The origin of calligraphy and painting

The birth of characters is a sign that human beings bid farewell to ignorance and move towards a civilized and rational era? Humans? Transition to civilization due to the invention of writing and its application in document records? .

As the carrier of China culture, the appearance of Chinese characters announced the beginning of Chinese civilization. At the same time, the unique cultural aesthetic psychological structure of the Han nationality also endows Chinese characters with unique calligraphy art.

There are various records about the origin of Chinese characters in ancient books and documents. "Zhouyi?" The copula says:? Fu, the king of the ancient world, looked up at the sky, looked down at the earth, looked at the culture of birds and beasts, looked at the adaptability of the earth, approached all things, and far away all things, so he started gossip to understand the virtues of gods and the feelings of all things. ? Come again:? The ancient rule, with the knot rule, sage easy to use books. ? Zheng Xuan Note:? Knotting a rope is a promise, a big event, and a big knot; Small things, sum up their tricks. ? From the standpoint of the development history of Chinese characters, there was a long pre-character historical stage before the Oracle character system came into being, and the structure and gossip obviously refer to the substitute symbols in the pre-character sense produced in this historical period. But neither tying knots nor gossiping can really exercise the function of writing tools. The non-ideographic nature of knotting can only help memory but not express thoughts. Eight symbols are extracted from the Eight Diagrams, which symbolize heaven, earth, thunder, wind, water, fire, mountain and ze respectively. Through the deduction and change of these eight symbols, the laws of movement of nature and society are revealed, which makes the Eight Diagrams take a big step forward in ideographic representation than tying a rope. However, the pan-natural symbolism of gossip itself makes it only have the function of expressing class concept, but it can't correspond to the real language from the level of text unit. In this way, there is still a long way to go between gossip and ideograms.

Widely popular in the middle and late Warring States period? Cangjie's theory of word creation? And have a great impact on future generations. Xunzi? Reveal the secret:? There are many writers, but Cang Xie is the only one. Did everything wrong? Five articles:? Cang Xie's works are also called "private" by boasters and "public" by naysayers. ? As a conventional symbol system, writing originates from the need of thinking and communication among human social groups and cannot be created by one person. The legend of Cangjie's word-making shows that Cang Xie, as a historian of the Yellow Emperor, has the power to collect and sort out words. Because ancient Chinese characters were monopolized by witch history and became the media of Jedi, fetishism of Chinese characters came into being, and then the creation of Chinese characters was attributed to the creation of a person with magical talent: the birth of Chinese characters was also endowed with magical and grotesque colors. (Cang Xie) The dragon's face is luxurious, his eyes are bright, he has real virtue, and he was born with the ability to write? Therefore, the change of the poor land, looking up at the round song of Kuixing, overlooking the mountains and rivers of turtles, birds and feathers, making words with the palm of your hand, it is raining, ghosts are crying at night, and dragons are hiding. ? In fact, writing is the representation of writing: the writing of any nation, like language, is gradually cultivated and refined by working people in their working life: from scratch, from less to more, from repeated attempts to conventions. It is by no means a temporary product of a person. It develops with the development of society and has a long course.

Aside from all kinds of myths and legends about the origin of Chinese characters, based on the earliest existing original written materials, the origin of Chinese characters can be traced back to Banpo and Yangshao pottery symbols around 4000 BC. Judging from the inscriptions on Yangshao pottery in Banpo, these symbols have some abstract ideographic properties, rather than realistic descriptions of natural animals and plants; Most of these engravings are carved on black wide stripes and black triangular stripes along the outer edge of the pottery bowl, with simple structure and mostly single-line combination. Guo Moruo believes that although the meaning of description is not clear, it is undoubtedly a symbol with the nature of words. Such as bouquets or family badges. China's later artifacts, whether pottery, bronzes or other finished products, have a tradition of naming objects, especially the bronzes of the Yin Dynasty, which have some characters depicting family emblems, which are very similar to these symbols. From the back to the front, just like from the lower reaches of the Yellow River to Xinghai, those nicks on painted pottery can definitely be said to be the origin of China characters, or the remains of China's original characters.

Although from the standpoint of writing, Yangshao Banpo pottery lacks rich composition in spatial modeling, the abstract grasp of line shows the complexity of our ancestors' consciousness in aesthetic experience, and the meaningful form of line shows its liberalization in the field of aesthetic practice. ? Lines and colors are two major elements of plastic arts. Comparatively speaking, color is a more primitive aesthetic form, because the feeling of color is directly based on the natural reaction of animals. Lines, on the other hand, are much more indirect and difficult to feel and understand: they need more elements and abilities of thinking, imagination and understanding. ? So, someone is thinking? Yangshao Banpo pottery carving itself first shows the ancestors' thinking about existence, reveals the essential meaning of Chinese characters, and also stipulates the aesthetics of abstract expression of Chinese characters. Cultural choice.

After the symbols carved on pottery in Banpo, Yangshao, the hieroglyphics of Dawenkou and Longshan in 5000 BC show that the evolution of Chinese characters is not necessarily in the same strain, and the sense of modeling is obviously strengthened. The symbols of pottery figurines have a complex spatial structure and modeling relationship such as balance and symmetry. . This shows that the pictographic symbols of Dawenkou have gone beyond the pure ideographic stage of Banpo lettering and entered a new historical development period of pictographic ideographic characters.

From Banpo Yangshao pottery carving to Dawenkou hieroglyphics and then to Oracle Bone Inscriptions writing system, Chinese characters have gone through a road from abstraction to pictograph and then to abstraction. This stipulates the abstractness of Chinese characters, and also avoids the danger that Chinese characters will be reduced to painting because the symbols are too specific and pictographic in the previous historical period. Has it always been in the history of writing development? Calligraphy and painting are homologous? This concept avoids and ignores the historical facts of the early development of Chinese characters, and only pays attention to some appearances of the early history of Chinese characters, which does not conform to the historical facts of the origin of Chinese characters. In fact, from the beginning, Chinese characters and painting took two diametrically opposite paths. In the writing period before Yangshao and Banpo, the abstraction of Chinese characters has been exposed, and the realistic tendency of painting has also been fully exposed at the same time. For example, the realistic painting image of people with fish lines on their faces and dancing hand in hand in groups is in sharp contrast with the abstraction and simplicity of pottery inscriptions.

Of course, it is undeniable that Chinese characters used to rely on hieroglyphs to get rid of their own survival crisis in its pre-writing period. With the development of society, people's cognitive field is constantly expanding, and their thinking and language level are also constantly improving. Many new things and new concepts must be embodied by language and writing, which makes lettering in a dilemma. The only way out is to rely on pictographs to expand the part of speech. In the early stage of the development of Chinese characters, pictographs formed an important turning point, which provided a channel for the expansion and proliferation of Chinese characters on the basis of abstract ideography, thus establishing a pictographic ideographic system of Chinese characters. Guo Moruo thinks? The origin of Chinese characters should be divided into two systems: the reference system and the pictographic system. Indication system should appear before pictographic system. Does it mean that things precede pictographs, that is, random descriptions precede pictures? . This understanding is undoubtedly in line with the historical facts of the origin of Chinese characters.

The cultural pattern of pictographic ideographic aesthetics supports the long development process of Chinese characters from Banpo pottery carving to Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and at the same time, it breeds unique calligraphy art in the matrix of Chinese characters. In the world, ancient Babylonian script and ancient Egyptian script were written in 4000 BC. Both of them have gone through the pictographic stage of 5000 years, and the reason why these two ancient pictographic characters disintegrated after A.D. was that their pure pictographic characters had no abstract ideographic support and became paintings that accurately described objective natural objects. Although the western phonetic symbols represented by ancient Greece are similar to the early Chinese characters in abstraction, they lack independent spatial modeling and composition changes in writing, and also lack the possibility of affinity with calligraphy art. The reason why Chinese characters can become the material of calligraphy art lies in the fact that their pictographs transcend the simulated objective objects and gain independent symbolic significance. ? A word represents not only an object or an object, but a fact or process, including subjective meaning, requirements and expectations. ? This abstraction and density make Chinese characters avoid falling into the quagmire of realistic painting. At the same time, the abstraction of Chinese characters is based on pictographs, which makes thousands of forms in nature provide inexhaustible text schemas for Chinese characters and constitute the material basis of calligraphy art.

Related knowledge: various calligraphy styles

1: Oracle Bone Inscriptions

Ancient Chinese characters are the names of characters and the oldest existing characters in China. Carved on tortoise shells and animal bones, it was first used for divination. After divination, the period of divination, the name of the diviner and the content of divination are all engraved with a knife next to divination.

Some are engraved with good or bad luck that will come true in a few days. Scholars call this kind of record Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which is a divination of the future outcome, and it was more popular in the Yin and Shang Dynasties. Oracle Bone Inscriptions was discovered in the 25th year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty (A.D. 1899), which is a record of royal divination in the late Shang Dynasty. It was discovered more than 3000 years ago in Xiaotun Village, Anyang, Henan Province. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is an early script that we can see, and it is also the first treasure in the history of China's calligraphy. His brush strokes become thick, Fiona Fang and light, with a certain sense of rhythm. Fiona Fang is full of turning points, steep in square and soft in round. Its lines are more harmonious and fluent than those of Wen Tao, which lays the foundation and rhythm for the unique line art of China's calligraphy. Oracle Bone Inscriptions was tied into a rectangle, which laid the foundation of Chinese font. Oracle Bone Inscriptions's knot is shaped with the body, so let it be. Its structure varies in length, Fiona Fang is changeable, long and flat follow the shape, font changes greatly, and it is scattered harmoniously. The writing principles of Chinese characters have been generally established in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, such as rugged, evasive, bow-echoing, unstoppable and so on.

2. Jinwen

A literal name in ancient Chinese characters. Shang, Western Zhou, Spring and Autumn and Warring States. This is an inscription cast or carved on the tripod in metal, which prevailed in the Zhou Dynasty. This is another monument in the history of calligraphy in China. Attached to the bronze ware, the tripod was cast to "make people know God's treachery", so it was a ritual vessel for religious sacrifice. Bronze inscriptions are also called Zhong Dingwen, Wen Qi and ancient prose. Compared with Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the lines of inscriptions cast together with bronzes are more rigid and powerful, and the pictographic meaning of characters is stronger. The shape of bronze inscriptions changes with the development of the times. The Yin Dynasty was similar to Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and it gradually became neat and majestic at the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, and similar to Xiao Zhuan at the end of the Warring States Period. The earliest bronze inscriptions were found on bronzes unearthed in the middle of Shang Dynasty. Although there are not many materials, they are all earlier than Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin Ruins. The Zhou Dynasty was the golden age of bronze inscriptions, with the most unearthed inscriptions.

The main works of this period are: Li Chan, Death of Heaven, Big Yu Ding, Wall Panel, Shi Sanpan, Mujizi's White Plate and Ding Song. Among them, Simu Wuding, Pan and Mao are the most famous and have the highest artistic achievements.

3. Stone carving

Stone carvings originated in the Zhou Dynasty and flourished in the Qin Dynasty. During the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, Qin's Drum Book was the earliest stone inscription in China. On the granite drum stone of 10, there are ten four-character poems carved to praise the hunting situation of Qin, so it is also called hunting. Legend has it that the earliest stone carving is Shen Bei in Xia Dynasty, and the style of carving poems is similar to the Book of Songs. Shi Guwen's calligraphy style belongs to the seal script system, and its font is similar to the seal script contained in Shuo Wen Jie Zi. Its calligraphy value is comparable to that of Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen, and calligraphy has always been highly respected. The main works are: Shi Guwen, Yishan stone carving, Taishan stone carving, Langya stone carving and Huiji stone carving.

4. Bamboo ink

Calligraphy is the most important art, but the original calligraphy before Qin and Han dynasties can only be seen in Jian and Bo Meng's books. In ancient times, bamboo was used as the main material, and bamboo slips were woven with beef tendon, silk thread and hemp rope. The earliest archaeological discoveries of bamboo slips and silk ink include Qin slips unearthed in Yunmeng, Hubei Province, the book of the Warring States League unearthed in Houma, Shanxi Province (the book of the League was written on a stone policy or a jade policy), and the silk book of the Warring States Period unearthed in Mawangdui, Changsha. China's calligraphy reached the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period after Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen. Due to the warlord regime, the figures since Shang Dynasty took different development paths in the vassal states? The situation of family struggle. For example, the "Tadpole Prose" in the Northern Jin Dynasty and the "Bird Book" in wuyue, Chu, Cai and other countries are even more tortuous. Bronze inscriptions in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period are not as thick as those in the Western Zhou Dynasty, but have been replaced by slender figures, showing a mellow aesthetic feeling, such as "a mirror of Fu Cha, the king of Wu". This period left many ink marks, such as bamboo slips, silk books and league books.