A study on the diffusion of Yu Youren’s calligraphy
SUMMARY
Yu Youren's calligraphy skills covered all kinds of scripts of Chinese characters, including steles, inscriptions, and calligraph copybooks. But he preferred to the most expressive cursive script. He is an unsurpassed peak in the calligraphy world on both sides of the Taiwan Strait!
Around the early 1930s, in his middle age, his calligraphy reached the first peak. With Xingkai (standard and running scripts), based on the stele style of the Han-Wei dynasties, become so majestic that shocked the calligraphy world in mainland China at that time! This is an artistic realm that is difficult to achieve for ordinary people in their lifetime, but he turned to transform the cursive script without any hesitation, recruited many talents with a background in philology or calligraphy, and established the Standard Cursive Script Society to collect, select, organize and edit cursive script characters. From writing those by himself and publishing standard “thousand characters” books in later years, the inscriptions and ancient writers copybooks were integrated, hard and soft, majestic and vigorous were all immerged, presenting the second peak of Yu’s calligraphy career, which no one can match, he got the reputation of "The Great Master of Cursive Scripts" by Taiwan calligraphy circle for his great achievements.
Yu had a profound cultural heritage. His calligraphy works not only showed the literati style, but also possessed smart and natural characteristics. He is famous and loved by the art world till now. Therefore, he has many followers and it has become a learning trend, and his works are remaining high in the auction market. During the fifteen years he lived in Taiwan, he was recognized that his masterpieces had reached a sophisticated and mature period with age by Taiwan academic and calligraphy circles. His greatest contribution is to organize completely and standardize the cursive scripts, which promoted Taiwan's stele studies and had a huge influence on Taiwan calligraphy.
The classic calligraphy has been preserved and learned continuously, through collecting and studying by generations to pass forward. This is the meaning of passing on the fire from generation to generation. Therefore, the inheritance of calligraphy is also the inheritance of cultural Tao and cultural roots; physical diseases must be treated by doctors, and for calligraphy diseases, experts who understand calligraphy and poetry must be taught to eliminate the vulgar. This thesis narrates the evolution of Yu's calligraphy style in stages, and then discuss many branches of Yu’s learning followers, including directly inherited, privately requested, and different regions followers, such as in Japan, Taiwan and Main China. So as to let everyone understand the inheritance and promotion of Yu's calligraphy. To continue to promote Yu’s art of cursive calligraphy.
Keywords: Yu Youren, calligraphy’s diffusion, standard cursive, promotion.