Essays on Chinese Calligraphy
Jottings (Extract)
By Mi Fu
Regular character has eight sides which vary with different characters. Zhi Yong's characters had eight sides while fell short of Zhong You's standard. As soon as Ouyang Xun and Yu Shinan aligned their strokes neatly, the ancient mode was lost. Liu Gongquan imitated Ouyang Xun, but he was far inferior to his model. His script, furthermore, has been the home of ugly, bizarre scripts ever since. Exists on this earth the poor taste calligraphy because of Liu Gongquan.
Poet Du Fu once commended a horizontal board inscription by Xue Ji “lush three characters, like twining flood dragon.” From its rubbing I have, Xue Ji retouched his strokes with backward brushwork, giving each stroke the appearance of loaf. This proves the saying that “there was no oversize regular character back in ancient time.”
Yan Zhenqing's semi-cursive script can be a model, but his regular script belongs to the vulgar class.
Characters must be propped up by bones. Bones must be vitalized with flesh, and flesh must be wrapped around bones. Characters must be pleasing, steady, unvulgar, precipitous but not bizarre, aged but not haggard, and full-figured but not fat. Their variations are valued for their form but not strangeness nor retouch, for strangeness leads to rebelliousness, and rebelliousness leads to bizarreness; retouch leads to painterliness, and painterliness leads to vulgarity - these are wrong directions.
When I was young I studied calligraphy of old masters to abstract their merit to form a style of my own. The success came when I turned old. Upon seeing my writing, people could not tell who my model was; thus, they began to call my calligraphy “compound script”.
About the author
Mi Fu (1051 - 1107)
Poem
Ink on rice paper
Mi Fu was a court painter. At the time when calligraphers struggled to free themselves from the influence of Tang masters and challenge them in expressions, his untrammeled semi-cursive script, which entitled him one of Four Song Masters, represented the achievement of the trend. He had a number of theoretical writings on Chinese calligraphy left behind. This one was compiled by later generation.
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