Yuan Dynasty Calligraphy

The calligraphy of Yuan dynasty plays an important role in the artistic history of Yuan, also serves as a link between past and future in the history of Chinese calligraphy. Criticizing Southern Sung calligraphy as superficial and vulgar, calligraphers raised a trend of thought in art, and they tried to establish the idea of "antique spirit" as one of the most important elements in art, and they emphasized the return to ancient model. During the decades of restoring ancient ways, four styles of calligraphy (regular script, official script, cursive writing and seal character) had made a new good progress. Among the representative calligraphers, Zhao Meng-fu gained the most outstanding achievements. Author analyzed several crucial factors of calligraphy of Yuan, in order to consider this matter in its entirety.Chapter one summarized the tendency towards idolizing the ancients of Yuan calligraphy. I was trying to reveal the background of the tendency and elaborate the representative calligraphers. Since there are lots of writings about Zhao Meng-fu, my research focused on his state of mind during his official experiences, calligraphy origins and so on.Chapter two was a brief introduction of the court artistic organization of Yuan-Kui Zhang Ge and its relationship with calligraphy. Author pointed out the faultiness and its influences to the art development of last years of Yuan. In the end, I referred to the appraising and collecting organizations and the famous collector-Princess royal.Chapter three put the emphasis on the minority nationality calligraphers. Dozens of Mongolians and colour-eyes were very good at calligraphy, I classified them in terms of their times. In a word, the calligraphy history of Yuan dynasty was created by calligraphers of various nationalities.Chapter four involved the calligraphy theory of Yuan. There are two kinds of calligraphy theory, the one is compositive writings, and the other is dispersive comment in preface and postscript. The outstanding comments are always distributed in the latter.Chapter five was about the revival of official script, seal character and a specific kind of cursive writing. Owing to the doctrine of restoring ancient ways, these ancient chirographies were revived again. While the official script and seal character of Yuan have their own unique aesthetic connotation, which is different from the ancient Qin and Han style. A distinguishing characteristic is the scholarly development, not merely being applied to hearstone. And Zhang cao (specific kind of cursive writing) was also revived with official script and seal character. It is pretty natural.