The Art of Calligraphy in Modern China.

• Author: Harrist, Jr., Robert E.
• Position: Reviews of Books - Book Review

The Art of Calligraphy in Modern China. By GORDON S. BARRASS. Berkeley and Los Angeles: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 2002. Pp. 288, illus., plates. $75.

During the Cultural Revolution a contingent of Red Guards showed up at the Shanghai home of the eminent calligrapher and writer Shen Yinmo (1883-1971). Declaring Shen, who was then over eighty years old, a "counter-revolutionary scholar," they forced him to write out these words on a banner that was then displayed over Shen's door. Before the next morning the banner had disappeared, not because of a sudden rehabilitation of Shen's political status but because someone recognized that his elegant calligraphy, founded on his life-long study of classical models, would be valuable some day and simply stole the writing. This story, reported by Gordon S. Barrass, reflects some of the ironies and contradictions in the recent history of calligraphy in China. At the same time that calligraphy was seen as an art tainted by its association with the elite culture of prerevolutionary times, it continued to be admired and practiced by the leaders of the communist regime, most notably Mao Zedong (1893-1976), whose characters embellished everything from train stations to newspapers.

A telling sign of the lively good health of the art of calligraphy in modern China, and of the attention it has gained abroad, was the decision made by the British Museum to form a collection of works dating from the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 to the present. With the assistance of Barrass, a former British diplomat who had been stationed in Beijing, the museum acquired an impressive collection of modern calligraphy, documented in part in the book at hand. Rather than a conventional exhibition catalogue, the book consists of two introductory chapters on the history of calligraphy and an overview of developments since 1949. There follow chapters on individual calligraphers, many of whom Barrass interviewed and with whom he appears to have formed cordial friendships. Although he acknowledges the importance of calligraphers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and elsewhere, his focus is on developments in mainland China.

Barrass categorizes the calligraphers he writes about as classicists, modernists, neoclassicists, and the avant-garde--labels that have some validity but are not used consistently. The senior generation of calligraphers included in an early chapter titled "The Grand Tradition," which includes Shen...