Most of the calligraphy I have posted on this blog has been standard style, AKA kaisho, typified by definite, clean lines. However, one style I have very little experience of is sosho (literally "grass writing").
Sosho is one of the cursive scripts of Chinese calligraphy, the cursive style emerging from about the second century B.C. in China, i.e., the Qin Dynasty, as a shorthand form of the squat, angular clerical script that was the standard script of the day.
The example of sosho I have posted here actually comprises the same characters as my last post, Beauty Battle. However, if no one told you, you'd probably be hard pressed to know. Sosho is abbreviated to the point of having to approach it almost anew. While attempting it, any experience of or even proficiency you might have in standard script seems to be of little help in producing good sosho.
Because, from the aesthetic point of view - which is really the only point of view that matters when it comes to calligraphy - sosho cannot be reduced simply to shorthand standard script, even if historically speaking that is how it developed. Rather, sosho is the epitome of the quality of grace (yun) that was the quality most highly prized in the Jin dynasty (265 A.D. - 420 A.D.), the dynasty that can claim China's most famous calligrapher, Wang Xizhi. In the words of one of China's most preeminent historians and theorists of calligraphy, Liu Xizai (1813-1881), cursive script (and, to a lesser degree, a similar style known as running script) was the epitome of all that was "simplified and fluid" (from his Discourse on Calligraphy (Shu Gai)).
But the significance of sosho goes beyond the abstract. Fluid and sinuous it may be, but a single glance at sosho is much more likely to get the imagination working than with kaisho. For all kaisho's classical poise and architectural balance, sosho has an urgency clearly visible in the brushstrokes. Sosho clearly owns up to being born of something hairy in the clear legacy of the brushmarks, it's not too proud to show the muscle that went into it, it runs and darts in spurts and even gets a little out of breath. The spur of the moment randomness and the textures in sosho are closer to the pictorial than in standard script. And whether you can decipher the literal meaning or not, you can still read a lot into its form and movement.
These characters paint the scene of two gorgeous blossom trees vying in beauty: the kind of contest that draws on all sorts of fierceness and sublimity, which I hope found expression here in the flow of the characters themselves.
Because, from the aesthetic point of view - which is really the only point of view that matters when it comes to calligraphy - sosho cannot be reduced simply to shorthand standard script, even if historically speaking that is how it developed. Rather, sosho is the epitome of the quality of grace (yun) that was the quality most highly prized in the Jin dynasty (265 A.D. - 420 A.D.), the dynasty that can claim China's most famous calligrapher, Wang Xizhi. In the words of one of China's most preeminent historians and theorists of calligraphy, Liu Xizai (1813-1881), cursive script (and, to a lesser degree, a similar style known as running script) was the epitome of all that was "simplified and fluid" (from his Discourse on Calligraphy (Shu Gai)).
But the significance of sosho goes beyond the abstract. Fluid and sinuous it may be, but a single glance at sosho is much more likely to get the imagination working than with kaisho. For all kaisho's classical poise and architectural balance, sosho has an urgency clearly visible in the brushstrokes. Sosho clearly owns up to being born of something hairy in the clear legacy of the brushmarks, it's not too proud to show the muscle that went into it, it runs and darts in spurts and even gets a little out of breath. The spur of the moment randomness and the textures in sosho are closer to the pictorial than in standard script. And whether you can decipher the literal meaning or not, you can still read a lot into its form and movement.
These characters paint the scene of two gorgeous blossom trees vying in beauty: the kind of contest that draws on all sorts of fierceness and sublimity, which I hope found expression here in the flow of the characters themselves.
Cherry blossom viewing in Shinjuku Gyoen, Toyko
