As you enjoy the strokes of voluptuous beauty, when burying yourself in the huge masses of Chinese calligraphical works, what captures your attention must be something more than calligraphy itself, the Chinese histo-cultural tradition, into which the calligraphy was born and with which it has been developing as a form of art. This makes you wonder: Where does the calligraphical beauty come from? Like any other form of art in the world, calligraphy in China has owed its glory to its creator, the calligrapher. “Art is life,” as is believed. It was the many legendary lives calligraphers lived and are living in the course of Chinese social development and civilization that gave birth to the Chinese calligraphy, the “most Chinese” form of art, and have nourished it. As Liu Xizai, a renowned calligrapher in Qin dynasty (1616-1911), rightly observed, “A calligraphical work of art is what it mirrors. It is the index of the learning, the talent, and the aspiration of the calligrapher. In a word, it is what the calligrapher is.”
When it comes to the beauty of brush calligraphy, Wang Xizhi (303-361) and Yan Zhenqing (709-785) are household names in China and the stories about them are told from one generation to the next. Wang was a calligrapher who could eclipse all his contemporaries in Eastern Jin period of Southern and Northern dynasties (420-589). Acknowledged as the “calligrapher-sage,” he is even believed to be the greatest artist in the history of the field. While his authentic works can hardly be available due to the passage of time, his masterpieces are still commended as the highest realm a calligrapher can reach.
