Research On Form And Order Of Seal Art Of Pre-Qin Dynasties

The continuing accumulation of human reason and the spiritual yearning and construction of form and order run through the course of human history. The development process of form and order in Chinese calligraphy has a very similar synchronization character with the historical development of human society in the early historical period. The art of calligraphy as the outward embodiment of human cultural spirit will also gradually mature in terms of form and order with the improvement of the human rational spirit and the deepening understanding of form and order.Adopting the evolution of the form and order as the main line, with the historical and cultural background of Shang, Zhou, Qin Dynasties, this paper tries to demonstrate the fact that a construction process of form and order of calligraphy runs through the course of the Seal Arts, thus to reveal the value and significance of studying the form and order of calligraphy through inspecting historical development tracks of Seal Arts, such as the Oracles in the Shang Dynasty, the Inscriptions in Western Zhou Dynasty, and Qin stone. This paper is divided to four chapters:the first chapter is about to setting the line style. My views are here:line replaces the face, straight replaces bending, these are used to explore the profile model in the line style; the use and mature of seal is also cited to demonstrate the line style; the thick strokes went waning, so did the sharp curves, these were establishing the writing features; geometric abstraction line style is proposed here to explore the pattern-imitating profile line style. At the end of this chapter the core spirit of Chinese calligraphy-the line style -will be explored in its discovery, development and process.ChapterⅡis about the setting of orders of the characters' internal structure. Picture type profiling, symbolic simplification, and words with more than one writing forms are given to explore the stage of Oracle; the standardization of glyphs and symbolization of character are adopted to explore the stage of the Bronze Seal; unification and geometric abstraction of the internal structure are also my views on Qin stones stage. ChapterⅢis about the construction orders for arranging internal space of Chinese characters. Big varieties in size, the instability of internal space, and the coexistence of features of abstraction and pattern-orienting are the general features of the stage of Oracle; the gradual unification of the characters' size, standardization for arrangement of internal space, and the feature of pictography are my major views here; the establishment of the vertical center of gravity, the rules of symmetry and balance, configuration the schema and pre-built schema for being tight in the top part and loose below of the specific points of argument are also discussed here.Chapter IV is about constructing the order of scrolls. Oracle stage are featured by adusting to the shape, multi-block surface, writing from top to bottom to form into vertical lines; Inscriptions stage are featured by margin-leaving, writing to the bottom left and vertical lines through horizontal arraning; both the overall feeling of stabling balance through the arranging of the whole space and the decorative features through abstract geometric composition contribute to setting the model Qin stone, for its balance of simple schema. Finally, the conclusion should be that, the process of constructing order has always been along with the development history of Seal arts, which provides a new perspective to the History of Calligraphy. This paper is just the beginning on this field. It would be too much if it can attract attentions of other experts and scholars to study on the order of calligraphy and push forward the study of the history of Chinese calligraphy.