"Pen as heavy as a thousand jins, at will it spreads and contracts (Calligraphy Volume)"

Author: Zhang Weisheng Compiler
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-02-01
Features: There is no ethnic script in the world that can be as artistic as Chinese characters, standing alongside painting, music, dance, sculpture, and literature as a self-contained system. The reasons for this mainly lie in three aspects. First, Chinese characters, which gradually evolved from pictographs to abstract symbols, are the fundamental elements of Chinese calligraphy art. Second, people have endowed the writing of Chinese characters with special material conditions and expressive spaces. Third, Chinese calligraphy art embodies profound cultural meanings, closely linked to the nation's way of thinking, aesthetic tendencies, customs, moral norms, political systems, literary history, and philosophical concepts. Calligraphy is a unique phenomenon of Chinese culture. It is an abstract art that relies on Chinese characters, takes lines and their constituent movements as its form, and expresses the realm of the spirit and embodies aesthetic ideals. Chinese characters gave birth to calligraphy. The history of calligraphy art has developed in sync with the history of China's written records. The history of Chinese calligraphy has almost become a special illustration of the history of Chinese social development. This book provides a detailed introduction to Chinese calligraphy, divided into "History," "Figures," "Appreciation," "Collecting and Preservation," and "Practice."