Hangzhou Declared Famous City of Calligraphy
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June 20th, 2010 marked an important chapter in the history of hangzhou. On this day, Hangzhou was officially designated as “famous city of calligraphy of China” by China Calligraphers Association. The city celebrated its latest glory by holding a series of calligraphic events.
Hangzhou deserves the honor. The 8,000-year-old city boasts rich cultural heritage and the scenic West Lake, both of which are believed to have played a special part in promoting calligraphy and spawning master calligraphers. Earliest poems and essays about the lake go back to about 1,000 years ago. And the total number of them can be a huge collection. Many of these poets and essayists are known calligraphers of national and international renown. Hangzhou is home to the prestigious Xiling Seal Engravers’ Society which enjoys a high reputation among the international calligraphy and seal engraving community. Hangzhou is also home to China Academy of Art, the first higher education institution in China that offers an undergraduate calligraphy course.
The application for the designation started in 2007 when the national calligraphers’ association wanted to promote the traditional art and honor cities that have played an outstanding role in promoting calligraphy. According to the organizer of the event, only ten cities would qualify for the national recognition. So far eight cities have been named. Hangzhou is the only provincial capital among the final winners.
The events following the honorary designation gave visitors an opportunity to appreciate the evergreen poetic grace of calligraphy and peep into its modern wonders and possible future adventures.
West Lake Art Gallery, next door to Zhejiang Museum, showed calligraphies of about 100 prominent calligraphers. All the texts celebrated the amazing beauty of the West Lake.
An exhibition at China Academy of Art at Nanshan Road in downtown revealed a modern façade of the ancient art. The avant-garde enterprise was named “Calligraphy is No Calligraphy”.
The show had two heavy-weight producers: Wang Dongling and Xu Jiang. The former is a professor of calligraphy at China Academy of Art and the latter president of the academy.
According to Wang, “Calligraphy can be fun. It is neither narrow nor closed. We desire to reach out and penetrate all arts via Chinese calligraphy, turn calligraphy into an art of space, make it travel into life of today, and relates to the general public.”
Xu Jiang tries to justify why calligraphy is no calligraphy: “Calligraphy is an art that belongs to hundreds of millions people. It is a significant ingredient of Chinese culture. But we are now in an era of no calligraphy, for the tradition is drifting away from the contemporary everyday life. As it is understood that artistic creation needs to place its roots down in this world and needs a land that gives nutrition, calligraphy must transcend and keep reaching into other fields so that it can reestablish a relevant relationship between the art and our modern life.”
If the organizers tried to convey the idea that this new-fangled calligraphy was no traditional, they succeeded.
The central piece on the second floor was a huge exhibit in the form of a folding fan surface. On the paper fan was calligraphy in red ink and in the cursive script. The calligrapher, an artist from Beijing named Cheng Puyun, pushed the exhibit on the ground so that it kept moving and showing new ways to be appreciated. The audience was fascinated. Cheng commented that she deconstructed the cursive script while creating this huge artwork. If one took a closer look and examined the artwork carefully, one could certainly see the traditional components of the script, but these components were rearranged in a deconstructive way so that they did not resemble the integral elements of the tradition.
Zhang Dawo, a Chinese artist now living in Australia, invited visitors and artists to shake hands with a hand created by an Australian sculptor. A close look revealed that the sculpted hand was covered with Chinese characters in the small seal script and English words.
Wu Haiyan, a professor of fashion design with the academy, showed her fashion design at the exhibition. Ten models wearing long robes sashayed through exhibition halls showing calligraphies in different styles printed on the robes. The professor commented that calligraphy was fashion in her eye. “As a matter of fact, many fashion designers of world renown go out of their way to demonstrate fashion through various art forms.”