Our summer Visiting Fellow Roland Buckingham Hsiao very kindly led a workshop on Chinese calligraphy a few weeks ago, which we greatly enjoyed. It was not only an opportunity to learn but to experience, which I am finding ever more important in my own research as I know are several colleagues in our network. I wanted to use this brief post to share some pictures and thoughts (with sincere apologies that the VIEWS blog has been so quiet recently, but only because we have been so busy working and attending conferences!).
Roland both teaches and researches calligraphy, placing an important emphasis on writing as practice – which means that research is not only theoretical but also practical, observational and experiential. At the VIEWS research cluster we all love our practical sessions because they’re fun, but they’re not only fun: they offer opportunities to apply theoretical ideas, to understand with the body as well as the mind, and to consider the relationships between how writing is done (in all its diverse contexts and materialities) and how its results appear.
We began with an introduction to the traditional styles of Chinese calligraphy, as well as the ways in which aspects of Chinese writing have been adopted for other traditions and languages. For me this raises a lot of interesting questions around the way we define calligraphy – is it about the aesthetics of the end result, the experience of the performance, emotional resonance or affect, the creativity of the forms, the use of particular implements and materials… or maybe some or all of these? One of the examples that particularly struck me in the presentation was the Lanting Xu (“Orchid Pavilion Preface”) of Wang Xi-zhi in the 4th century CE, famously written in a state of drunkenness and heightened emotion. The composition only survives in copies today, sadly, but what is fascinating is that not only was this copied so many times, but that master calligraphers copied it complete with its crossed out mistakes (see the image below, a copy by Tang writer Feng Cheng-su). The copies are not some perfected extraction of the text but rather capture something of the experience of its first writing.
So in this spirit we began our practical introduction to calligraphy, not with the more famous Cursive Script (草書 cǎo shū) but with Seal Script (篆書 zhuàn shū) – which Roland prefers to begin with because of the way it teaches you to control the brush and your movements. Where cursive writing allows flourishes and connections and varying pressure and line weight, seal script is governed by geometric principles, with a steady line weight and each character contained in its own invisible bounds. You can see below my attempts to copy characters in seal script (top) and cursive script (bottom). Don’t look too closely, I was only working character-by-character (not necessarily in order) without understanding, and some came out better than others! Each photo includes a facsimile of what I was copying on the left so you can see the real thing.
As with any practical experiment in writing, some of what I learned was unexpected. Compare some of our clay play days (including one we had earlier this term), where lessons have included discovering that when you impress your stylus to make a cuneiform wedge it points the opposite way to what you were expecting; realising that the amount of clay thrown up as you draw a line with a pointed stylus is a significant factor to be controlled (by wetness or quality of clay, fineness of implement, etc); and even things that may seem obvious in retrospect, like the fact that clay is very messy and you need cleaning materials nearby!
For my experiments with Chinese calligraphy (my first experience of trying it), I tried to learn by watching as well as acting, to think about my posture and breath, and to begin with a free hold of the brush with my elbow and wrist off the table. Starting that way helped me to learn how to control the brush. While the cursive script allows you to flick outwards, the seal script requires you to have a nice start and finish on each stroke, which can be achieved by rotating the brush and “tucking” the end in. I’m keen to try the clerical script at some point, which involves something of the controlled separation of seal script but some juicy flourishes too. For my own research I was also particularly interested in all the kinds of directionality at play, from the order of strokes and compositional elements in a character to their downward and then rightward direction of writing/reading – but that is something I will pick up on in more detail another time.
Another experimental aspect of the session involved using the implements and materials of Chinese calligraphy for a now-probably-extinct minority script, the Lisu syllabary (or Lisu bamboo script: see further here and here). This script was invented by a farmer called Ngua-ze-bo in the 1920s to write the Lisu language spoken in China (especially Yunnan), Tibet and Myanmar. Its signs combine an appearance similar to other minority scripts including Dongba and Geba with signs that look more similar to Chinese characters, and it was interesting to compare their shapes and structures (see my attempt to copy some signs below). The intention was also to explore possible ways of developing calligraphic traditions in living minority scripts, potentially contributing to their visual range.
The experience of the workshop was delightful. Roland is a very calming, attentive and generous teacher, which itself makes the world of difference. Our little group was, as always, warm and friendly, but also content to sit quietly together and concentrate on our individual efforts. I felt enveloped by a sense of peace and calm purpose – and on a Friday afternoon of a stressful week, it felt like what we all unexpectedly needed. Huge thanks to Roland for running this inspiring session!
~ Pippa Steele (PI of the VIEWS project)
