From An Unconscious Reproduction To A Self-conscious Creation In The Acquisition Of Traditionally-established Brushstrokes

The thesis, out of the technique-oriented perspective of traditional Chinese calligraphy, takes a first glance at the traditionally-established standards for the fundamental techniques in the form of systematic strokes as well as their related ideas, from which are draw their internally evolutional mechanism and external varieties of form languages. These two aspects enable us to make an in-depth exploration of the process of acquisition to model strokes, including the specific qualifications as the object, the sensitivities of the subject and acceptable principles as well as the possible solutions to self-perfection of form languages, particularly, an emphasis is placed on an analysis of how the dynamic movements of handing brush pen and visually forceful strokes interact as both cause and effect. In essence, a command of strokes manifests itself as a two-way progress on which techniques and personalities join in a fashion of mutual compensation with a perfect harmony of unconscious reproduction and self-conscious creation.Unconscious reproduction is a matter of exploration of the traditional heritage, with partiality for a command of high-quality strokes and specific qualifications, aiming at restoring a sequence of instinctive movements and spontaneous performance by means of repeated stimulation and giving due consideration to universal aesthetic criteria as a spiritual orientation in an attempt to remove and eliminate the negative transfer of the dynamic faulty formulation previously acquired and strive to consolidate the positive transfer of the well-controlled movements and the sensitive modes of perception.Self-conscious creation means to transcend and break through the limit of traditional stereotypes to distinguish oneself by expressing oneself, laying particular stress on individual aesthetic preference and subjective intervention as well as spiritual reflection of the inner world on the basis of all-round technique optimization and language purification in an attempt to absorb and digest the traditional essence to establish an independent system of individually-styled languages on the way to accomplishment of ever lasting self-cultivation.In this progressive orbit, intuition is expected to guide, and regulate and evaluate the individual technique performance and aesthetic preference and even activate sub-consciousness to rectify the deviation of perception by some universal criteria. Meanwhile, in line with the expression of the inner truth, intuition tends to mediate conflicts between the acquired techniques and personalities for the purpose of sensitivity promotion and sensibility perfection.Seen from above, the text, rather than focusing on ideal stroke-acquiring methods from a purely technical point of view, makes an analysis of some universal norms and their relative exceptions, namely some decisive commonly accepted techniques and the other imperceptible ones. The former refers to the dominant function of the vertically-shaped strokes and a trunk stream of related specific qualifications, and the latter, consists of the strokes shaped by twisted brush tip and revolving fingers in a circle with irresistible force, and some imperceptible micro-techniques as well as super-forms hidden in the visible forms. Out of ignorance of the interactive relationship between them, a sort of reversed intervention of the fluctuating strokes deep into other styles of scripts with an end of the twisted strokes resulted in a gradual decline of the cursive-styled scripts and a fashion of passive imitation of the traditional stereotype.In the view of this, an effort is made to establish a systematic methodology of stroke acquisition on the tripartite principle of Top Priority for Intuition, Technique as a Standpoint and self-identification on the way from an unconscious reproduction to a self-conscious creation.