Research On Zhang Wentao’s Calligraphy

Zhang Wentao was an outstanding poet and critic as well as a famous painter,but his reputation in calligraphy was not acknowledged. However, Zhang Wentao might be called a master of calligraphy in all styles, especially in cursive hand. Learning widely from others’ strong points, he absorbed traditional achievements and unfolded both traditional and new ideas in his works. Throughout his life, Zhang devoted all his time in creation of poetry, calligraphy and painting.Modeling himself after Mi Fu, he expressed gloom, intangibility and strength in his calligraphy with a lot of interest, and there is kind of ups and downs, strokes break even and steady in his style. This is really a calligrapher’s quality of imitation of ancients and innovation. Therefore, based on his achievements in calligraphy, we hold it is significant to study Zhang wentao. In the introduction of this article, the author states the present situation on the study of Zhang Wentao, showing the “short board” in the academic research. The second chapter mainly elaborates Zhang”s life course and achievements for the following aspects reference. The third chapter focuses on the discussion of Zhang’s “self-cultivation” from the four aspects of ancient books, poetry, painting and calligraphy. The next chapter discusses Zhang’s calligraphy origin, from the “brushwork”, “ink”, “words”, “art of composition” and so on. The fifth chapter is a summary of Zhang Wentao’s view points on calligraphy:to cultivate oneself before writing with painstaking repair; to learn but not to stick to tradition against simulation, and what he advocated most is spirituality, clear interest and countenance in calligraphy. The sixth chapter is a detailed discourse on Zhang’s calligraphy features and forming reasons in three respective stages. The seventh chapter, based on the discussion of Zhang’s influences on arts of calligraphy, the author summarizes some Zhang’s excellent calligraphy works, and points out his indispensable role and status in the history of Chinese calligraphy. The last chapter states that the author’s original intention of writing this paper relies on the lack of systematic and profound research on Zhang’s calligraphy art in the academic field.The study of Zhang’s calligraphy can help us make a detailed understanding of his calligraphy, and how important talent and learning is to an artist; it can deepen our descendents’ understanding of calligraphy theory to make up for their lack of calligraphy; it can display variety of styles to compensate for the lack of previous research on the calligraphy; it can make us understand better the importance of self-cultivation to calligraphers and it can remind the contemporary people to avoid external principle mistakes of creation behind the prosperity of calligraphy at present,among of which, the first point is the most important. Zhang Wentao has been away for more than two hundred years, yet his calligraphy still inspires us today. So It isnecessary to make full use of his existing calligraphy research achievements and rich network resources to push the research toward a higher level.