Research On The Calligraphy Thoughts Of Bai Jiao's Manuscripts On Calligraphy

Bai Jiao was one of the outstanding masters of Model Calligraphy in the modern history of calligraphy.He devoted his whole life to the art of calligraphy and made a thorough study of the theory of calligraphy,which directly traced back to the Jin and Tang Dynasties,and broke Dong Qichang's argument that there was no way to study the calligraphy of Jin and Tang Dynasties.In addition to his calligraphy creation,in order to revive Model Calligraphy and popularize calligraphy,he once opened a forum to teach,and wrote a number of lecture notes and calligraphy treatises.The essence of his life's treatises is Manuscripts on Calligraphy,which is hundreds of words short,but every word is pearl.As Bai Jiao's treatises in his later years,the Manuscripts on Calligraphy is all about his life's experience of learning calligraphy.It only contains a few hundred words,but covers how to learn calligraphy,the relationships between brush and ink,space and frames,the rules,the movements,virtual and real in calligraphy and so on.As Mi Nangong(Mi Fu)said,"most of the books and treatises in the past dynasties were devoted to the use of words and paid attention to the magnificence of the words,which was not helpful for later scholars to learn calligraphy.”While Bai Jiao's Manuscript's on Calligraphy,with only a few hundred words,narrates the process of learning calligraphy,the relationship between brush and ink and the principle of writing.It may be said that it has reached what Sun Guoting called "the words are simple,but the theory is rich,so that people can understand at a glance."For the study of calligraphy theory,Bai Jiao's Manuscripts on Calligraphy is undoubtedly a good bridge.When we study ancient calligraphy theory,there is a certain gap in the use of characters and meanings due to the great distance between different times.The same word has different meanings in different times,so there may be misunderstandings in the interpretation.However,Bai Jiao is close to our times,which is a good communication bridge for us to study the calligraphy theory of predecessors.Compared with other essays such as Talks on Calligraphy,his Manuscripts on Calligraphy is a systematic calligraphy treatise,which can be said to be a careful study of every word and has a high learning value.It is the essence of his lifetime calligraphy theory works.It can be seen that Bai Jiao's Manuscripts on Calligraphy has certain practical and theoretical significance and value for us to understand and study the calligraphy and theory of Bai Jiao and learn Tablet Calligraphy of Jin and Tang Dynasties through Bai Jiao as a bridge.Therefore,this paper,based on Bai Jiao's Manuscripts on Calligraphy,and combining the calligraphy works and treatises of previous calligraphers,studies Bai Jiao's calligraphy thoughts from five parts:the advance and retreat of the brush;the shade variation of ink;the expression of the relationship between one Chinese character,a line or even a text in the same respect;through the "tangible" and "invisible" in calligraphy to explain the relationship between "Ontology and Methodology",and how to learn calligraphy from rudimentary to mastery and then write your own style.