For all of these artists, Chinese calligraphy represents the starting point of the creative process but not the finishing line. Both of them reflect the aim of Chinese contemporary society at dialectically facing their past tradition and at opening to a new one as well. This paper aims at showing how still valid and extremely productive are both these two theoretical and creative/practical approaches to Chinese calligraphy in China nowadays. The result is the creation of works of art that could be assimilated to universally comprehensible forms of art, such as: Abstract art, Abstract expressionism, Conceptual art, Performance art, Contemporary dance, Multimedia art, and even Street art. Their Art aims at a radical and total transformation of calligraphic art, annihilates Chinese tradition, rejects the use of legible characters, experiments with new languages and new media within the idiom of international contemporary art, in order to make people reflect upon human condition or to challenge conventional thinking. It is “anti-calligraphy”: the contrary, the deconstruction, and the negation of the traditional calligraphy. Wang Nanming and the Avant-garde think that “contemporary calligraphy is not calligraphy yet”. They still remain deeply rooted in the signified system of Chinese writing, even if they break with the strict rules of Chinese classical aesthetic, contaminating their art with Western elements, especially from abstract art, and focusing on the stylistic exploration (which means a pictorial approach to calligraphy, a drastic reduction of the number of characters, a reshaping of characters). Wang Dongling and the Modernists think that, despite many changes and influences, we can still refer to the traditional calligraphic lexicon to describe the calligraphic production of contemporary Chinese Art. A vivid debate on Contemporary Chinese Calligraphy is involving art critics in China nowadays. Contemporary Chinese Calligraphy has gradually lost its connection with Chinese language and has gradually strayed from the concept of linguistic unity which comprehends sound, signified and graphic sign. Since the mid-1980s Chinese Calligraphy Art has undergone a radical change and has opened itself to experimentation. Thus, to appreciate this art, we must retrace the visible force-form of a piece of calligraphy. The abstract quality of Chinese calligraphy in large measure consists of the aesthetic effect of shi actualized in calligraphic form. I conclude that understanding Chinese calligraphy as "force-form" has clear implications for calligraphic education and appreciation. On the other, the forms of successful calligraphic works are never static rather, they should be filled with internal force (shi). On the one hand, calligraphic shi, as an aesthetic effect, is attached to the visible xing. This article explicates how calligraphic xing and shi are mutually dependent. The second and the third parts discuss shi as it is used in classical calligraphic theory, clarifying how calligraphic shi, as a kind of directional force, persists through the three aspects of calligraphic form: brushstrokes, characters, and compositional structure. The first part of this article starts with a discussion of xing in early Chinese aesthetic discourses before turning to the term's usages in texts on calligraphy. This article explains the xing (form) of Chinese calligraphy, proposing that calligraphic xing is inseparable from shi (force), a key aesthetic concept in Chinese calligraphy criticism and Chinese aesthetics at large.
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