Jan. 29, 2015
Jan. 29, 2015, Dr. Zheng Rui, a young scholar from the School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, gave a talk on“Chinese Calligraphy: Art for the Entire Chinese Population”at the Department of Art and Art History, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), for the art historians and artists. After the first talk on Nov.5, 2014, the department became more interested in Chinese calligraphy.
“The entire faculty is present at this talk about Chinese calligraphy,” as Prof. Peter Pinnell, Chair of the Department of Art and Art History pointed out at the beginning of the talk. Presently, there are 7 full-time art historians and 17 artists working in the department, and most of them came to the talk and found the art to be more interesting than ever before. Among them were Peter Pinnell, Professor of art specialized in ceramics, Andrea Bolland, professor of art history in Italian renaissance & baroque art, Wendy Katz, professor of art history in American art, Marissa Vigneault, professor of practice in modern and contemporary art, Karen Kunc, professor of art in printmaking, etc.
Zheng Rui talked about the phenomenon of wide popularity of calligraphy among the Chinese population home and abroad, and then he explained some of the major reasons for the phenomenon on the basis of the theory of calligraphy, which helped American art historians and artists to understand the charm of Chinese calligraphy as well as how it becomes art for the Entire Chinese population.
After the talk, the scholars raised very interesting and professional questions. “How can Chinese people read and understand all these different scripts of calligraphy?” “Why are there so many stamps on the extant master pieces of Chinese calligraphy or Chinese painting?” “How is the art of calligraphy related to the text that the artist wrote in a piece of wild cursive script?” “There are some minority groups in China who have their own calligraphy. What do you think is the relation or difference between their calligraphy and Chinese calligraphy? ”
