Barnhart.72.innerworld of brush

Chinese Calligraphy: The Inner World of the Brush Author(s): Richard Barnhart Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, Vol. 30, No. 5 (Apr. - May, 1972), pp. 230-241 Published by: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3258680 Accessed: 18/11/2008 20:13 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mma. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. http://www.jstor.org I Fe / 1 rIf f I I Ie me "" C \ CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY' The Inner World of the Brush RICHARD BARNHART Assistant Professor of the History of Art Yale University Two characters by Chu Yun-ming, from a handscroll also illustrated in Figure 17 1. After Wang Hsi-chih (4th century, exact dates un- certain), Yueh I lun, originally dated A.D. 348. Detail of an ink rubbing. Wan-go H. C. Weng Collection, New York This essay is an introduction to the art of Chinese calligraphy - the subject of a major exhibition on view at the Museum through May 7- explaining how its stylistic and aesthetic qualities can be enjoyed by Western visitors who do not understand Chinese. Chinese calligraphers often see brushwork by analogy with natural phenomena, not in any directly representational sense, but in terms of underlying principles of movement, growth, or structure. The stretch- ing branches of a winter tree, the flowing water of a mountain stream, a rock plunging from a high cliff - such images vividly suggest principles of brush form and movement that interact profoundly with the past art of the brush. The sight of boatmen pulling the long oars of a ship on the Yangtze awakened Huang T'ing-chien to a new understanding of the brushwork of the T'ang monk-calligraphers, and became the basis of the long, trailing diagonal strokes of his mature style. Present experience and past thus merge at brushtip. One gradually comes to a realization that the past is alive in the tradition of Chinese artists. The calligraphy of Mi Fu or Huang T'ing-chien or Chu Yiin-ming is as vital and fresh today, and as much a part of the visual experience of an artist now, as it ever was. The formal vocabulary, the material of style, is all that has ever been written, joined to the experience of life. 2. Chao Meng-fu (1254-1322), Title inscription for the Record of the Miao-yen Temple (Miao-yen-ssu chi), about 1310. Anonymous loan, The Art Museum, Princeton University 3. Wen Cheng-ming (1470-1559), Laudatory frontispiece (Yin-shou) for an album of paintings by T'ang Yin (1470-1523), now mounted as a handscroll. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Earl Morse. Photograph: The Art Museum, Princeton University I A~ 4. Anonymous, Stele of Shih Ch'en (Shih Ch'en pei), dated A.D. 169. Detail of an ink rubbing (17th century) from the original memorial stone. Wan-go H. C. Weng Collec- tion, New York. In the exhibition Chinese Calligraphy: no. 7 in the catalogue by Tseng Yu-ho Ecke 6. Huang T'ing-chien (1045-1105), Letter to Chang Ta-t'ung. Detail of a handscroll, dated 1100. Anonymous loan, The Art Museum, Princeton University 5. Chao Meng-fu, Record of the Miao-yen Temple. Detail of a handscroll, about 1310. Anonymous loan, The Art Museum, Princeton University I;I Confronted with an example of Chinese calligraphy, the Western viewer may assume that because he does not read Chinese he will be unable to appreciate the art of brush writing. Usually, however, the aesthetic and expressive qualities of the art are independent of verbal meaning. That is, the artistic effects of a work of calligraphy are fully apparent before one begins to read the characters or words. Insofar as calligraphy is an art, therefore (and to the Chinese it is not merely an art, but the highest graphic art form of their culture), it exists as such outside the realm of verbal content. Nonetheless, there is a large and sophisticated body of principle and theory upon which the art of calligraphy rests, and it is helpful to have some understanding of this framework in approaching it. THE FIVE SCRIPT-FORMS nstead of a unitary stylistic basis, such as ideal or naturalistic form, calligraphers rely upon five basic styles that might be thought of as script-forms. During roughly the first millennium B.C., these script-forms developed in a logical sequence in accordance with the growing use of the flexible hair brush and an increased awareness of the expressive potential of brush writing. Thereafter, they remained the common repertoire of all calligraphers, each used for specific effect or purpose. Two of the five are purely archaic. The hoary Seal script (Figure 2) is the most monumental, and was generally used for commemorative or dedicatory purposes. It is among the oldest forms of the written language, and alone of the common script-forms denies spontaneity, fluidity, and movement, otherwise common attributes of the calli- graphic art. The brush is here used in imitation of a stylus, with which the first writing was done; it is held rigidly upright, the tip of the brush carefully maintained within the center of the stroke, and each stroke is written evenly and with powerful deliberation, as if inscribing lines in sand with a sharp stick. The tip of the brush, like the tip of the stick in sand, seems to penetrate deep into the paper, losing itself in the round, full impress of the line. Two essential characteristics of calligraphy are illustrated most vividly by the Seal script. The hidden, or restrained, tip epitomizes an enduring cultural and artistic ideal: virtue, or strength - the sharp tip of the brush - is to be held within, guiding and shaping action, but exposed only rarely. The exterior, bland and mundane, smooth and round, is significant only to those who sense what is within. Again, although it is historically among the most primitive forms of the language, the Seal script remains a living style, joined by all of the later script-forms and all of the innumerable personal styles within each script-form to create a rich tapestry of meaning and association. It is the beginning of culture, but the ancient beginnings live on in the present. Styles in Chinese art do not fade away; once formed, they remain forever viable alternatives. The majestic and powerful Seal script serves to commemorate and to dignify, but it speaks too of a stylus scratching an oracle bone. G rowing out of the Seal script historically was the Li (Clerical or Official script, after its use by scribes during the Han dynasty: 206 B.C.-A.D. 220) (Figures 3, 4), more angular than the Seal script, and emphasizing such potentials of the flexible brush as changing stroke width, long, extended horizontal and diagonal strokes, and occasional sharp rather than round stroke ends. When used very formally, as in the first example illustrated, it has much of the dignity and monumentality of the Seal script, and was used for the same purposes. When used less formally, it may be graceful and even delicate, with an old-fashioned charm and somewhat stilted flavor that limit its use in casual writing. It remained always a deliberately archaic style, at its most effective when written slowly with rich, sooty ink that appears to sink into the paper or silk. he three remaining script-forms constitute the "modern" written language, although they developed during the third and fourth centuries. Unlike the Seal and Li forms, the 7. Emperor Hui-tsung (1080-1135, reigned 1101- 1125), Poem. Detail of a handscroll. National Palace Museum, Taipei . 9. Emperor Li-tsung (born 1203, reigned 1225-1264), Couplet by Wang Wei, dated 1256. Detail of a silk fan. The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund. No. 29 in the exhibi- tion catalogue I 8. Mi Fu (or Mi Fei, 1051- 1107), Sailing on the Wu River. Details of a handscroll. John M. Crawford, Jr., Collection, New York. No. 22 in the exhibition catalogue F i3i definition of each is far from rigid, since one easily becomes the other depending largely upon how quickly an individual character is written. The Regular (K'ai, or Model) script (Figures 1, 5, 13) in its pure form is the standard writing, used nearly always in printed books, and learned by children when they begin to read. It is the first written form that fully utilized the formal capacity of the brush. Nearly every stroke and dot is flexed and modulated in thickness, there are few if any straight lines, and every element in each character is conceived as relating compositionally to another, thus creating a continuous flow of abstract movement that can only be properly read as one mentally follows the process of character formation. Generally speaking, although Chinese is written from right to left, an individual character is written from left to right, and from top to bottom. The sequence of placement of dots and strokes in forming a given character is quite rigid, and therefore the actual movement of the brush is always apparent: i.e., the top leftmost element is written first, then each element directly below it, followed again from top to bottom by the rightmost portion of the character. If a character is not composed of left and right halves, then it is simply written in sequence from top to bottom. Only when a portion of the left half extends under the right half is the right written first. If there is a falling dot to the right, or a strong central vertical line, that element is usually written last, and it carries the flowing force of the brush into the character below. Because of the precision of line and structure re- quired in writing the pure form of the Regular script, as in the example by Chao Meng-fu (Figure 5), such calligraphy is often admired for its perfect realization of an ideal. In each of the script-forms, however, virtually limitless personal variety is possible. In contrast to the cool, classical perfection of Chao Meng-fu is the gaunt power of Huang T'ing-chien (Figure 6), whose calligraphy in the large Regular script stands among the towering achievements of Chinese art. He violates every precept of the classical tradition: his lines are often deliberately wavy, trembling slightly, as if driven by some enormous force; they vary arbitrarily from thick to thin; many strokes are seemingly lifeless, without any modulation - blunt, round, heavy, they are the stylus- written lines of the Seal script merged into the structure of the Regular form. At another extreme, of elegance and fine-drawn beauty, is the Regular script of the Sung Emperor Hui-tsung (Figure 7). Huang T'ing-chien did not object to a laughing description of his writing as "snakes dangling from a tree"; Hui-tsung's writing, on the other hand, is called "slender gold," after its resemblance to gold filament, exquisitely flexed and turned. If there is truth to the Chinese belief that a man's character is fully manifest in his calligraphy, perhaps it is seen here. Hui-tsung was a gifted artist and a weak ruler who watched over the loss of half of China to barbarian invaders, and it is art not strength that characterizes his writing. That fine gold filigree is easily bent and broken, however, only heightens appreciation of its delicate beauty. hen several strokes and dots in a character are written continuously, without lifting the brush, the Running (Hsing) script results. It is literally a running together of elements, usually emphasizing the vertical aspect of move- ment. Characters written in the standard Regular script 235 generally occupy a rough square in composition; those written in the Running script are conceived as if in a standing rec- tangle. Essentially, the differences between the Regular and Running scripts are those between a printed and handwritten form. Few great calligraphers achieved more in the Running hand than Mi Fu (or Mi Fei; Figure 8). His friend, the poet- calligrapher Su Shih ( 1036-1101 ), said that Mi used his brush like a sword, and it is a slashing virtuosity that characterizes his work, especially in the glistening vertical strokes torn down the page with dash and verve. One senses in his work exuberant pride in the freedom that comes only after absolute mastery of all convention, releasing the brush into a realm of sheer joyful creation. A more delicate and restrained example of the Running script is the Southern Sung Emperor Li-tsung's couplet written on a silk fan (Figure 9), an exquisite, small performance by a distinctive minor master. With none of the brio of Mi Fei, Li-tsung nonetheless achieves a rewarding interplay of hair- like strokes joining elements and broad, strong horizontals and verticals, exhibiting throughout a perfect control of the brush. But whereas Mi Fei's driving force is his arm, Li-tsung's characters are guided by his fingers. t the extreme of speed and abbreviation in writing is the A Cursive script (Figures 10, 11, 14-17), the form of brush writing that most immediately and dramatically conveys the essence of the appeal of calligraphy as an art form. Perhaps no other traditional art of the world is so excitingly kines- thetic, abstract, and spontaneous. Functionally, the essential principle underlying the Cursive script is to write each char- acter as quickly and simply as possible while still conveying the essence of its form; in other words, to reduce a standard form to an abstraction that can be imparted in continuously flowing movement. In order to allow achievement of the greatest possible creative freedom, masters of the Cursive script frequently chose to write a standard text such as the "Thousand-character Essay" or a passage from the classics or poetry of the kind memorized by schoolboys. The brush was thus freed of virtually all verbal association, often to become pure abstract form. Some idea of the possible range of Cursive writing is suggested in the contrast between Hsien-yii Shu's classical, controlled Song of the Stone Drums (Figure 14), in which each character is still conceived as essentially a single, coherent unit, and each stroke and dot conforms to the rigorous canons of tradition; and, on the other hand, the abandoned writing of Ch'en Hsien-chang (Figure 10) or the mad genius, Hsii Wei (Figure 11 ). In the two latter examples, there is little sense of individual, separate characters left, but rather an open, sprawling movement over the entire surface, with one character often merging with another, and elements of indi- vidual characters split apart to drift out to a point of the most tenuous relationship with their original form. Individual brushstrokes observe no canons of correctness: Ch'en Hsien- chang uses a coarse, heavy brush that allows no orthodox nicety, and Hsii Wei prefers to let his brush run almost dry of ink, so that it drags and scrapes over the surface like a piece of worn-out charcoal over coarse paper. Although the five common script-forms are coherent entities, they are regularly intermixed, and a single piece of writing may contain characters written in the Regular, Run- I/// -_ 10. Ch'en Hsien-chang (1428-1500), Song of the Fisherman. Details of a hanging scroll. Center of Asian Art and Culture, The Avery Brundage Col- lection, San Francisco 11 (left). Hsii Wei (1521- % 1593), Poem dedicated to Mr. Wang. Detail of a handscroll. Wan-go H. C. ,;~J Weng Collection, New York. No. 57 in the exhi- h bition catalogue ning, and Cursive scripts. For example, the three right-hand characters in the illustration from Mi Fu's Sailing on the Wu River (Figure 8) are done in a running hand, while the single character to the left is a pure cursive form. Only about a third of the characters in Hsien-yii Shu's Song of the Stone Drums (Figure 14) are written in the Cursive form; the majority are in a Running script. It is thus more strictly appropriate to describe both works as combinations of Running and Cursive forms (Hsing-ts'ao). Indeed, from the earliest theo- retical writings on calligraphy we read of the importance of achieving individuality by deriving elements and principles from all of the script-forms. Thus Huang T'ing-chien (Figure 6), in creating his distinctive Regular style, adapted one of the basic concepts behind the archaic Seal form. His wavering strokes, moreover, are of a kind normally found earlier only in the Cursive script. In Yen Chen-ch'ing's striking Farewell to General P'ei (Figure 12) an unprecedented combination of script-forms and elements are employed to create a unique masterpiece. In the first three lines from the right, all characters but two are written in a powerful, archaic form of the Regular script using certain elements from the Seal and Li forms, while the second character in the first line and the third in the third line are written in a pure Cursive hand. In the next three lines, all but three characters are done in a fully Cursive script, punctuated by the occasional pictograph-like archaic structure. The effect, drawing upon the entire history of the written language, is thoroughly unconventional, almost bizarre, but rich in power and ancient substance. When it is realized that a competent calligrapher may be at ease in any of the five script-forms (it is a common exercise to write the same text successively in two or more very different styles), it will be apparent how utterly different is the Chinese concept of form from our own. The range from the Seal to the Cursive script is precisely the range, formally, from primitive to abstract art. The implications of this orientation are particularly significant when it is remem- bered that all Chinese artists, whether painter or poet, are first calligraphers, and trained in the traditions of the art of brush writing before turning to other art forms. Thus, it appears likely that a painter, given a coherent individual form, might well conceive it simultaneously as both primitive and archaic, and cursive and naturalistic. In other words, the pictorial image of a pine tree is perhaps subject to the same range of formal interpretation as the written character for pine tree. The range of script-forms moreover makes it quite difficult to interpret style in the ways suited to Western art. Con- fronted with two examples of writing by Hsien-yii (Figures 13, 14), one Regular, one Cursive, we would seem to have a perfect Wolfflinian dichotomy. In fact, of course, the difference between the "closed" form of the Regular script and the "open" form of the Cursive has nothing whatever to do with chronological d