2006年2月

　　17世纪的山西，曾经出过一位中国书法史上的奇才——傅山。傅山祖籍大同，六世祖移居忻州、曾祖迁家太原府阳曲县，生活在一个极有想象力的时代。傅山留给后人的书法，除了那精到的小楷、古拙的隶书外，便是那跌宕恣肆的狂草和奇崛诡秘的大篆。傅山曾这样描述自己的草书：“回顾奔驰兽，旋骇竹木龙。”傅山在谈到古代篆隶时，曾有如下论述：“篆须熟味周秦以上鸟兽草木之形始臻上乘。”他又说：“ 古篆、隶落笔，浑不知如何布置，若大散乱，而终不能代为整理也 。”而这两者的结合，便是草篆。傅山的草篆显然是受到了晚明书家赵宦光的启发。不过，赵宦光草化的是小篆，傅山草化的是大篆。17世纪是一个崇尚“奇”的时代，在书家中，走得最远的就是“奇士”傅山。

　　四百年后，山西又出了一位当代艺坛难得的奇才——魏立刚。魏立刚的故乡是大同，青年时到南开大学学数学，毕业后到太原工作。从大同到太原，他生活的途程正和四百年前的傅山相似。不仅如此，他对这位乡贤的艺术也心慕手追，走的是草书加大篆的路子。看他的作品，翻转颠倒，盘绕穿插，无所不用其极。千奇百怪，幻化无穷，殊有“魔”力。魏立刚称自己的艺术是“魏氏魔块”。这个“块”极为重要。构筑这个块的点画是草书的，但它的结构却是大篆的。大篆结构复杂，草化之后，更加难以辨识，在繁复的块面之间，又有灵动的线条牵属相连。方块汉字的书法精神在这更为抽象的笔墨中不但没有丧失，反而高高地张扬了。

　　如果把“魏氏魔块”放到中国现代书法的背景下去观察，我们或许对其意义有深一层的认识。20世纪80年代中期，中国现代书画学会在北京举办了中国第一次现代书法展。我曾在1986年2月撰文尖锐地批评那次展览。当时的参展者既对日本书法家已经进行了四十年的探索缺乏借鉴意识，也不具备重起炉灶的能力。整整二十年过去了，我丝毫没有改变自己的看法：“欲变而不知变。”

　　地大物博的中国毕竟有欲变而又知变者。20世纪80年代末，乐心龙从国内寄他的现代书法的作品给我，邀我为他的作品集作序。他的作品着实让我感到振奋。由于日本书法家率先在书法的领域中进行了卓有成就的尝试，以后日本现代书法就一直成为中国当代书法家进行尝试的重要参照系，如何走出中国自己的路，一直困扰着有使命感的、从事现代书法探索的中国艺术家们。我之所以当时对乐心龙的作品十分赞赏，是因为它不同于深受假名书法传统影响的日本现代书法，更具方块汉字的精神和境界。乐心龙的作品集因故未能出版，而他本人也在1999年因车祸不幸去世。他去世后，我一度对中国笔墨型的现代书法的前景相当悲观，因为这种笔墨型的现代书法需要的才情太高，技术难度太大，只有那些对传统有深邃的理解又能超脱于传统的人方能为之。自从我在90年代中期第一次见到魏立刚的作品后，我又拾起了对笔墨型现代书法的信心。魏立刚和乐心龙一样，都是传统营垒里杀出来的骁将，对中国书法、特别是对它的草书的精神有着深刻的理解。未届不惑，魏立刚就已创造出了和日本现代书法迥然相异、足以傲世的现代书法的样式。是“魏氏魔块”再次引领着我的想像力驰骋。

　　如果把“魏氏魔块”放到中国的当代艺术的背景中去观察，我们或许对其意义有更深一层的认识。文字书写既是手工的，又是观念的。近二十年来，中国不少的艺术理论家和批评家都对中国书法予以厚望，他们似乎都隐约地感觉到，这一极具民族特色而又有几千年传统、极为成熟的艺术，很可能是中国当代艺术最为重要的资源之一。21世纪中国艺术的许多重要发展，都可能和汉字的书写有关。魏立刚对当代艺术观念和观念艺术的关注已经反映在他的《上海的砖筑》之类的作品中。但魏立刚和他的魔块一样不可端倪。我们暂且闭上嘴巴，屏住呼吸，满怀期待地看他的笔下将会出现什么样新的神奇。

　　白谦慎2006年2月记于波士顿

　　In Shanxi Province during the seventeenth century there lived the marvelous scholar and extraordinary calligrapher, Fu Shan(1607-1684/85).The Fu family had long lived in Datong, a city north of Taiyuan, but, six generations before Fu Shan, an ancestor working as a tutor in the Shanxi residence of a Ming prince moved to xinzhou, a prefecture neighboring Taiyuan. Fu Shan’s great-grandfather subsequently moved to nearby Yangqu, Taiyuan Prefecture(modern Taiyuan).

　　The seventeenth century in china was a period in which the most forward-looking artists pursued the aesthetic of qi (the shocking, dramatic,eccentric,strange,bizarre,marvelous,curious).This eccentric trend affected Fu’s calligraphy, helping him become the most radical calligrapher of this diverse and creative period .Thus, he not only wrote calligraphy in such normative scripts as refined small regular script and archaic clerical script but, more impressively, he also wrote in the spontaneous “mad cursive” and obscure greater seal scripts. Fu Shan once characterized his cursive writing thus:” Look again: characters flee like running animals terrifying,[the brush] spins [like] a bamboo dragon.” Discussing the archaic seal and clerical scripts ,Fu Shan argues:” To study seal script, one should become familiar with the shapes of birds, animals, and plants reflected in pre-Qin dynasty writings; then, he can achieve excellence.” He also contends:” Observing archaic seal and clerical scripts, one cannot understand the rules by which they were composed; they are so unpredictable, no one will ever make them orderly.”

　　Applying the methods of cursive writing to the writing of seal script gives rise to the so-called cursive seal script. This extremely rare script is found only in the work of a few free-thinking calligraphers. One of these was Fu Shan, who was inspired by the script’s inventor, the late-Ming artist Zhao Yiguang. As the basis of his cursive seal ,Zhao used lesser seal script , which had remained in the calligraphic repertoire during the two thousand years since its origin . Fu, however, preferred to apply cursive methods to the more ancient greater seal script, ignored by calligraphers until the seventeenth century.

　　Now, four hundred years after the imaginative eccentricities of late Ming artists, there emerges another extraordinary talent—the calligrapher Wei Ligang of Shanxi. Wei, a native of Datong, attended Nankai University in Tianjin, where he studied mathematics, after which he returned to Taiyuan. While Wei’s journey from Datong to Taiyuan is similar to that of Fu Shan’ family four hundred years ago, Wei followed not only Fu’s geographic but artistic footsteps, seeking calligraphic innovation through study of the cursive and greater seal scripts. As a result, his brush turns tirelessly in his calligraphy, its strokes entwining one another, tangling, penetrating, overlapping to create a visual complexity of magical power and metamorphic unpredictability.

　　Wei Ligang bases his calligraphy on what he calls “Wei’s Magic Square.” The word “square” is key to understanding the structure of Wei’s art, for he retains the rectilinear structure that is a fundamental underpinning of traditional calligraphic formats. In addition, he applies cursive brushwork to character structures derived form greater seal script. Since the character structures of greater seal are the most complex among Chinese script types, adding cursive techniques to such already complicated structures made Wei’s work increasingly illegible .Yet, even as he departed from the standard form of written scripts and legibility, the concept of calligraphy as an art based on square characters was not diminished but enhanced and intensified.

　　Analyzing “Wei’s Magic Squares” against the background of contemporary calligraphy in China gives us a better understanding of the significance of his work. In 1985,the Society of Modem Calligraphy and Painting launched the first Modernist Calligraphy Exhibition in Beijing. Shortly thereafter, in a short article that harshly criticized most of the exhibition’s participants for ignoring four decades of fruitful experiments by their Japanese counterparts, I wrote that most of the participants were unable to produce innovative Work. Two decades later, I see no reason to change my critique of the modernist movement.

　　In the late 1980s Yue Xinlong(1951-1999)sent me photographs of his modernist works and invited me to write an introduction to a catalogue of his work, then in preparation. I was elated by the results of his calligraphic experiments. Because Japanese calligraphers first created modernist calligraphy and then accomplished mush in that field, their work has long been an important reference to modernist Chinese calligraphers. Still, their efforts present the latter with the problem of creating a modernist calligraphy distinctive from that of the Japanese. Modernist Japanese calligraphy is deeply influenced by the tradition of hiragana, a script whose thread-like strokes and radically elongated character structures create vertical compositions that contrast with the square format of traditional Chinese characters. I was enthusiastic about Yue Xinlong’s work because, in contrast to the Japanese approach, it possessed the spirit of China’s square character format. Unfortunately, Yue’s Catalogue was never published. Later, tragically young, he died in a traffic accident.

　　After Yue’s death, I lost confidence that a distinctive Chinese style of modernist calligraphy might develop because, being a calligrapher, I know this mission demands talent, courage, and transcendent insight. However, my acquaintance in the mid-1990s with works by Wei Ligang restored my confidence in the potential of Chinese modernist calligraphy. Like Yue Xinlong’s work, that of Wei Ligang is rooted in traditional calligraphy, especially its cursive and seal scripts. Despite his classical origins, by his late thirties, Wei Ligang had already formed a distinguished modernist style based on his magic squares.

　　Analyzing “Wei’s Magic Squares” in the context of contemporary Chinese art helps us to understand their potential for the future. Writing is both manual and conceptual. In the last two decades, many art theorists and critics have had high expectations of calligraphy. They believe that this sophisticated art form, with its thousands of years of history and strongly distinctive cultural characteristics, is likely to be an important graphic resource for contemporary Chinese art; indeed, many important developments in contemporary Chinese art already are reliant on the forms and concepts found in characters and writing, In recent years, Wei Ligang has given great attention to conceptual art, a concern reflected in such works as shanghai’s wall. But since Wei himself is as unpredictable as his magic squares, we would do well to keep silent, hold our breath, and wait to see what new surprises will be born from his brush.

　　Boston, February2006

作者：白谦慎(Bai,Qianshen,)