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Finding
a clearing in the midst of the polarized divides - a calligraphic
departure
Doris
Sung
To
the non-practitioners, Chinese calligraphy may seem to be
a difficult and unattainable cultural practice. In the film
Hero (dir. Zhang Yimou, 2002), calligraphy is portrayed as
something that could only be mastered through years of kung-fu
practice. As fictional as it may seem, the film has pointed
out a few elements that are essential to the art form and
practice: 1) Calligraphy is somatic, it relates to the mind-body
of a person; 2) Calligraphy is a distinctive semiotic system
that departs from the literary function of a language; 3)
Calligraphy communicates power.
In
the past few thousand years, calligraphy is practiced by millions
of Chinese-speaking people, as well as by non-Chinese speakers
who venture to understand the Chinese culture through this
linguistic and artistic form. Regardless of whether a calligrapher
has a conscious understanding of the essences of the practice,
the moment a person picks up a brush to practice calligraphy,
he or she is participating in the grand spectacle of an empowered
cultural form. As an artistic practice, Chinese calligraphy
went through stages of development before it became a premier
art form. Before late Eastern Han (25-220 A.D.), Chinese calligraphy
was regarded as a pragmatic occupation of the clerical set.
As far as its aesthetic function was concerned, calligraphy
was used only as a craft to embellish the content of certain
text or objects. During the last years of Eastern Han, scholars
began to uphold the idea that literary performance was the
most trustworthy gauge of a person's inner worth, from that
point on, calligraphy comes to the forefront as one of the
disciplines that enabled self-cultivation.
The
concept of self-cultivation through literary learning is exemplified
in the discourse of wen. The character wen first appeared
on bronze vessels dating back to the 10th Century B.C. The
concept of wen represents various levels of meanings.
At first, it conveys the idea of a pattern, and later comes
to mean the exemplary behavioural pattern. Wen eventually
comes to mean "written text" and "culture." Through different
stages of Chinese cultural development, wen has become
a conception that embodies political, social, cultural and
aesthetic inklings. The development of calligraphy as a premier
art in China goes hand-in-hand with the ideal of self-cultivation
through wen. Through this ideological transformation,
calligraphy as an aesthetic medium has transcended its materiality
to embody a set of principles and modes of expression. Calligraphy
becomes a discourse in which the scholarly ideals were construed
and asserted.
Fast-forward
to the present, Chinese calligraphy runs the gamut from a
form of high art to the general notion of writing with brush
and ink. As a social practice, it still strongly communicates
the ethos of elitism and power. A case in point is the calligraphic
inscriptions by influential figures that adorn tourist spots
and facades of buildings, or the highly praised mobao(treasured
calligraphy or painting) by famous people. This kind of social
calligraphy recalls the notion of calligraphy as extension
of personhood and exemplary behaviour. This embedded linkage
between calligraphy and personal standing has made the division
between the artistic practice and social functionality of
calligraphy rather fluid. Calligraphers are well aware of
this ethos about their practice, many fear the prospect of
deviating from the rules set by their predecessors. In form
and content, calligraphy has been slow in transforming itself
to keep up with the fast-paced society. What role, then, does
calligraphy play in the rapidly growing Chinese contemporary
art world? How are the so-called traditional practices being
conceived in the new cultural landscape?
With
these questions in mind, the intention of this exhibition
and symposium is to bring together the old and new. The fourteen
artists bring to this exhibition their unique interpretations
of the essential elements of Chinese calligraphy, as well
as to defy the aesthetic, cultural and social boundaries of
the art form. By putting such an exhibition together, we run
the risk of being seen as nostalgically hanging onto a cultural
practice that is losing ground in the field of Chinese contemporary
art - the hotbed that breeds works that increasingly utilized
digital, photo-based or time-based media. The Chinese cultural
landscape is seeing a kind of polarization. On the one hand,
works that are categorized as "contemporary art" present up-to-the-minute
reports of the socio-cultural landscape; on the other hand,
the "traditional" painters and calligraphers are insisting
on the flower-bird-insect-fish genres, upholding the views
that only these genre paintings and calligraphy that reflect
the minds of their ancestors could be truthfully called Chinese
art and culture.
With
this event, it is our intention to seek a land in the middle,
a clearing that stands in the midst of the polarized divides.
We aim to bring together differences to produce new meanings.
We start with one thing and hope to plant the seeds for many
more.
A
long version of this essay will be forthcoming on this site.
The long essay will reflect on the art works in this exhibition.
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