The Research Of The Style And Value Of Wen Zhengming’s Small Regular Script Calligraphy

Wen Zhengming has played a great role in the history of Chinese calligraphy and painting. In the field of calligraphy, he is good at all fonts including seal script, official script, regular script, running script, cursive, especially small regular script and running script. His achievement in small regular script has a close relationship with his learning from masters deeply and widely. He can inherit previous’tradition in history and form his own style successfully. In early years, he tried to resist weakness, comply with the rule of calligraphy solidly on the basis of inheriting the aesthetic style from Zhao Mengfu with sharp technique of writing mixed with hardness and vigorousness of Ouyang Xun and simpliness and wateriness of Zhi Yong. As a government officer of Ming Dynasty, the works in this period got less folder, fluctuated and more moderate affected by the era environment and the style from Ouyang Xun. However they seemed to be rigid on the account of pursuing the style of neatness, carefulness and preciseness. In the last times, he became very brave and felt self-confident to innovate, as a result of building his own style with free and smart technique of writing and wide and changing structure based on the Zhong You’s unpretending and classic style and Wang Xizhi’s wide, free and natural one.It is not accidental for Wen Zhengming to form his own style which exists several reasons potentially. Those three respects reflecting his small regular script is that:firstly the concept of calligraphy learning which advocates the rule, secondly the ethics, mean and gentle concept of Confucian, the open-minded and calm attitude of Taoism, the aim to get healthy and keep a quiet heart in Buddhism and the detached, elegant mind in Metaphysics which composite the content of the concept facing with the environment, lastly the possibility of the mundane life and the inevitability of the style of Wumen Calligraphy Faction. At the peak of his small regular script in his old years, his own style,that is moderate, pure, exquisite, relish, comely, flowing, exists uniquely in the history of small regular script.Wen Zhengming has created a great achievement and maked a far-reaching infection in his small regular script. Through carving monuments, he tried his best to spread the classic from Jin and Tang Dynasty and the excellent works by his own in order to the promotion of his calligraphy learning concept and aesthetic one. As a leader of Wumen calligraphy faction, the descendants and disciples who were guided by him played a decisive role in the regional cultrual fashion as a result of that Wen Zhengming’s small regular script became fashionable in the south of the Changjiang River. Even though Dong Qichang-the key member of literati painting competed with him at the end of Ming Dynasty, he had maked Wen Zhengming as a model of learning calligraphy especially when imitating his path of it at the early time. Later the influence of the art of Wen Zhengming’s calligraphy was long-lasting and broad. A large number of later learners has gotten a rich inspiration from Wen Zhengming’s style of small regular script until now.