Presenting Oranges section (center left) of Three Passages: Ping-an, He-ru, and Feng-ju (平安何如三帖), Wang Xizhi (王羲之, ca. 303-361), Jin Dynasty (265-420), Album leaf, ink on paper, 24.7 x 46.8 cm, National Palace Museum, Taipei.
One of the most treasured works of art held in the National Palace Museum in Taipei is a short three-line piece of calligraphy called Presenting Oranges. The original—now lost—was written in the fourth century by Wang Xizhi. As the greatest Chinese calligrapher of all time, anything in Wang Xizhi’s hand was priceless even during his lifetime. For over a thousand years, students of calligraphy have looked to Wang as a model. But none of his original works have survived. Instead, we have only post-seventh-century copies.
Every year, my calligraphy teacher in Tokyo would organize a pilgrimage to the Palace Museum in Taipei so his top students could stand in front of Presenting Oranges. Those trained in the art of writing in brush and ink are not only able to admire the work for its formal aesthetic qualities but are able to feel what it felt like to create it.
And so, by following the correct stroke order in your mind, you can physically experience the speed and pressure of the brush, take pleasure in the flourishes and full stops. You breathe along, as if you were writing it yourself.
Calligraphy is a performance art: the moment the ink touches the highly-absorbent rice paper, there is no going back. No retouching. No rethinking. And so, the calligraphy—dashed off in semi-cursive script—conflates time and space to capture one precise motion through that spacetime. It reads: I present three hundred oranges. Frost has not yet fallen. I cannot get more.
Over the months, as I wandered in the Chinese garden, I longed to see the originals works of calligraphy in ink on paper. So, when the Words in the Garden exhibition was announced, I was thrilled; for not only would I be able to see the original works of calligraphy used to create the inscriptions found in the garden, but there would also be opportunities for watching the artists at work—both in video and right there out in the garden or in the Flowery Brush Library, located next to the new Studio for Lodging the Mind.
Favorite Books:
Embodied Image
by Robert E. Harrist Jr
Kraus’ Brushes with Power
Modern Politics and the Chinese Art of Calligraphy
Sturman’s Mi Fu: Style and the Art of Calligraphy in Northern Song China Style and the Art of Calligraphy in Northern Song China
Kazuaki Tanahashi ‘s Delight in One Thousand Characters: The Classic Manual of East Asian Calligraphy
Shakyo Practice book and A Kanji Stroke Order Manual for Heart Sutra Copying
Taction: The Drama of the Stylus in Oriental Calligraphy 石川九楊著『書-筆蝕の宇
Ishikawa, Kyuyoh; Miller, Waku
Michael Cherney秋麦 (Qiu Mai),
Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie
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