This will be in the background of my next comic! I think the amount of humour you can milk out of a throwaway gag is directly proportional to a) inanity and b) how much effort you put into it.
i thought it would add to the humour if i just stuck it into google translate. fun fact! written chinese has been standardised since 221 BCE. as someone who grew up in an english speaking country, it freaks me out SO MUCH that i can understand stuff written in the han dynasty. it feels forbidden lmao every time i visit a museum i'm afraid i'm gonna get Tower of Babble'd.
Here’s me practicing:
I customised my own brush so i could write it with the correct stroke weights and counts fhfhfgfg.
Brush presets in sketchbook pro, for those interested:
Figure 1. Jiang Biao’s fan calligraphy, UWM Special Collections (cs 000089).
Graduate Research: Chinese Scroll and Fan Work,
Part 10
For the next two weeks, we will focus on the artistic dichotomy of Zheng (正, normative or orthodox) and Qi (奇, unusual or strange ) between five fin de siècle calligraphic fans in our Zhou Cezong Collection of Chinese scroll and fan work. and the work of calligrapher Fu Shan (1607-1684). Zheng is a conservative style, relying on established styles and techniques. Qi is an idea of originality, requiring artists to break from social and political conventions, and challenging recognized norms. According to art historians Dora Ching and Katharine Burnett, the first half of the seventeenth century witnessed Qi as one the primary markers of Chinese art history, which was represented by Fu Shan and a few others. Fu claimed that he would rather have his calligraphy be awkward, not skillful; ugly, not pleasing; deformed, not slick; spontaneous, not premeditated. However, after 1670, this revolutionary pursuit was held in thrall to the prescribed reiteration of Zheng until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Kang Youwei (1858-1927) made an emotional harangue against the latter’s stultifying nature.
(From left to right): Figure 2 (a): Detail from rom Figure 1; Figure 2 (b): Detail from the Stele of Mount Yi; Figure 2 (c): Detail from Fu Shan’s work.
The fan in Figure 1 is a small seal script (first appeared in Qin Dynasty: 221-207 BCE) written by Jiang Biao (1860-1899), the educational commissioner who worked with Chen Sanli (see my previous blog) during Hunan Reform from 1897 to 1898. The format of his characters (Figure 2a) drew inspiration from the Stele of Mount Yi (Figure 2b), which contains a quintessential small seal script created around 219 BCE. Both of them emphasize a balanced, neat, and standardized form, symbolizing the main features of Zheng.
However, in Fu’s view, Zheng style was the degeneration of Chinese calligraphy, and only by deviating from this orthodoxy can one’s works attain vitality and the spirit of nature. One of his ways to achieve this vitality is to exaggerate parts of his composition. In Figure 2c, he first stylized the top half of the character to a wiry linearity; then he exaggerated the bottom half with a fluffy and ostentatious curvature. By these exaggerations, the character produces a strong visual contrast and awkward rawness, exhibiting a feeling of novelty and surprise.
Figure 3. Jin Nong’s Guanyin (Bodhisattva).
From Zhongguo meishu quanji, Huihua bian 11 中国美术全集， 绘画编, 第11卷 [The Collections of Chinese art: Painting Section, volume 11](Shanghai: Shanghai renmin meishu chubanshe, 1988), 29.
Fu’s exaggerated presentation of Qi is also manifested by another iconoclastic artist Jin Nong (1687-1763) in the middle of Qing Dynasty. As a great literati-artist, Jin’s paintings retained a charismatic, somewhat whimsical flavor which derived in part from his amateurish exaggeration. In Figure 3, the head of Guanyin (Bodhisattva) is foreshortened to a restricted rectangular space, while his swirling and gargantuan drapery is expanded and elongated to a scope that strains credulity. The stark contrast of the proportion between his head and body is reminiscent of Fu’s audacious approach in Figure 2c.
Figure 4. Peng Yunzhang's fan calligraphy, UWM Special Collections (cs 000094).
The second fan (Figure 4) is a clerical script by Peng Yunzhang (1792-1862), a high official in late Qing Dynasty. Derived from small seal writing, the structure of clerical style is undulating and flaring. For instance, the horizontal stroke will begin with a rounded head similar to a silkworm cocoon and end with a wavelike flourish resembling the tail of wild goose (see the last horizontal stroke in Figure 5). This style reached its zenith during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 CE); and it marks the conclusion of ancient pictographic script and heralds the beginning of the current system of writing.
Figure 5. Detail from Figure 4.
Figure 4 is a faithful imitation of the Ode of XiXia Pathway, which is a cliff stele designed to commemorate governor Li Xi’s achievement to construct a pathway along the face of a precipitous cliff around 171 CE. Peng’s fan possesses the easygoing poise and smoothness of the original stele. However, the character in Peng’s writing is too elegant and orthodox (Zheng), bordering on banality and rigidity. On the contrary, Xixia’s character is imbued with improvised kinetic variations.
Specifically, in terms of structure, Peng’s layout is properly arranged and equally spaced (Figure 6a), whereas in Xixia (Figure 6b), imbalance is the leitmotif---at first glance, the three parallel strokes on the top right give a vertiginous illusion and structural disharmony; nonetheless, they echo the three tilting horizontal strokes on the left. By following an invisible diagonal line, Xixia pushes a directional force that invites audiences to view the images from an oblique angle. This diagonal perspective does not run out of control; instead, it is perfectly buttressed by two prominent perpendicular strokes and two arch-like components in the character, thereby bringing a kinetic balance to the overall structure.
(From left to right) Figure 6 (a): Detail from Figure 4; Figure 6 (b): Detail from Ode of XiXia Pathway; Figure 6 (c): Detail from Fu Shan’s work.
As an advocate of Qi, Fu viewed imbalance as a barometer of his pursuit of Qi. Xixia’s masterful control between imbalance (diagonal kinesthetics) and balance (perpendicular buttress) might serve as the epiphany for his experimentation. In Figure 6c, the three skewed strokes on the top and the two leftward cocoon-shaped dots on the left are joined to create an imbalanced diagonal. However, the central 口and its two supporting vertical lines act as a counterweight to stabilize that imbalanced balance. In this case, the unusualness of Qi does not transgress the boundaries of accepted conventions; rather, it just brings a precipitous visual contrast to animate the stereotypical practices.
Figure 7. Eugen Kirchner’s November (from the MOMA collection).
The use of imbalanced balance in a diagonal composition can also be seen in Western paintings. In the aquatint November (Figure 7), Eugen Kirchner (1865-1938) adopts a similar arrow-like diagonal to push the silhouettes of people to their furthest depth (a compositional imbalance). The pronounced diagonal perspective amplifies the blusteriness of the weather (an environmental imbalance), and indicates a sense of dreariness and angst (a phycological imbalance) within the throng. However, the erection of the road sign in the middle right not only works as a supporting counterweight to the composition, but also attenuates the stress from the environmental and phycological imbalance. The road sign is unaffected by the wind and the people move freely to almost a same direction. Here, the imbalanced diagonal is balanced by a vertical sign in regards to the compositional, environmental, and phycological perspective.
View more posts from the Zhou Cezong Collection of Chinese scroll and fan work.
– Jingwei Zeng, Special Collections graduate researcher.
