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Wei #2 |
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Zu #3 |
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"Let
us worry about beauty first, and truth will take care of itself."
What
is beauty? Philosophers pondering the meaning of aesthetics have produced
weighty tomes, but an absolute definition of aesthetic values remains elusive.
Aesthetic perceptions differ from culture to culture. Different conventions
govern landscape painting in the East and West. If there is no objective
standard of beauty in the world of human creations, what system of aesthetics
are we to use in speaking of the beauty of the Nature? How are we to judge the
Nature's design to benefit an artist’s creation? Or how a non-Chinese speaking
people perceive the abstract beauty within a Chinese calligraphy work?
It is “perception” of our basic senses that drive us to make things better, be it for delicious cooking, melodious music or beautiful painting. However, everyone’s perception is different. So artists as well as critics “set” criteria for appreciating art and traditional rules and norms to create good arts. Why criteria for arts? And why do we need to learn traditional rules and norms? If art does not impose some norms or standards, then everybody can have it in his own way without learning and practicing. Consequently, people won’t appreciate each other’s ways. Just as languages and music have their own grammars, Chinese calligraphy has numerous sets of strict rules, norms, and esthetics.
For
example, a major rule of Tsao Shu is
to simplify the left radical of a Chinese character and focus on the right radical
(“Yi Zuo Yang Yu 抑左揚右,”
literally simplify the left and focus on the right.) This rule makes writing the
left part of a character faster by connecting it from the right part of
the preceding character. Thus a calligraphy work in Tsao Style will look more
smooth, connecting, and faster with abrupt turning and dramatic effects.
The following is a chart that lists each character in Kai Style and three ways of writing that character in Tsao Style. Like Zuan Style, a character can be written in many ways in Tsao Style.
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Wei #2 |
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Zu #3 |
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From
the above examples, we may know “simplifying the left and focusing on the right” is the
major rule for creating a Tsao Style character by different ancient
calligraphers. The calligraphers obey the prototype more strictly on the left
side while they have leeway for artistic design on the right side. If a laymen
tries to coin his way of creating a Tsao Style character without learning,
he may end up making mistakes. Adding or removing a single dot in one position
can turn a Tsao Style character into another one. For example, “Wei #2” and “Zu
#3” are just different in one dot in the beginning and another dot at the end. There
are innumerous examples in Tsao Shu of tiny differences like this example since the total number of Chinese
characters is so large.
However,
rules are not absolute. A rule that is not allowed in one Chinese calligraphy
style may be a specialized feature in the other styles. For example, Emperor
Huei Zong ( 宋徽宗
)
of the Sung Dynasty invented Skinny Gold Style “So Jin Tee
瘦金體”
that adopted strokes with principles against traditional rules and theories. It
was “that” calligrapher’s perception that made him not to adopt
traditional rules of most Chinese calligraphy methodologies and that made him unique and
different.
The
above left and middle Kai Style works were obeying the traditionally strict rules of
Chinese calligraphy. However, the right one drastically deviate from the
traditional rules of
strokes. Those strokes look very speedy and sharp which are not seen in almost
all other styles.
“In
my own development as an artist, it has been made evident to me, time and time
again, that success comes from the careful observance of details.”
The
first step to practice art will be “observing” and "understanding"
rather than mere practice or creation by our physical hands. Some artists used to say that one has
"to
train one's eyes."
Before we start a piece for any forms of art, we must mentally “visualize” our design. This is very important in the
Lin Mo
( 臨摹
)
process of Chinese calligraphy. To be a Chinese calligraphy cognoscente both in
skills and insight, one has to train his inner eyes to see the underlying
principles guiding an ancient master’s design. He has to go beyond the
extrinsic beauty as shown in the writing to the profound beauty embodied within.
Physicists
from Einstein on have been awed by the profound fact that, as we examine Nature
on deeper and deeper levels, She appears even more beautiful. Why should that
be? We could have found ourselves living in an intrinsically ugly universe, a
“chaotic world," as Einstein put it, "in no way graspable through
thinking."
Likewise
when we look into the ancient Chinese calligraphy masterpieces on deeper and
deeper levels, we will find the beauty of the calligraphers’ souls speaking in
their own works. How did they do that? They simply observed and followed their
inner heart. The more we dive in, the more we feel that the ancient wise men
exceeded us in mental, physical, and spiritual levels. We are just living in a
“chaotic world of deteriorating Chinese calligraphy bombarded with fame,
shortsightedness, self-proclaim, politics, and lack of skills and consciousness.”
The
essence of art is in the "eyes of the beholder" rather than
permanently fixed, quantitatively and qualitatively, within the aesthetic
object. Art is a special human
behavior towards aspects of one's world that are determined to best give one the
experience of feelings and meaning of great intensity, relative to other objects
or aspects of our environment. The qualities of these "aspects" of our
world that conjure up the feelings and perception of art include the masterful
ability of the artist to include, in his aesthetic stimuli formation for others,
the qualities of "comprehensiveness" (the degree to which the
work creates the feeling of integration and unity in the viewer), "consistency"
(elements of the work form a compatible whole), "intensity"
(the creation of emotional intensity through both the form and content of the
work), and "originality" (the value of novelty through
creativity which leads to new aesthetic experience for the beholder).
The
artist facilitates in his creation aesthetic perception of the viewer. The
viewer must take responsibility for the carryover of aesthetic appreciation,
from that of the artist that created the stimulus, to his own feelings and
internalized relationship with the art object.
