Wang Duo · From Copying to Creation

Author: Yuan Qiming
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: From copying to creation, it is a topic that every calligrapher must face. The artistic characteristics of calligraphy determine that it places greater emphasis on "copying" as an entry and practice method compared to other arts, while also pursuing the realm of "creation" as a transformation and sublimation. However, the relationship between the two is not a simple or absolute causal one but rather involves a transformative mystery that transcends causality. Since ancient times, accomplished calligraphers have all succeeded in mastering this mystery. However, due to differences in scholarly contexts, the ancients rarely preserved their copies, and their distinction between copying and creation was not as clear or well-defined as it is today. The practical trajectories and inner journeys of generations from copying to creation have also become blurred and lost over time. To promote the development of contemporary calligraphy and explore the transformative mystery from copying to creation, we have organized the writing of this series titled "From Copying to Creation." Through the excavation of methodologies and values in ancient calligraphic systems for progressing from copying to creation, these books take individual calligraphers or specific works as their subjects of explanation, integrating multiple types of information as closely as possible, such as origins and schools, imitation and innovation, subject and object, will and law, as well as textual materials and visual resources, in order to provide readers with beneficial reflections and insights. For those calligraphers in history who established schools and bridged past and present, we not only organize their works and documents related to copying and creation but also attempt to analyze their implicit or explicit, relatively rational approaches and transitional methods. For those brilliant and timeless masterpieces in calligraphic history, we not only analyze their technical features and artistic styles but also focus on how later generations understood, referenced, and selected them at different levels across various eras. Of course, during the writing process, the same source materials may lead to different perspectives, interpretive methods, and presentation effects; and the same interpretive subjects may involve some degree of overlap. But all of this will help us explore the points of convergence between tradition and contemporary from a broader, more flexible, and thus more comprehensive standpoint. This is also the overall effect that this series aims to achieve.