Exhibition dates: September 2, 2006 – January 21, 2007
Exhibition location: Galleries for Chinese Calligraphy and Painting
Bringing together masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's permanent collection with important loans from private collections, Brush and Ink: The Chinese Art of Writing explores the 1,600-year history of calligraphy from its genesis as a fine art in the fourth century A.D. The exhibition presents some 70 works of calligraphy executed by renowned traditional masters – Huang Tingjian (1045-1105), Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), Ni Zan (1306-1374), and Dong Qichang (1555-1636) – as well as by five contemporary artists. Early inscribed ritual bronzes, dynamic scholars' rocks, and objects made for the artist's study complement the calligraphy.
"In China, calligraphy – the art of writing – is regarded as the quintessential visual art, ranking above painting as the most important vehicle for individual expression," said Maxwell K. Hearn, Douglas Dillon Curator in the Department of Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum. "As such, calligraphy may be appreciated in much the same way as some abstract art—by following the artist's every gesture, re-experiencing the kinesthetic action of creation as preserved in the inked lines."
Chinese is a character-based writing system. Because each character has a recognized standard form and is composed following a fixed sequence of brushstrokes, it is possible to follow the hand of the artist as he reenacts this pattern. Not unlike a slalom skier following a fixed course, however, from the moment the calligrapher launches into his
writing, his every movement is a unique response to where he has come from and where he is going. From stroke to stroke and character to character, calligraphy is an indelible record of the highly personal solutions each writer creates in response to physical circumstances (the tactile qualities of brush, ink, and paper or silk), psychic circumstances (the writer's state of mind and emotions), and historical circumstances (how the artist chooses to acknowledge or to ignore the techniques and nuances that earlier practitioners have created in writing the same characters).
The exhibition opens with a brief introduction to the long evolutionary phase of Chinese writing (second millennium B.C.- eighth century A.D.) through paradigmatic works representing each of the five basic script types—seal, clerical, running, cursive, and standard. It also introduces Wang Xizhi (303-361), the artist credited with transforming calligraphy into a fine art. Organized roughly chronologically, the exhibition tracks the evolution of calligraphy through successive peaks of individual innovation to its recent transformation from a universal mark of scholarly status into a form of abstract art. Various aspects of calligraphy – such as its aesthetics, meaning of texts, techniques, and historical backgrounds – are discussed throughout the exhibition.
One of the highlights of the exhibition, Excerpt from "Song of Leyou Park" by Zhang Jizhi (1186-1266), exemplifies the lengths to which a piece of calligraphy might be appreciated solely for its aesthetic merits. So prized was Zhang's writing for its vigorous beauty that these eight characters were cut out of a handscroll and remounted as a hanging scroll for display in the tea ceremony in Japan. Because it begins in the middle of one couplet and ends halfway through another, it no longer makes any sense as a piece of poetry. Huang Tingjian's masterpiece, Biographies of Lian Po and Lin Xiangru (late 11th century), is among the many examples in the exhibition that carry potentially subversive sentiments. This powerful, 60-foot-long transcription of a historical text ends with the words: "Put the needs of the country first and private grievances last." The exhibition also includes a significant work by Fu Shan (1607-1684), who preferred his calligraphy to be "awkward and not skillful; ugly, not charming; deformed, not slippery; spontaneous, not premeditated." In his Frank Words of Farewell for Wei Yi'ao, a powerful work written on 12 hanging scrolls, Fu used eccentrically archaistic characters and obscure alternate forms that distorted classical models.
In recent times, many contemporary artists have continued to experiment with archaistic or idiosyncratic character forms, creating illegible texts or pseudo characters to express their independence from both traditional canons of connoisseurship and the scrutiny and censorship of government bureaucrats. By pushing calligraphic forms to new levels of abstraction, the five artists featured in the exhibition force viewers to focus on expressive content rather than on textual meaning. Many contemporary works seem more akin to conceptual art than to writing. But these artists' use of ink, paper, and traditional formats indicates their continued engagement with their heritage. As China's traditional culture rapidly becomes more remote from the present, these works testify to the durability of calligraphy as the quintessential Chinese art form.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Museum will offer gallery talks on January 3 and 16, both at 11:00 a.m.
The exhibition is organized by Maxwell K. Hearn. Graphic design is by Emil Micha, Senior Graphic Design Manager, and lighting by Clint Ross Coller and Richard Lichte, Lighting Designers, all of the Museum's Design Department.
The exhibition is featured on the Museum's Web site (www.metmuseum.org).
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September 29, 2006
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