On The Side

The debate on the side brush-tip of the calligraphy in the theory of past dynasties'literature presents the origin consciousness of the different value trends of the calligraphy side brush-tip in the context of different eras.It also forms a dialectical relationship with the argument of "centre brush-tip hit by every stroke".The discussions on the side and centre brush-tips created the many possibilities for the calligraphy brush usages and enriched the expressiveness of calligraphy.In this paper,the "side brush-tip" in calligraphy is selected as the research object.Through the literature review of ancient books,the concept of centre and side brush-tips and their relationships with and differences from each other are then illustrated.Taking Mi Fu Letters as the example,and confining the subject range,this paper traces the feature of side brush-tip of his calligraphy as early as Er Wang and Sun Guoting of Jin and Tang dynasties,and as late as the calligraphy with side brush-tip features of Dong Qichang and Wang Duo of Ming dynasty that was influenced by Mi Fu.In contrast to previous studies,this paper only takes the evolution of side brush-tip in the history of calligraphy as the background information,to avoid lengthy discussion.Therefore,this paper takes the individual example of Mi Fu Letters to explain the role of side brush-tip in Mi Fu Letters as the connecting link between the early and late calligraphy features.