Study On The Stele Criticism In The Republic Of China

The stele study,flourishing in the middle of Qing dynasty and improved by Bao Shichen and Kang Youwei,had a profound influence on the calligraphy in the late Qing Dynasty.During the Republic of china,calligraphers began to review the stele study from a totally new perspective because of new discoveries in archaeology,the development of the printing & commmunication technology,the stimulus of Bao Shichen and Kang Youwei's extremist opinions “respecting the stele and restraining the rubbing”as wel as the stele study's own drawbacks.Many scholars and calligraphers such as Zhang Zongxiang,Liu Xianxin,Sha Menghai,Zhu Dake,Bai Jiao made a repeated research on the traditional inscription rubbings systematically and integrally from the theory to the pracitice.They also made a detailed research on many factors of tablet calligraphy such as the copy source,the writing and carving's quality,the rubbing's quality and the natural damage.Based on these researches,they proposed many different opinions and rebuttals about the stele study and Bao&Kang's “respecting the stele”.The calligraphers in this period gradually took up the creation road of “combining the stele and the rubbing,complementing on each other.”The calligraphers' criticism of the stele study in the Republic of china not only breaks Kang Youwei's “the stele is always better than the rubbing”,but also has a directive significance to our calligraphy learning.