Calligraphy is a unique form of artistic expression of the beauty of words in China and its neighboring countries and regions that have been deeply influenced by Chinese culture. Including Chinese calligraphy, Mongolian calligraphy, Arabic calligraphy and English calligraphy. Its "Chinese calligraphy" is a traditional art unique to Chinese characters.

Broadly speaking, calligraphy refers to the rules of writing text symbols. In other words, calligraphy refers to the writing of words in accordance with their characteristics and meanings, in their style, structure and chapters, so as to make them aesthetically pleasing works of art. Chinese calligraphy is an original expressive art of the Han nationality, known as: wordless poetry, non-line dance; Painting without pictures, music without sound, etc.

The art of writing, mostly refers to the art of writing with a pen, which is divided into two types: hard pen and soft pen. It is an art form of written expression. Chinese painting and calligraphy are related, and they contain more literary interest. ——Cai Yuanpei "Pictures"

1. Ancient historians revised history, and each had its own principles and styles for material processing, historical commentary, and character praise and disapproval, which was called "calligraphy". "The Second Year of Xuan Gong": "Dong Hu, the good history of the ancients, calligraphy is not hidden. Liu Zhiji in the Tang Dynasty "Stone Puzzle Scripture": "Therefore, I know that at that time, Shi Chen had a straight pen, and Si was bound to die if he committed a crime, and there was no one to give up calligraphy. Song Xie Caibo's "Notes on Secret Zhai" Volume 4: "The calligraphy of the Analects is strict, that is, the calligraphy of the Spring and Autumn Period. "Ming Liu Ji's "Spring and Autumn Ming Classic, Zheng Vaxu Zheng Bova Xu": "The cover is the same as the calligraphy of Zheng Vaxu and Zheng Bova Xu. “

2. The art of writing words. Also refers to calligraphy works. "The Book of Nanqi: The Biography of Zhou Hao": "Shao learned Wei Heng Sanli's calligraphy from the Wai clan chariot general Zang Zhi's family, and learned a lot of work. Song Qianyi's "Qian's Private Chronicles": "The wonder of Yuanzhang's calligraphy can be described as the first today. The twenty-eighth chapter of "The History of Confucianism": "Those who wrote poetry have not been so good since ancient times. And the calligraphy is wonderful, there is no third one in the world. ”

3. Refers to the shape of Chinese characters. Qing Ye Mingfeng's "Qiaoxi Miscellaneous Notes, One Two Three Words": "As much as the Qin and Han Dynasty monuments, only the calligraphy of one two or three is different. ”

4. Wording. Lu Shuxiang's "Punctuation Trivia": "Tongjian" calligraphy, the word 'night' is a sentence, and it must be inherited. The word 'night' is broken to mean 'in the night of the day', and the word 'night' is continuous, meaning 'to be in the night'. ”

A small step for Chinese calligraphy, a big step for the revival of Chinese characters, cross-border cooperation and common inheritance.

In the superficial sense of the word, calligraphy refers to the law of writing. In life, the word calligraphy has the following meanings: first, the pronoun of a certain written work or the collective name of all written works; Second, an art category, which generally refers to the art of writing Chinese characters. Kang Youwei said in "Guangyi Zhou Shuangji": "The structure of Tang dialect, Song Shang interest", it can be seen that the law of calligraphy in the Tang Dynasty pursued the highest and most rigorous, and the achievements of calligraphy in the Tang Dynasty were also the highest in the history of calligraphy.

Calligraphy is a traditional art unique to China. Chinese characters are created by working people, began to be recorded in pictures, after thousands of years of development, evolved into today's writing, and because the ancestors invented the use of the brush to write, it produced calligraphy, throughout the ages, are mainly written with a brush, as for other forms of writing, such as hard pen, finger book, etc., its writing rules and brush words are not very different, but basically the same.

In a narrow sense, calligraphy refers to the method and rules of writing Chinese characters with a brush. Including pen holding, pen movement, dot painting, structure, layout (distribution, line order, chapter) and so on. For example, the pen refers to the real palm and the five fingers work together; The center of the pen is paved; The dot painting means that the brush follows, and the runchu is the same; The structure is in the shape of a word, echoing each other; The distribution is intricate, the density is appropriate, the virtual and the real are born together, and the whole chapter is coherent; Literacy ancient and modern, big and small, rather high than low.

The connotation of calligraphy mainly includes the following aspects:

1. Calligraphy refers to an art that uses the four treasures of the study as a tool to express emotions. The peculiarity of the tool is an important aspect of the peculiarity of the art of calligraphy. With the help of the four treasures of the study as a tool, the performance of the tool is fully reflected, which is an important part of calligraphy techniques. Without the Four Treasures of the Study, the art of calligraphy is impossible.

2. The art of calligraphy is based on Chinese characters. The peculiarity of Chinese characters is another important aspect of the peculiarity of calligraphy. Chinese calligraphy is inseparable from Chinese characters, and the form of Chinese dot painting and the collocation of side are the contents that writers pay more attention to. Different from other pinyin characters, Chinese characters are a combination of form, sound, and meaning, and the form has a strong meaning.

The so-called "six books" of the ancients refer to the six methods of pictographic, signifying, knowing, forming, phonetic, transcribing, and borrowing Chinese characters, which are of great guiding significance for the analysis of the shape and structure of Chinese characters.

3. The background of calligraphy art is traditional Chinese culture. Calligraphy is rooted in the soil of traditional Chinese culture, which is the background for the survival and development of calligraphy. The theory of calligraphy that we can see today since the Han Dynasty has its own systematic, complete, and coherent nature. Like other theories of literature and art, the theory of calligraphy includes both the technical theory of calligraphy itself and the aesthetic theory of calligraphy, and in these theories, all of them shine with the wisdom of ancient Chinese literati. For example, theories on how to express categories such as "spirit, qi, bone, flesh, and blood" in calligraphy, theories about techniques such as brushwork, calligraphy, and chapter law, as well as theories of creation, and product reviews, all have their own systems.

4. The art of calligraphy includes penmanship, calligraphy, construction, chapter, ink, gestures and other contents. Calligraphy is the core of his technique. Penmanship is also known as "using a pen", which refers to the method of moving the pen with a sharp edge. Calligraphy, also known as "knots" and "structure", refers to the collocation, intersperse, echo, avoidance and other relationships of dot painting in the word. Zhangfa, also known as "cloth white", refers to the overall layout of a character, including the handling of the relationship between words and the relationship between lines. The ink method is the method of using ink, which refers to the treatment of thick, light, dry, dry and wet ink.

Broadly speaking, calligraphy refers to the rules of writing linguistic symbols. In other words, calligraphy refers to writing in accordance with the characteristics of the text and its meaning, with its style, structure and chapter, so as to make it an aesthetically pleasing work of art.

With the development of cultural undertakings, calligraphy has not only been limited to the use of brushes and the writing of Chinese characters, but its connotation has greatly increased. For example, in terms of the use of tools, there are all kinds of pens alone, such as brushes, hard pens, computer instruments, airbrush soldering tools, carving knives, engraving machines, daily tools (mainly referring to hardware and life tools that are relatively hard in texture and can be used for writing). Pigments are not only the use of black ink blocks, but also inks, adhesives, chemicals, spray paint glazes, etc. The list goes on. From the point of view of the way of holding the pen, some hold the pen with the hand, some hold the pen with the foot, and there is no shortage of people who hold the pen with other organs, and even some people do not use the pen at all to write, such as "pointing to the book" and "squeezing the missing book"; In terms of writing languages, it is not a type of Chinese character, and some ethnic minority languages have also appeared in the calligraphy art arena, such as Mongolian.

There are five main types of Chinese calligraphy, including seal script (including large seals and small seals), official script (including ancient and modern scripts), regular script (including Wei tablet and regular letters), line script (including line script and line grass), and cursive script (including chapter grass, small grass, large grass, and standard cursive).

The art of Chinese calligraphy began in the production stage of Chinese characters, "the sound cannot be transmitted in a different place, but in a different time, so the text is born." Words, so for the traces of meaning and sound. (Uttered in "Shulin Zaojian", Ma Zonghuo Ji) Therefore, the text was produced. The first works of the art of calligraphy were not words, but some carved symbols - hieroglyphs or pictorial characters.

The carved symbols of Chinese characters first appeared on pottery. The original portrayal symbols only denote a general concept of chaos and have no exact meaning.

More than 8,000 years ago, the Yellow River basin appeared Cishan, Pei Li Gang culture, in Pei Li Gang unearthed handmade ceramics, there are more similar text symbols, this symbol, is the ancestors of the communicative function, the function of remembering and the chaotic combination of pattern decoration function, although these are not the Chinese characters that can be recognized by modern people, but they are indeed the prototype of Chinese characters.

Immediately after the Banpo site of the Yangshao culture about 6,000 years ago, there were some simple portrayal of painted pottery similar to the text unearthed. These symbols have been distinguished from patterns and patterns, and have taken the development of Chinese characters one step further. This can be said to be the origin of Chinese writing.

Then there is the Erlitou culture and the Erligang culture. The archaeological excavation of Erlitou culture found that there are pottery shards with carved marks, and there are 24 kinds of marks, some of which are similar to the oracle bone characters of Yinxu, all of which are single and independent characters. Erligang culture has been found to have a writing system. Three bones with characters have been found here, two with one character each and one with ten characters, which seem to have been carved for the practice of lettering. This is another big step forward for civilization.

The origin of the original text is an instinct to imitate, to image a specific thing. Although it is simple and chaotic, it already has a certain aesthetic taste. This simple writing can therefore be called prehistoric calligraphy.

The evolution of calligraphy generally refers to the evolution of calligraphic fonts. Generally speaking, the Wei and Jin dynasties were not only the end of calligraphy, but also the period of the integration of calligraphy techniques.

Chinese calligraphy has a long history, the history of calligraphy is changing, and the art of calligraphy is fascinating. From the oracle bone inscription and the golden inscription to the big seal, the small seal, the official script, to the cursive, regular script, and line script of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Wei Dynasty, and Jin Dynasty, calligraphy has always exuded a unique artistic charm.

From hieroglyphs to oracle bone inscriptions, the handwriting of silk and ink in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the Spring and Autumn periods, and the Han Dynasty, the law of the Tang Kai, the Shangyi of the Song people, the Shangzhi of the Yuan and Ming dynasties, and the inscription controversy of the Qing Dynasty.

From the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, through the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, to the Qin and Han dynasties, the historical development of more than 2,000 years has also led to the development of calligraphy art. During this period, various calligraphy styles appeared one after another, including oracle bone inscriptions, gold inscriptions, stone inscriptions, silk and vermilion handwriting, etc., among which seal script, official script, cursive script, line script, regular script five kinds of fonts were finalized in the screening and elimination of hundreds of miscellaneous characters, and the art of calligraphy began to develop in an orderly manner.

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there were great differences in the written languages of various countries, which was a major obstacle to the development of economy and culture. After Qin Shi Huang unified the country, Prime Minister Li Si presided over the unification of the national script, which is a great achievement in the history of Chinese culture. After the unification of Qin, the text is called Qin Seal, also known as Xiao Seal, which is simplified on the basis of the Jin Wen and the Shigu Script. Among them, "Interpretation of Mountain Stone Carvings", "Taishan Stone Carvings", "Langyu Stone Carvings", and "Huiji Stone Carvings" are written by Li Si, and have been highly praised in all dynasties. The Qin Dynasty was a period of change of inheritance and innovation. "Shuo Wen Jie Word Order" says: "The Qin book has eight bodies, one is a big seal, two is a small seal, three is an engraved character, four is an insect book, five is a copy of the seal, six is a signature book, seven is a book, and eight is a lishu. It basically summarizes the appearance of the font at this time. By Li Siqin's small seal, the seal method is harsh, and it is inconvenient to write, so the official book appeared. "Lishu, the seal of the Jie". The purpose is to make it easy to write. In the Western Han Dynasty, Lishu completed the transformation from seal script to official script, and the knot changed from vertical to horizontal, and the line ripples were more obvious. The emergence of Lishu is a great progress in the writing of Chinese characters, and it is a revolution in the history of calligraphy, which not only makes Chinese characters tend to be square and model, but also breaks through a single center in penmanship, laying the foundation for various genres of calligraphy in the future. In addition to the above calligraphy masterpieces, the Qin Dynasty also has edicts, weights, tiles, currencies and other texts, with different styles. The calligraphy of the Qin Dynasty has left a brilliant page in the history of Chinese calligraphy, and it can be called a precedent.

The calligraphy of the two Han Dynasty is divided into two major forms of expression, one is the mainstream system of Han stone carving; One is the secondary flow system of the Wadang seal inscription and the ink of the Silk League. "Since the Later Han Dynasty, the stele has risen in the clouds," is a sign of the maturity of the Han Dynasty. Among the cliff carvings (the text engraved on the cliff), the "Ode to the Stone Gate" is the most famous, and the calligrapher regards it as a "divine product". At the same time, Cai Yong's "Xiping Stone Classic" met the requirements of restoring the ancient subordinate and the fetal breath. The inscription is the most important art form that reflects the degree and rhyme of the times, and the steles of "Fenglong Mountain", "Ode to the Western Narrows", "Kong Zhou", "Yi Gong", "Shi Chen", "Zhang Qian" and "Cao Quan" are especially praised and imitated by later generations. It can be said that each monument has its own strangeness, and there is no one who is the same. The north book is majestic, and the south book is simple and ancient, reflecting the different aesthetic pursuits of the "scholar" and "shu" classes. As for the Wadang seal and the simple silk league book, it reflects the marriage of artistry and practicality.

The flourishing period of calligraphy art began in the Eastern Han Dynasty. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, there were special works on calligraphy theory, and the earliest calligraphy theory was proposed by Yang Xiong at the turn of the Eastern and Western Han Dynasty. The first monograph on calligraphy theory was Cui Ming's Cursive Script in the Eastern Han Dynasty.

Han Dynasty calligraphers can be divided into two categories: one is the Han Li calligrapher, represented by Cai Yong. One is cursive writers, represented by Du Du, Cui Ying, and Zhang Zhi.