Chinese Calligraphy
“Chinese calligraphy evokes a complex beauty by the
simplest of means. A single character, a
single stroke, even a single dot can reflect a calligrapher's talent and
learning, his intuition and insight, and all that encompasses his inner spirit.
Moreover, this remarkably spontaneous yet
premeditated act of self-expression embraces an artistic tradition thousands of
years old, and whole epochs of philosophy, religion,
and culture. No wonder the Chinese and
other Oriental cultures have long regarded calligraphy as one of their supreme
artistic accomplishments.
We do not need to be able to read, speak, or write Chinese in order to be moved by Chinese Calligraphy. For centuries, calligraphers have approached calligraphy as an art that uses the forms of the Chinese written language primarily as a means of self-expression, not a means of communication. Calligraphy shares the same formal elements of line, plane, and space common to all graphic arts - East and West - and all forms of linear expression. For people in the West, a piece of calligraphy can suggest an expressionist or abstract work of art that moves us long before we know it as the work of a certain calligrapher written at a certain age during a certain dynasty, in a certain script form with a particular kind of brush, ink, and paper, reflecting a certain mood and range of influences. The appreciation of Chinese calligraphy depends more on us than the calligraphy itself.”
Four Thousand Years of
Chinese Calligraphy by Léon Long-Yien Chang and
Peter Miller
Chinese calligraphy forms the foundation of all
Chinese brush painting. The skills
acquired through diligent practice with a competent teacher over many years
enable the artist to express feeling, and spirit in pictorial forms.
Following the classical Chinese calligraphic
tradition, Sifu Lo's Chuan Shu style
calligraphs published in the program book were chosen solely for their
aesthetic qualities, not for their meaning.
On the other hand, his brush renderings of fish were chosen precisely
for their symbolic meaning of "Abundance", as a wish for abundance to
everyone attending the event.
The Chinese calligraphs for "Wu Mei Pai",
"Hsieh Peng", and "Ken Lo" shown in their respective pages
were written in the Kai Shu style by
the Grandmaster's daughter, Peng Gim Yun, a respected calligrapher and brush
painting artist living in
The Relationship between Wu
Mei Pai and Art
To understand this relationship it is important to
first mention the "Five Pillars of Education" and the "Five
Excellences" in traditional Chinese culture. The Five Pillars of Education are Mei (Beauty), Tai (Health), Ji
(Wisdom), Hop (Harmony), and Duk (Virtue). The Five Excellences are Art, Music,
Literature, Martial Arts, and Medicine.
In studying any of the Five Excellences, the Five Pillars are applied.
In Martial Arts this means our movements must be
beautiful, benefit our health, increase our wisdom, be harmonious, and teach us
virtue. Traditional Chinese scholars
studied the Five Excellences to understand the different aspects of the world
around them. They studied Art to understand beauty and aesthetics, Music to
understand tone and rhythm, Literature to understand meaning and history,
Martial Arts to understand power and conflict, and Medicine to understand
science and healing. All of the Five
Pillars are used to learn and master these fields of study. The Five Pillars and Five Excellences are
therefore interwoven into a fabric that ties
together seemingly disparate fields of study into an integrated whole,
expressing at once the Chinese view of perceiving the whole and its function
rather than its parts.