In Qing Dynasty, Emperor Kangxi was especially fond of Dong Qichang’s style of penmanship, while Emperor Qianlong favor Zhao Mengfu’s writing style. After Jiaqing Emperor’ reign, thanks to the calligraphers and theories of Bei school, Bei writing had started to become a trend. On the contrary, the writing styles from Wang Xizhi, and his son, Wang Xianzhi’s Tei school and the studies around them began to fall out of the leading roles among calligraphers.
In contemporary calligraphy, the styles of Bei and Tei strive to compete one another. And the fusion of both styles has developed into a new writing trend and has started to be seen in recent works increasingly.
From the 17th century, the western atheistic made its way into the eastern world. The art community attempted to interpret the beauty of traditional eastern art with the new perspective and narrative of the western atheistic.
From the perspective of History of Chinese Aesthetic Consciousness by Zhu Zhirong and Yang Mingang, this paper aims to seek for the characteristics within the aesthetic consciousness in the study of Bei and Tei, and to view the aesthetic trait and the quality of writing styles in this period of time form the works and the styles of penmanship created by the modern calligraphers.
Further in this paper, we attest to the aesthetic theories by works of calligraphers. We then elaborate on the idea of aesthetic consciousness and the fusion of both styles mentioned above in the form of a monograph, hoping to give a comprehensive view on the topic and to inspire fellow Chinese calligraphy enthusiasts to keep on seeking the beauty in Chinese calligraphy.
In chapter one we will discuss the motivation, purpose, structure and limits, method, and definition of this research.
The second chapter focuses on the evolution in aesthetic consciousness of styles of Bei school, Tei school and the fusion between the two. From the overview of studies of stele and exemplary and their natures in aesthetics, we would search for their inner relation in the evolution of writing styles and their traits.
Next, we will further depict the connection between western aesthetics and Chinese calligraphy to deepen the understanding of Chinese calligraphic aesthetics by selecting some works from both sides that represent beauty or spectacularity that overlap with Bei or Tei aesthetics.
Chapter three discusses the inspirations and impacts of the integration of Bei and Tei in the modern Chinese calligraphy community. Furthermore, we will talk about how external changes such as politics, economy, education, community interaction, and the modification of writing tools can affect the aesthetic and the making of writing styles of calligraphy.
Then we will divide the timeline into two parts: ancient times and modern times to see the Chinese-writing regions in eastern Asia, where the integrated writing style holds the majority in the calligraphic community. We will be focusing on China, Taiwan, and Japan, where calligraphy is strongly connected with politics and diplomacy, and dig deeper into the transition in calligraphy, in the hope to show a comprehensive view of how the the integrated writing style has developed.
In chapter four, five and six we will separately explore the integrated writing style and its iconic artists in China, Taiwan, and Japan, and how the three regions’ calligraphers interact.
We will be focusing on their works in their mid and later times, and discuss mostly their running script and grass script works, which is much easier to showcase the traits in the integration of Bei style with Tei styles, and a number of works in seal script, clerical script and standard script, then analyze their work through the traditional traits such as stroke, structure, use of ink and the author’s writing experience to comment on their achievements and impacts to the following generations.
In chapter seven we will sum up how both Bei and Tei aesthetics deepen modern Bei-Tei integrated style and coexist with it, to guide calligraphy learners with direction and find examples of modern Bei-Tei integrated trend.