Inheriting Tradition And Innovating To Make Achievements

Dong Qichang and Bardashanren, calligraphy maestros in the Ming and Qing dynasty, always win the admiration, attention and thinking of descendants for their distinctive art characteristics and deep contents of aesthetics. Bardashanren is known for the fact that he admired and learned from Dong. Since middle age he had engaged in studying Dong's calligraphy for about twenty years, even to make images and verve much alike. His works can almost be mistaken for the genuine. He changed his late style so suddenly as to create a new style which are totally different from Dong's calligraphy. But he enjoyed Dong's calligraphy all his life and never changed his love all the time. Their unique student and teacher's art relationship inevitably leads future generations to explore from the different levels. In this paper, we compare their representative works. From various components of the calligraphy art (the usage of pen and ink, the word unity, art of composition and verve style), we upgrade to explore the spirit of essence of traditional Chinese culture, and come to the most essential art and artistic pursuit laws through comparative analysis. That is, although the elements of art and corresponding forms have their own postures and they are protean, the development of arts and the human spirit embodied are common, and remain unchanged forever. Thus such research undoubtedly has practical significance in the course of its going forward.