿偏。 For Concede Upright, the ‘shu’ stroke is straight and does not lean.
横勒 (Reined in ‘Heng’)：横勒者，但放平而无势。For Reined in ‘Heng,’there is no potential [shi], when the stroke is level.
均平 (All leveled)：均平者，若兼勒以先威。For All Leveled, simultaneously rein in the strokes. *
纵波 (Vertical‘Po’)：纵波之波，惟喜藏头收尾。The ‘po’ of Vertical ‘Po,’ only delights in a hidden head and gathered tail.
横波 (Horizontal‘Po’)：横波之波，先须拓颈宽胸。The ‘po’ of Horizontal ‘Po,’ first needs an extended neck and broad chest.
纵戈 (Vertical‘Ge’)：纵戈之戈，但怕弯曲力败。The ‘ge’ stroke of Vertical ‘Ge,’solely fears of losing strength from bending.
横戈 (Horizontal‘Ge’)：横戈之戈，尤嫌挺直钩平。The ‘ge’ stroke of Horizontal ‘Ge,’particularly dislikes stiff, straight flat hooks.
屈脚 (Wrong Foot)：屈脚之钩，须要尖包两点。The ‘gou’ stroke of Wrong Foot, must envelope two ‘dian’ strokes.
承上 (Prop Up)：承上之撇，宜令叉对正中。 The ‘pie’ stroke of Prop Up, must intersect at mid-point.
曾头(Head)：曾头者，用上开而下合。For head, the top is opened and and the bottom is closed.
其脚 (Feet)：其脚者，用上合而下开。 For feet，the top is closed but bottom is opened.
长方 (Rectangle)：长方者，喜四直而宽大。 A rectangular case, likes its four sides straight and wide.
短方(Short Rectangle)：短方者，贵两肩而平开。A short rectangle, values level and open shoulders.
搭钩 (Build [separate] ‘Gou’)：搭钩者，钩须另搭，不则累苟笔之态 (For Build ‘Gou,’the ‘gou’ is added separately, the strokes do not appear casual or tired.
重撇 (Weighty ‘Pie’)：重撇者，撇须宛转，不则犯排牙之名。 For Weighty ‘Pie,’the ‘pie’ stroke conveys the curve, not committing the fallacy of looking like a row of teeth. *
攒点 (Assembled ‘Dian’)：攒点之点，皆宜朝向，不则为砌石之样。The appropriate orientation of each‘dian’ stroke of Assembled ‘Dian,’ do not resemble a row of masonry.
排点 (Arrangement of ‘Dian’)：排点之点，须用变更，不则为布棋之形。 The ‘dian’ stroke of Arrangement of ‘Dian,’uses variation, not resembling scattered chess pieces.
勾努 (Striving [vertical]‘Gou’)：句努之字，不宜用裹，若用裹，字便不方圆。 A Striving ‘Gou,’ is not suited for enveloping, otherwise, the word will not look square.
勾裹 (Bounded ‘Gou’)：勾裹之字，不宜用努，若用努，字最难饱满。A ‘nu’[vertical] stroke is not suited for a Bounded ‘Gou,’if used, the word won’t fill out.
中勾 (Middle ‘Gou’)：中勾之字，但凭偏正生妍。 A Middle ‘Gou,’is beautiful, merely relying on an upright disposition.
绰勾 (Ample ‘Gou’)：绰勾之字，亦喜妍生偏正。 For Ample ‘Gou,’ the most charming disposition inclines towards upright.
伸勾 (Outstretched ‘Gou’)：伸勾之字，惟在屈伸取体。An Outstretched ‘Gou,’solely aims for a bent, outstretched form.
屈勾 (Yielding ‘Gou’)：屈勾之字，要知体立屈伸。A Yielding ‘Gou,’must know its form exists upright with its extension bent back.
左垂 (Left Droops)：左垂者，右边不得太长。 The left droops, the right side must not be too long.
右垂 (Right Hangs Down) ：右垂者，左边须索要短。 The right hangs down, the left side alone is short.
盖下 (Cover Below)：盖下者，左右宜乎均分。For Cover Below, the left and right sides divide equally.
趁下 (Advantage Below [referring to stroke])：趁下者，两边贵乎平展。 For Advantage Below, the two sides are valued and displayed equally.
纵腕 (Vertical ‘Wan’)：纵腕之腕宜长，惟怕蜂腰鹤膝。The ‘wan’ stroke of Vertical ‘Wan’ is long, only afraid of resembling a wasp’s waist or a crane’s knee.
横腕 (Horizontal ‘Wan’)：横腕之腕嫌短，不宜鹤膝蜂腰。 The ‘wan’ stroke of Horizontal ‘Wan’ dislikes being short, it is not a crane’s knee or a wasp’s waist.
纵撇 (Vertical ‘Pie’)：纵撇之撇最忌短，仍患鼠尾牛头。The ‘pie’ stroke of Vertical ‘Pie’ especially dreads being short, yet worries over resembling a rat’s tail and a bull’s head.
横撇(Horizontal ‘Pie’)：横撇之撇偏喜长 ,惟怕牛头鼠尾。The ‘pie’ stroke of Horizontal Pie favors being slightly long, only afraid of resembling a bull’s head and a rat’s tail.
联撇 (Successive Pie)：联撇之法，取下撇之首对上撇之胸。 The law of Successive Pie, the lower stroke’s head faces the upper stroke’s chest.
散水 (Disperse Water)：散水之法，下点之锋应上点之尾。 The law of Disperse Water, the bottom stroke’s edge responds to top stroke’s tail.
肥 (Fat)：肥者止许略肥，而莫至于浮肿。 Fat words are slightly fat, not to the extent of looking bloated or swollen.
瘦 (Thin)：瘦者但须少瘦，而体反为枯瘠。Thin words are trim, and the form opposes looking dry and weak.
疏 (Scant)：疏本稀排，乃用丰肥粗壮。 Scant words by nature are arranged sparsely, hence, use ample, robust strokes.
密 (Close)：密虽紧布，还宜自在安舒。Although close words are tightly arranged, and also comfortably outstretched.
堆 (Stack)：堆者，累累重叠，宜重叠处以铺匀。Stacked words overlap, again and again, the place of overlap positioned evenly.
积 (Accumulate)：积者，总总繁紊，用繁紊中而取整。Accumulated words, are always invariably complicated and disorderly, seek wholeness within the disorder.
偏 (Slant)：偏者还须偏称。 Incline to one side as appropriate.
圆 (Round)：圆者则喜围圆。 Round words naturally likes circular enclosure.
斜 (Oblique)：斜者虽斜，而其中要取方正。 Despite being oblique, the word in essence possess uprightness.
正 (Straight)：正者已正，而四方无使余偏。 Straight words are upright, its four corners not oblique.
重 (Weighty)：重者下必要大。A Weighty case, the bottom is necessarily large.
并 (Open)：并者右必用宽。An Open case, the right is necessarily wide.
长 (Long)：长者原不喜短。 A Long case primarily dislikes shortness.
短 (Short)：短者切勿求长。A short case does not seek length.
大 (Big)：大者既大，而妙于攒簇。 For Big case, the words are already big, and its components are amassed cleverly.
小 (Small)：小者虽小，而贵在丰严。Small cases are small, but value an ample and austere appearance.
向 (Facing)：向者虽迎，而手足亦须回避。Although Facing cases greet, its hand avoids the foot.
背 (Back [Away]) ：背者固扭，而脉络本自贯通。The Back case is already turned around, but the artery [of the word] is naturally free flowing.
孤 (Alone)：孤者画孤，而惟患于轻浮枯瘦。Alone words are drawn isolated, and only worries over becoming flighty, dry and thin.
单 (Single)：单者形单，而偏重于俊丽清长。Single cases are alone, slightly weighted, handsome, light and long.

Notes on Reference Materials

2009-03-26T16:47:00.005-04:00

The 84 Laws was a miraculous find. I enjoy selecting books, taking interesting titles off the shelf, reading the back cover, and flip through the pages. I find Chinese bookstores frustrating, the experience is something like shopping at Cosco - books in bulk, stacked high, shoved together on tables, and I spend more time wandering the store looking for the right section than actually selecting the product. I don’t own many calligraphy manuals, because I never know what to buy. The 84 Laws was the only manual I’ve ever picked out. I was drawn to the simple layout: four characters per page and a few short lines of text below them. The calligraphy was beautiful, the layout was simple, and unassuming. I discovered the title weeks later after showing the book to my dad. That was the first time I seriously looked at the cover. I am using this manual above all others, because I found it, by accident, but it speaks somewhat poignantly for all of the major decisions I've made in choosing reference materials for this thesis. I picked paintings and treatises instinctively, based on what felt right or made sense for me. It's not very scholarly I know...

The 84 Laws

2009-03-25T23:03:00.003-04:00

In the 15th Century A.D., the calligrapher Li Chun wrote an essay titled The Eighty-Four Laws. Li determined eighty-four typical situations for creating good form. For each case, Li used four examples, written by famous calligraphers showing the types of adjustments necessary in the making of dynamic but balanced form. Li focused the eight component strokes individually, showing the variety of line spacing, line weight and angle of trajectory. Li also identified four composite character types: left-right, left-middle-right, top-bottom, and top-middle-bottom. Each component’s proportion, scale, and position, in addition to line spacing, line weight, and stroke orientation are adjusted as per the composite type. The analysis alternates between the character’s overall appearance and the character’s stroke components. Li observed that many characters look best as simple geometric shapes such as squares, rectangles, trapezoids and circles. Singular character form and composite character form present different challenges. The integrity of a singular character form often depends on the precise rendering of one dominant stroke. Whereas size and spacing in addition to line modifications affect composite character forms.

Chinese Writing System - Part 2

2009-03-25T22:41:00.001-04:00

The graphic representation of Chinese characters, rather than being truly pictorial, takes a diagrammatic approach which reveals not the outline, but the meaningful structure of its object. (Shirakawa, 105)

Linguistically, Chinese words are categorized as one of six types – pictogram, ideogram, semantic combination, extended meaning, phonetic borrowing, and semantic-phonetic combination. Pictograms are literal representations of living things and objects. The character for “broom” (fu - 帚) is a conventionalized diagram of a ceremonial broom used to splash wine over the altar. Ideograms are characters that symbolize an idea or action; one is able to discern a disposition from the character’s appearance. The word for “up” (shang－上) and “down” (xia－下) respectively show a upward pull and a downward push. New characters can result from an arrangement of pictograms and ideograms. The word for “return” (gui - 歸) is a combination of the ceremonial “broom” (帚), the word “stop” (zhi - 止)and a diagram that represents the meat offering used prior to the troops’ departure. “Return” not only describes an action but is synonymous with ritual. There are groups of characters that have different configuration and pronunciation but share a common semantic root. Therefore these words by extension of a common symbol also share a similar logic of meaning. When “broom” (帚) is used as a symbolic root, words such as “clean” (sao - 掃) or “soak” (jin - 浸) expand their meaning to describe the tools used and the ritual context they were created from. Some characters are made when the sound of one word is applied to another without consideration for meaning. The first person “righteousness” (yi - 義) is a borrowed homophonous of the word for “meaning”(yi﹣ 意). Ninety percent of Chinese words are made by phonetic-semantic combinations. A word relies on one component to indicate sound and the other to symbolize meaning. The word “ant” (yi﹣蟻) combines “righteousness” (yi-義), the phonetic root with a diagram that means insect. Letters used in European languages are phonetic symbols, and meaning is carried by sound. The Chinese chose to condense sound and meaning into a visual construction. The language retained its visual format:

The fact that Chinese characters not only developed from but retained through time their pictorial / diagrammatic forms indicates just how central the element of visual form is in the Chinese character.” (Nakata, 10)

It is important that one writes correctly and legibly, but historically, it was paramount that one writes beautifully.

The Chinese Writing System - Part 1

2009-03-25T21:32:00.013-04:00

Hsiao Chuan

Li Shu

Chen Shu

Tsing Shu

Tsao Shu

Chinese language developed over 5,000 years, the beginnings of written language were first documented as creation myths. In the Legendary Period, a time before recorded history, there were three emperors-Fu Hsi, Shen Nung and Huang Ti. Fu Hsi the ox-tamer created the bagua or more commonly known as the eight trigrams. The symbols consists of continuous and broken lines. Three continuous lines symbolize heaven, three broken lines symbolize earth, and six variations of broken and continuous lines describe wind, water, mountain, thunder, fire, and lake. The trigrams represent more than 1,471 ideas and objects, but there is no evidence that Chinese language was founded on this system. In Chinese Calligraphers and Their Art, the author Ch’en Chih-Mai speculates that literal representation of objects and ideas preceded abstraction. It is likely that pictograms existed before the bagua. The second emperor Shen Nung created a numeral system using knotted string. It is possible that the brush technique of “return” was inspired by knots, but without proof, these assertions remain conjectures. The Yellow Emperor - Huang Ti is the ancestor of the Chinese people. While Fu Hsi and Shen Nung are mythical figures, Huang Ti may have actually ruled between 2697-2597 B.C. His minister, Ts’ang Chieh is credited for inventing the first writing system. Ts’ang Chieh:

After studying the celestial bodies and their formations and the natural objects surrounding him, particularly the footprints of birds and animals, came to realize that things could be told apart by devising different signs to represent them. (Ch’en, 5)

The earliest evidence of a literate culture came from a period between 2205-1766 B.C., known as the Shang Dynasty. The Shang Oracle Bones consists of 100,000 artifacts engraved with pictograms. The writing is arranged vertically but each word differs in orientation and size. Collectively this language called Chia Ku Wen is made of 2,000 characters, and reveals a first attempt at pictorial abstraction. The Shang Dynasty was succeeded by a period of disunion where feudal states and principalities operated independently. Written language, like the state of governance developed in a scattered way until the Qin Dynasty that ruled from 221- 207 B.C. Under the unified rule of Emperor Qin Shih Huang, a standardized writing system was created and employed. All the characters were reconfigured to follow a uniform orientation, size and rectangular shape. This system became the first calligraphic style called Hsiao Chuan.

The preferred writing tool changed from a stylus to a brush. Writing Hsiao Chuan with a brush is labour intensive because the stroke composition is complex and the character still had to appear as if it were a carved line. The calligrapher wrote slowly, burying the brush tip inside the stroke. Instead of re-inventing the writing instrument, a new style was created to suit the brush’s flexibility. Li Shu was first used by clerks within Emperor Qin Shih Huang’s court. This style reduced the number of strokes in a word, allowed for fluid brush movement and added emphasis upon the points entry and exit in a stroke. When the Han people succeeded Emperor Qin Shih Huang, they adopted Li Shu as the official court script. But Li Shu was still restrictive of brush and hand movement and Tsao Shu was invented as a script that keeps “the basic structure of the character in Li Shu, compromise on its formality, allow it to run wild and free, in order to meet the demands of time.” (Ch’en, 46) Tsao Shu traded legibility for speed, so a compromise came in the style of Chen Shu. Chen Shu is a culmination of Hsiao Chuan, Li Shu and T’sao Shu: burying the brush tip inside the stroke, adopting a simplified pictographic form, and exaggerated line variation. Chen Shu also exploded the Chinese figure into eight stroke types. T’se, lo, nu, yo, tse, lueh, cho, and chih are aesthetic variations of horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. T’se and yo describe the most pleasing ways to write short strokes, lo and nu for horizontal and vertical lines, and tse, lueh, cho, chih are all variations of diagonal lines. The word yong (永) or “eternity” is character composite of all eight strokes. A manual titled “The Eight of Laws of Yong” described the requisite movements needed for each stroke. When a student begins calligraphy training, the first character he learns is yong. Chen Shu is presently the standard Chinese script. The last calligraphic style invented is called Tsing Shu which in large part resembles Chen Shu but occasionally links brush strokes together. Hsiao Chuan, Li Shu, Tsao Shu, Chen Shu and Tsing Shu are the five major styles practiced by calligraphers today.

Why Do We Copy the Old Masters?

2009-03-25T20:57:00.003-04:00

The overall appearance of Chinese words has transformed significantly and visibly; every change reflects the state of Chinese society throughout history. Calligraphy and Power in Contemporary Chinese Society is a study that unearths the influence of calligraphy on an average person who lives in contemporary China. Calligraphy remains an important cultural treasure. Through a series of interviews with calligraphers, scholars and average citizens, the author Yen Yuehping, discovered that many still believed that words embody ancient knowledge.

With each change of written form, the characters are conceived to be endowed with new meanings that reflect changes in the socio-cultural environment. As a result, written characters as a whole constitute a fecund reservoir of ancient ideas and a record of social history. (Yen, 52)

For example, Hsiao Chuan was the official script during the Qin Dynasty. The script’s archaic appearance simultaneously alludes to the ancient cultures that invented language and symbolize the unification of the Chinese empire. Chinese characters also incorporate information of past calligraphic techniques.

Knowledge of calligraphic techniques helps unravel the hidden messages carried within characters, such as the interplay of structural balance and imbalance, and the meaning of the natural rhythm of things. (Yen, 54)

To write Hsiao Chuan, the calligrapher buries the brush tip, applies firm but even pressure to the page. Brush movement mimics the slow motion of chiseling into a hard surface. The brush carves into the paper. Each calligraphic style possesses a unique combination of stroke arrangement, rhythm, pressure and speed, but at no point are the techniques mutually exclusive. In fact, new forms reinvent old techniques. For example Hsiao Chuan requires a large amount of restraint to hide the flexible nature of the brush whereas Tsao Shu liberates the brush across the surface of the page. Hsiao Chuan respects an orderly structure while Tsao Shu is preoccupied with spontaneity. Brush control is paramount in both cases. In the former case, control is visible through the uniform line spacing and thickness, in the latter case, control is visible at the pivot point between strokes. Rigid ends are necessary counterpoints to fluid lines in between. The technique that stops the momentum of a moving brush is constant; the differences are in stroke lengths, speed and pressure.

Calligraphic Space: A Function of Accumulated Time

2009-03-24T22:44:00.003-04:00

The brush stroke is a potent reduced form. In The Path of Beauty, Li Zehou, a scholar of aesthetic philosophy calls Chinese characters significant forms. A significant form “incorporates elements of both imagery (generalized simulation), and expressiveness (of emotions).” (Li, 38) An abstract form that exudes life. The Daoist sages believed that images were more adept at conveying meaning than words. Calligraphy is a practice preoccupied with the image of written words.

“...for although calligraphy does consist of written words, its meaning as art has never been restricted to the verbal meaning of the words...the notion of ideas or meaning being communicated in a nonverbal manner by calligraphy is presented by implication.” (Cai, 282)

Chinese characters are a mix pictograms and ideographs. The symbols are not only abstracted objects, but stand for processes and actions. Li argues that the reader perceives phenomena from the written form. Lines create sensations of movement, “like a melody in music, what one perceives in the lines is not a series of objects in space but rather an epoch in time.” (Li, 22) A brushstroke channels the strength and fluidity of the writer’s hand. Chinese words are a composite of lines that describe objects and ideas, and brushwork injects dynamism in the written form, elevating the words to the status of significant forms.

Landscape painting arranges motifs to create tension and induce the propensity for action. Motifs are literal representations: the viewer can easily anticipate cause and effect. When a person is beside a bridge this naturally suggests that he will cross it. In calligraphy, brush strokes are the motifs and tension is apparent within each stroke. There is a correlation between hand movement and the brush trace left on the page. Francois Jullien writes:

The Chinese art of calligraphy can be considered a prime example of dynamism at work within a configuration because, in the case of each ideogram copied, a particular gesture is converted into a form, just as a particular form is equally converted into a gesture. In this schema the figure produced and the movements producing it are equivalent. (Jullien, 78)

To create tension, the calligrapher must disrupt repeated movements. There exist precise rules in calligraphy. Each character is inscribed within and centered on an imaginary square. Unlike Western writing where movement is unidirectional from left to right, the Chinese calligrapher proceeds to build the character stroke by stroke within the imaginary square. The center of the square marks the axis of reflection, rotation and union. The calligrapher first locates the center, his initial strokes mark boundaries, follow by lines that are filled in to complete the character. One always begins from top to bottom and completes the left side before the right side. Not one move is repeated successively: a horizontal motion is followed by a vertical or diagonal motion. Every stroke begins and ends in the opposite way of its intended path. Tension is initiated by the constant alternation of brush movement. Calligraphy skillfully adjusts character composition, entry, follow-through and exiting of every stroke to appear poised for action.

Water never pools over calligraphy paper. The longer the brush remains still, the larger the ink blots. The faster the brush moves, the less ink is absorbed by the paper. Since every type of brush movement follows some semblance of a “pause-pull-pause” pattern, ink opacity varies within a line. These variations describe the duration, speed and pressure of the brush in motion. If a line of uniform width is considered one unit of time, changes in the distance between pauses, in line thickness, in ink opacity, and in the distance between strokes are rhythmic accents. Calligraphy skillfully modulates standard rhythms and speeds. Learning stroke order always precedes developing character recognition. Those versed in Chinese language can detect rhythm, speed, and timing in writing.

Although a good calligrapher has absolute mastery over his motor skills, there are several limiting factors that make every work unique. The calligrapher is forbidden to go back and alter a stroke, once made. The brush tip is soft; it is impossible to produce a uniform bead of ink across the paper. The paper is hand made; every sheet differs in thickness and absorbency. The calligrapher’s state of mind and the physical setting that surrounds him all affect the outcome of the finished work. Su Shi’s Treatise on calligraphy writes:

Furthermore, because one writes at a given time, circumstances will provide either discord or harmony. When there is harmony, the writing flows forth charmingly; when there is discord, it fades and scatters. (Su, 7)

Every line trace is specific to the immediate moment of its creation. With every stroke, the calligrapher imparts a mood or tone that reflects the physical and emotional circumstances surrounding the creation of the work. Chinese characters as significant forms, and has the ability of suggestion. Lines reflect the author’s joys and sorrows. A handscroll written by Dong Qichang in the Ming dynasty translates as follows:

In the third month of the guimao year, I was in Suzhou at the Cloud Shadow Mountain Studio. Outside my window it was raining, and I had nothing to do. My friends Fan Erfu, Wang Boming, and Zhao Mansheng dropped by to visit. We sampled some Tiger Hill tea and ground [some fresh] Korean ink. Then I tried out a new brush, writing with abandon and all quite at random. (Bai, 147)

The first section: “In the third month of the guimao year. I was in Suzhou at the Cloud Shadow Mountain Studio. Outside my window it was raining, and I had nothing to do. My friends Fan Erfu, Wang Boming, and Zhao Mansheng” is written in Tsing Shu. Tsing Shu is characterized by simplified characters and occasional linkages between strokes. The words in the passage are generally uniform in size and spacing. The line work follows a consistent range of thicknesses. Horizontal strokes are parallel to each other. Vertical lines maintain a sense of uprightness. In the second section: “dropped by to visit. We sampled some Tiger Hill tea and ground [some fresh] Korean ink. Then I tried out a new brush, writing,” all the characters are larger, and a few columns were filled by only one word. The author no longer follows the rules of periodic uniform spacing and every character is comprised of more loops and swirls. At times an entire column of characters is written with one continuous line. The third part reads: “with abandon and all quite at random.” All characters are reduced to gestures. The brush is dry, and each line is written with haste. Writing “with abandon” suggests the least of restraint in brush work, the freest use of paper space, and the least attention to character legibility. The transformations explained through the story complement the execution. While the handscroll is a record of an ordinary event, the gradual conversion of the lines imparts fresh imagery to the content. Another example is the story of Wang Xizhi’s masterpiece Lan Ting Shu (Orchid Pavilion Preface). In the spring of 353 A.D. Wang Xizhi, the sage of calligraphy and forty of his friends gathered at Lan Ting (Orchid Pavilion) near Shaoxing, a town just outside of Shanghai.

According to Wang Hsi-chih, the place was surrounded by lofty mountains and steep slopes, lush forests and bamboo groves, with a clear brook gushing through, giving reflections to the left and the right. It was a fine day in early Spring. The air was clear and the breeze was soft. After a few rounds of drinks, Wang His-chih composed an essay commemorating the occasion which he wrote down ‘on paper made of the silk cocoon with a brush made of mouse-whiskers.’ (Ch’en, 62)

The piece is praised for Wang’s skillful combination of power and variation. “The character 之－zhi (a preposition, meaning ‘of’) appears twenty times but not two of them are identical” (Yen, 97) Lan Ting Shu was subsequently copied by numerous accomplished calligraphers. Wang himself has rewritten the piece several times. None were comparable to the original. Beautiful scenery, great company, joyous spirit, an experienced hand, all culminated in an instant surge of inspiration, evident in the form and arrangement of characters. The conditions could not be recreated. That is why the original is valued above all other versions.

Historic significance affects technical execution. A moment of inspiration can elevate the significance of technique. The essence of brilliant writing is control of timing. Rhythm is a measure of ruptures in a unit of time. Musical rhythms are written as beats within a section of time. Brush technique is also rhythmic. The general pattern is pause, pull, pause and repeat. Because calligraphy values honest reflection of good technique and no stroke is ever reworked; there is a transparency between the gesture and the resultant form. Dynamic exchange exists between the hand and the brush, between the brush and the paper, between one stroke and another, between ideogram and ideogram, between one unit of images and another.

Preface-Layout

2009-03-24T12:17:00.001-04:00

Part 2 Layout

2009-03-23T22:56:00.008-04:00

Countless Peaks and Vales

2009-03-21T15:53:00.004-04:00

Hanging in the National Palace Museum in Taipei is “Countless Peaks and Vales,” an eight foot high scroll completed in 1693 by Qing Dynasty artist Wang Hui. A prominent and gifted painter in the 17th Century, Wang Hui first made his reputation by copying old masterworks. His style is a combination of detailed rendering and evocative calligraphic brushwork. Drawing on past influences he writes: "I must use the brush and ink of the Yuan to move the peaks and valleys of the Song, and infuse them with the breath-resonance of the Tang. I will then have a work of the Great Synthesis." The Song Dynasty saw the rise of the scholar literati class and marks the beginning of monumental landscape painting. Painting became a mode of personal expression; the literati painters began composing the landscape to show natural orders, which they believed were missing in active society. During the Yuan and Ming Dynasty, painting moved away from literal representation, instead calligraphic lines carried the life of a landscape. Wang’s mentor Dong Qichang stressed: "If one considers the uniqueness of scenery, then a painting is not the equal of real landscape; but if one considers the wonderful excellence of brush and ink, then landscape can never equal painting."

In “Countless Peaks and Vales” the colour palette is black, grey and the paper’s natural buff. The subject is a river gorge - a typical landscape in the regions south of the Yangtze river. Rocks and water are skillfully painted and placed, dividing the picture plane in various zones. Summits resembling spearheads are repeated successively from the top of the scroll down, stopping approximately at center; the cliff face bare, a stubble of shrubs scattered along the ridges. In the top half, the mountain pass is most visible from the left hand side, a close view in elevation, assuming two thirds of the scroll. The peaks dwindle in height and continue in the distance, disappearing behind the mist. Four long lines of calligraphy are written on the top right, mirrored by seven short lines of text on the top left. At center, rock and water intersect: at the far left water carves through the mountain eventually tumbling over of an edge, and a river rushes in from the far right, two fishermen paddling against the current. The scale changes, as if the scene is viewed from above. Clusters of trees line the river’s edge. Two villages appear: one beside the river, the other tucked inside a valley. The river divides the bottom portion in two halves, following an arcuate path. On the left bank a second waterfall appears, the route of flowing water continues as a dry path. Two travelers one old, the other young are trekking up the mountain. Needle shaped pines and gnarled conifers surround a monastery on the right bank. Three monks standing at the shore. Several trees left of the monastery interrupt the river’s flow, again water transformed into rock. The river becomes a quiet stream. Behind the monastery two travelers on horseback are rounding the corner on a second mountain trail. At the scroll’s bottom left corner, conifers and pines command the most attention. The trees in an upright stance contrast the ones bent over. Behind the trees is an island with a pavilion perched above. A small footbridge links the island to shore. None of the major motifs in Countless Peaks and Vales exists in fixed states. Water sublimates into air, flows through the veins of mountains, and boats skim over its surfaces. Plants grow in rock crevices and people walk on rock surfaces. The motifs coexist seamlessly, and permutations of rock, water, trees and people creates a broad range of variation.

There is a strong sense of unity in “Countless Peaks and Vales,” each element’s raison d'être is dependent on a counterpart. However, Wang’s painting is incredibly resilient against visual fragmentation. The painting overall tells the story of mountains stretching far in the distance and a river packed with charming vignettes along its shores. But if one considers only one half or one fifth of the overall work, another story unfolds. From the bottom-most section, a scholar and his two pupils stand at the head of a bridge. Both students are carrying supplies while their teacher points his staff towards a place across the water. Directly behind them, a stream appears, water rushing towards the quiet bay. The trio’s destination - the pavilion, is screened by a large rock, although one assumes that there are stairs leading up to the top. A boat is heading away from shore, reeds and trees sway right - showing that the oarsman is rowing against a headwind. Two people are resting in the pavilion, perhaps waiting for their friend. One man gazes at the peaks in the distance, while the other admires the rocks before him. The story progresses from right side to the left side. The bridge suggests a path and a destination, the upward gaze of the scholar extends the scene beyond his immediate context, while the wind resists the fishermen’s efforts of moving upstream. The motifs do not follow the usual conventions of scale and distance. Objects vary in size and level of detail even if positioned in same zone on the scroll. The trees behind and in front of the small pavilion are significantly larger. Wang Hui seamlessly stitches relates conditions. Although the lower section is but a fragment of the overall painting, there still exists a complete story.

The Calligraphy Lesson

2009-03-19T23:53:00.003-04:00

Teaching the friend premise is a little corny...but this is the solution I've come up with so far.

Preface: 7 pages + 1 photograph (maybe), 1500-2000 words

The Setup: 500-700 words

content: 3-4 pp diagrams + text

I am teaching a friend (Krista) calligraphy, she doesn’t read, write or speak Chinese
I bring over brushes, ink, paper and prepare references: the character 永 (yong), a book - The 84 Laws, a dictionary, a landscape painting and a calligraphy scroll
Introduce Chinese written language

Part 1: 1 blank page + 永 (yong), 300-500 words

content: 6-8 pp + diagrams

I explain that 永 (yong) is composed of 8 basic strokes in Chinese writing
Krista learns how to hold a brush, brush movement, the stroke order
Her first attempts are unsuccessful and I show her where the problem areas are
I ask her to consider the relationship between strokes and paper

Part 1.1: 1 blank page + cover of The 84 Laws, 500-750 words

content: 25 pp diagrams + text

I introduce Li Shun and his 84 laws (diagrams)
Krista is curious why Li Shun and her are both copying other’s work
I explain the common belief that old works are reservoirs of knowledge and personal style is a synthesis of older works (essay)

Part 1.2: 1 blank page + cover of Calligraphy Dictionary

content: 60 pp diagrams + text

I show Krista the same character 花 (flower) written in many different ways (from dictionary)
Phrases written and arranged in variation
花 (flower) written in 5 styles, stroke order, line and shape
Timeline
Essay on the history of calligraphy and the five major styles (in essay)
5 styles all differ rhythmically & in time of execution

Part 2: 1 blank page + Countless Peaks and Vales, 2000-2500 words

content: 20 pp diagrams + text

Essay on Countless Peaks and Vales and brush painting
Diagram analysis of painting
势 (shi) as it operates in calligraphy (balance of shapes and strokes)
Essay on Fenellosa’s Chinese Written Character as Medium for Poetry

Part 2.1: 1 blank page + quote on dynamism, 500-750 words

content: 10 pp diagrams + text

Diagrams showing rhythm
Diagram showing interaction between brush and paper
Diagrams showing calligraphy written with small brush
Diagrams showing calligraphy written with large brush
Essay on collapse of time and space in calligraphy

Part 2.2: 2 page spread + fold-out page of calligraphy

Part 3: End of Lesson, 500 words

Review to today’s lesson: tools, methods, dynamics, sensation of hand moving in space and collapse of time and space
Krista has more questions (still working on that) and I promise to answer them during our next lesson

Epilogue: Lessons I’ve learned, 500-750 words

My trip to Lan Ting
Calligraphy is hard, due diligence is the only way one improves
Culturally important: Chinese identify with the craft, calligraphy equals value
Socially important: Positive reputation associated with calligraphers
Calligraphy is practiced throughout Asia, but is now receiving attention from the West
I’m not sure what exactly keeps me practicing, maybe it’s because of the community of people that practicing, a way of connecting to my roots, or that it’s something I can just work on without having the pressure of ever finishing, in any case I’ll continue practicing

Chinese Painting: A Landscape that Continuously Unfolds

2009-03-18T17:43:00.012-04:00

In Classical perspective, as it was codified in the Renaissance, the third dimension is constructed geometrically, based on a line at the viewer’s eye level, and one or more fixed vanishing points with one or more of those points on that line. Perspective establishes a specific point in space to which all other points relate. Space is defined by points, straight lines, and planes. Perspectival art renders uniform space – where the subjects are framed and bounded, and fixed in their positions. In Chinese art the subjects are drawn with black outlines with tones applied as detail. Chinese calligraphy, is strictly focused on line work. If Chinese art is in essence a two dimensional graphic, how do we understand depth or space?

Chinese aesthetics is rooted in Daoism. Nature is a popular subject in Chinese painting. Nature – ziran (自然) represents elements of the natural world. Ziran also means “of itself.” The natural world is self generating, made by a matrix of elements that interact causing change. Nature is rhythmical, in constant flux passing between active and passive states. The Daoists believed that every object living or inanimate possess qualities “of itself.” True wisdom recognizes and follows the flows of natural rhythms, leaving things as they are. The Chinese makes no distinctions between nature and artifice or between large and small. Landscape painting and garden design uses similar tactics in spatial organization. The Chinese garden – a world of artifice, where the elements nevertheless follow natural processes – is a tightly organized journey, where a small space expands by suggestion, and the sense of the place is framed as an accumulation of experience. The garden is a continuous narrative, each scene is revealed along a serpentine path. Well designed gardens control pace and view. In-position viewing locates the viewer at a platform or pavilion in order to admire a scene in elevation. Curving paths are disorienting, hiding important settings and destinations from view. In-motion viewing anticipates the viewer’s promenade along narrow paths that thread between rockery and buildings. All the elements used in the garden are suggestive forms. Rock sculptures remind the visitor of majestic mountains, ponds and streams represent lakes and rivers. A rock is a smaller version of a mountain because both belong under the same cosmology. At the end of the journey, the visitor is reminded of the natural landscape through the scenery he passed through. For an artist, accurate depiction is not important, but revealing natural rhythms and the spirit of the subject are essential. Brush art captures vitality in painted form with brush technique and strategic composition.

Shi (势) is an ambiguous term meaning both position and potential. Shi represents the rules and also the effect caused by the rules. The definitions are codependent: things arranged in a specific position generate a potential. In The Propensity of Thing, Francois Jullien uses the ambiguous meaning of shi to argue that Chinese logic is never formed a priori. A sinologist and philosophy professor at the Université Paris VII Denis-Diderot, Jullien writes:

When compared with the elaboration of Western thought, the originality of the Chinese lies in their indifference to any notion of a telos, a final end for things, for they sought to interpret reality solely on the basis of itself, from the perspective of a single logic inherent in the actual processes in motion. (Jullien, 17)

No configuration of forms is perfectly static; all actions require form to take effect. Chinese artist and poet “produced a particular configuration of the dynamism inherent in reality.” (Jullien, 75) Calligraphy, painting and poetry tells stories in parallel: simultaneously describing the here and now and the events will follow.

Chinese paintings use silk and paper. Paper is made of bamboo pulp cut in separate sheets or made into a roll. A finished painting is mounted over lining paper and coated with a paste that waterproofs the surface. Chinese painting and calligraphy are not on permanent display but stored and periodically brought out for viewing. The scroll exists in two formats: the handscroll and the hanging scroll. Handscrolls are horizontal compositions, typically nine to fourteen inches high with variable widths. Looking at a handscroll, one begins from the right-hand side, unrolls the painting, one shoulder width section at a time, re-rolling the section before moving on to the next part. Hanging scrolls are vertical compositions that range between two to six feet high with variable widths. A hanging scroll is suspended from a cord at the top and viewed after the painting is hung. Jullien describes the logic behind landscape painting as follows:

In contrast to Western logic, which is panoramic, Chinese logic is like that of a possible journey in stages that are lined together. The field of thought is not defined and contained a priori; it just unfolds progressively, from one stage to the next, becoming more fertile along the way. Furthermore, the path along which it unfolds does not exclude other possibilities – which may run alongside temporarily or intersect with it. By the end of the journey, an experience has been lived through, a landscape has been sketched in. (Jullien, 124)

The scroll format encourages continuous narratives. Artworks are completed in stages. With long scrolls, each section is painted separately then assembled. Boundaries are avoided: motifs in one scene extend towards its neighboring sections. There are no visual breaks; scenes combine, never disrupting the pace or tempo of the overall work. Great paintings sustain multiple viewings, the scenes always revealing new surprises. The first viewing establishes the overall narrative: the characters, the motifs, the major paths and journeys. The subsequent viewings reveal finer subplots: the minor characters and alternative routes. Time is physically marked by the moment the viewer begins and finishes unrolling the scroll. The scroll format invites kinetic interaction.

A Chinese landscape painting is a precise compilation of forms that allude to movement. One rarely finds a straight line in the painting. Even architecture found in paintings cannot escape the influence of curves. Straight columns support sweeping roofs that, in return, reciprocate the motion of currents and streams that are never far from the scene. Curved lines best illustrate organic forms: the lines are serpentine, rarely limited to a single arc. Chinese painters impart life into their subjects using a strategy that Jullien calls functional bipolarity. From opposition comes desired effect: the curve is the opposite of the straight edge, but the combination of contrasting qualities creates tension, and the tension is visually dynamic. For example, a cascade is represented by undulating lines, but on every line, each arc springs from a common point but in alternating directions, facing left and right. The effect describes both the motion of the water and the structure that causes the movement. The rock gives shape and direction to the flow of the water and the water animates the rock. It is this combination of angular and smooth edges, and alternating orientation that creates the sensation of movement. The straight elements are structural while the curved elements suggest life. Another way artists create visual dynamism is by combining and repeating similar motifs. Kuo Hsi, a painter in the Song Dynasty writes:

The change of appearance caused by the varying degree of distance from the object is figuratively known as ‘the change of shape with every step one takes.’…Thus a single mountain combines in itself several thousand appearances. (Kuo, 41)

Trees, rocks, bodies of water, boats, villages and people are often repeated, disperse throughout a painting. Views of the same object at various distances and levels of detail are collapsed on one picture plane. A painter may also group “pines, cedars, old acacias, and old juniper trees in clumps of three or five, in such a way as to emphasize their shi.” (Jullien, 82) Every tree possess a shi - the propensity for developing a unique form. Direct comparison reveals obvious differences in shape, height and posture. Differences create harmony, not dissonance. Ultimately, shi is a unifying force, “for in China, a painting is only really worthy of its name when it represents the totality of things.” (Jullien, 98) Shi is a term, representative of the vital energy, a natural logic that shapes form and propels change in all objects alive or inanimate. Functional bipolarity and variation are artistic devices that enable the viewer to sense vitality - a life force in the painted form. The artist stays true to the essence of his subject - a unifying quality, but never replicates any motifs exactly.

Conclusions - The First Draft

2009-03-17T23:41:00.003-04:00

Until I can write without having to recall what a word looks like or think about how my hands should move, I remain a student, not a master of the craft. The only definitive advice I’ve ever gotten was “practice, practice, practice," and I think that's pretty good advice.

Chinese is not my first language. I am a novice. Using my own graphics I illustrated the patterns emergent in calligraphy such as brush technique, stroke order and the differences between five calligraphic styles. The drawings separate the concrete facts from the incidental events. Calligraphy is a tedious, repetitive craft that uses wet, unforgiving materials. While the premise is basic, the rules simple, juggling aesthetic and kinetic factors in the moment between strokes is not. There are no easy tricks or shortcuts that masks a calligrapher’s inexperience. In this thesis, my calligraphy was carefully selected; for every successful case there were pages and pages of failures and mediocre results. Whereas the historical examples were successful, every stroke, every word and every sentence rendered beautifully on the first try. A true master is a painter and a poet. Calligraphy after all is a communications art and utility greatly influenced its development. In Feudal times, literary talent and a beautiful hand could transform a man’s life and elevate his social status. Every notable poet and painter was also an excellent calligrapher. A masterpiece makes space, traverses time and distance by suggestion on multiple levels: the tangible, the ephemeral, the poetic and the literal. Prose shape imaginative space, brush strokes and color blocks construct graphic space, the hand, the brush and the paper interact inscribing a physical space. Calligraphy is a matrix of stroke types assembled using a predetermined order and brush technique. Calligraphy is also a harmonious combination of serial patterns and personal touches. Contradiction is calligraphy’s definitive characteristic, simultaneously rigid and fluid.

In this present age, brush writing is obsolete. Most people prefer a pen or a keyboard. In China however, a skill set that includes calligraphy immediately boast one’s public image. Mao Zedong saved brush writing over other traditional arts during the Cultural Revolution. A single word by an established artist is a pricey commodity and historical relics are worth many times more. Calligraphy equals value. When hard work and good fortune intersect, magic happens, but these are rare occurrences. Thus, a few written words turn men into sages, and transform obscure places into extraordinary finds. As a culturally distinctive craft, brush art is also attracting new audience in the west. A renewed interest in calligraphy by a Western audience outside of the intellectual circle keeps the tradition alive.

Lan Ting

2009-03-16T10:55:00.011-04:00

I visited Orchid Hill Park on a November morning, following a winding path that cuts through a bamboo grove, the sound of raindrops lightly tapping my umbrella. The path led me to a small pavilion raised on a platform three steps high, the sweeping gable roof raised by four stone columns. At the center was a stone tablet inscribed with the words “Lan Ting.” During the Spring Autumn Period, a pavilion was built at the foot of a hill where once there were orchids planted. It was named Lan Ting, the Orchid Pavilion. In the spring of 353 Wang Xizhi and forty-one of his friends and family gathered here. They played a game floating cups of wine down a stream, drinking and writing poetry. Wang wrote a preface introducing these poems titled “Lan Ting Xu,” considered the masterpiece of Chinese calligraphy. Looking at the fabled pavilion I thought: this is it? Had it not been for the inscription, the building was simply ordinary, its significance verified by two words. Was that enough? I came here chasing the beautiful place I sensed in Wang’s writing. I came searching for clues connecting the present to that spring day in 353. I wanted inspiration. No one noticed. I guess calligraphy gods don’t like rain either.

Abstract

2009-03-12T10:25:00.003-04:00

The story begins with a line, an impression left by a brush moving rhythmically over an absorbent white paper. The lines are strategically placed in a predetermined order, building a Chinese word. Various aspects of the Chinese writing system from tools, technique, movement patterns to compositional tendencies across the five calligraphic styles are analyzed using line drawings, video, and stop action frame grabs. The drawings are not instructional, but serve as an introduction to the artistic process and the very culture that developed the art.

Movement and time are important themes in Chinese art. Chinese aesthetics is influenced by Daoist practices and the contents in a brush painting must exude life or convey vitality. The Daoist used the line to symbolize change. The line is also the fundamental element in all Chinese brush painting. Change means "a transfer of states," and brush technique shifts from one gesture to another. In calligraphy, rhythmic variations within a line animates its contents. Two types of movement: the broad sweep and the pause exists simultaneously in every line, causing friction between momentum and inertia. The distance between pauses represents time and the various stroke widths indicate speed. This reciprocity of opposite conditions is best defined as ‘shi,’ a term used in numerous strategic manuals. ‘Shi’ represents a dynamic logic, where a position is defined by the most advantageous outcome. But the Chinese character is also a descriptor of historic time. Brush calligraphy is a two thousand year old practice, and Chinese characters in its present form incorporates all past forms and techniques. Style choices reflect the purpose of the work and the artist’s personal preferences. Furthermore, various environmental and emotional factors influence the piece’s overall effect. A piece of calligraphy is a route map showing the hand and brush in motion and a relic from a moment of creativity at a specific time and place in history.