Riding the wind of rebirth

The people around also started to get agitated. They didn't know who Zhou Zhi was, but the title of expert in restoration of works from the Four Masters of the Six Dynasties was enough to earn him respect here.

An Siyuan seemed to be waiting for this effect, and only then began to introduce Zhou Zhi.

The people who came all had industry backgrounds, mainly from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as the Freer Gallery of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

In the early 20th century, Western collecting circles developed an unprecedented interest in Chinese art, and American collectors and museums competed to purchase the most outstanding Chinese art treasures on the market.

At the same time, China was impoverished and weak, facing internal and external troubles, and had no time to protect its own cultural heritage, causing a large number of precious artworks to flow into the market.

Against this backdrop, American museums have built up rich collections of Chinese art through active acquisitions and donations from collectors.

Because these art galleries are all in New York or close to New York, they receive the most funding and have the most exquisite collections.

Many museums also have academic backgrounds. For example, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was originally initiated by the Boston Library of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to exhibit their collections of artworks. Then there is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During the 30 years that Fang Wen, who holds a Ph.D. in Chinese art and archaeology from Princeton University, served as special consultant and director of the Asian Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he made the Metropolitan Museum of Art an internationally renowned center for the acquisition, exhibition, and academic research of Asian art.

The museum's collection, in turn, contributed to the birth of the "Princeton School".

There is also the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with the University of Pennsylvania behind it.

Zhou Zhi is now able to talk freely with these people, and two of them have even invited him. If he wants to study abroad, the school can provide him with a full scholarship, and he can even work as an Oriental art consultant in the art museum while he is in school.

If it were in his previous life, or a few years ago, Zhou Zhi would have thought this was a good thing that he could not even think about, but now he no longer cares about it.

But they all meant well, so Zhou Zhi just kept being polite with them, saying only that his supervisor in China had already arranged the subsequent research direction, and that studying ancient Chinese characters was his interest and ambition. At present, the research environment in China is actually better than that abroad in this direction.

As for the auction, collection and restoration of oriental painting and calligraphy artworks, he is of course happy to participate. For example, he feels honored to receive the invitation to an exhibition like today.

In this exhibition, the Metropolitan Museum of Art used calligraphy and painting as two threads to display some of its collections and loaned Oriental artworks.

This piece of oracle bone is one of the important exhibits because, so far, it is the oracle bone with the most characters in the country. It was pieced together using the splicing technology developed by Clover. A total of 32 characters were found on the spliced ​​oracle bone.

This piece of oracle bone was used for two divination activities, and three divinations appeared. Therefore, there are quite a lot of characters, reaching 29 characters, only three less than the latest discovery. This alone is already a treasure of civilization. Zhou Zhi also introduced the latest technology for studying oracle bone inscriptions, namely the combination project and the root analysis project. This is also a very good opportunity for popular science and publicity. Many of the discoveries themselves are very interesting and are quite popular among the participants.

For example, Zhou Zhi used the oracle bone script representing the root of the word "foot" as an example and explained many related characters to the participants.

It not only represents foot, but also represents left and right, advance and retreat, and rise and fall. With these meanings, the meaning that this root can indicate becomes richer. By flexibly adjusting its direction, we can get many ideographic characters such as step, stop, advance, retreat, descend, and ascend, which are much easier to learn and understand than other ancient characters.

Sure enough, after Zhou Zhi’s brief lecture, the foreigners suddenly felt that the oracle bone script was really simple, and they felt that they might be able to master it if they listened to a few more classes.

In addition to oracle bone inscriptions, the exhibition also features bronze inscriptions, large seal script, stone drum inscriptions, Zhongshan seal script, small seal script, all the way to official script, regular script, running script and cursive script.

Another highlight of the exhibition, of course, is the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s treasure – Huang Tingjian’s calligraphy, “The Biography of Lian Po and Lin Xiangru” on paper.

This is the longest piece of cursive calligraphy on paper in the history of calligraphy, measuring 32.5 cm in length and 1822 cm in width. Excluding the decorative parts at both ends, the length of Huang Tingjian's calligraphy alone is more than meters.

As someone who has been practicing Huang Tingjian's calligraphy for a long time, Zhou Zhi only felt that he had come tonight. He quickly read the rest of the text, and then lingered in front of the calligraphy for a long time with a pilgrimage-like mood.

In order to take care of social interaction without interfering with his study of this work, Zhou Zhi simply opened a "calligraphy salon" here.

"There is no date or historical inscription at the end of this calligraphy work, but judging from the 'Imperial Palace Seal' and 'Shaoxing' chain-bead seals inside the scroll, as well as ancient records such as the Shigutang Calligraphy and Painting Examination and An Qi's Heiyuan Huiguan, it was written in the second year of Shaosheng, that is, 1095. This is Huang Tingjian's masterpiece in his later years."

"The Records of the Grand Historian: Biographies of Lian Po and Lin Xiangru actually has a total of 4,500 words. Huang Tingjian started writing from 'Lian Po is a good general of Zhao' and only stopped at 'He first worries about the country, then his personal grudges'. There is a deep meaning behind this."

"When discussing the techniques of cursive script, we often mention personal temperament and education. Personal experience and changes in temperament will directly affect the style of calligraphy. This piece of calligraphy is a model of Huang Tingjian's fusion of spirituality and enlightenment. The work reveals the calligrapher's emotions and personal philosophy during the writing process, just like a silent poem, with power between the lines and emotional fluctuations intertwined between the brushstrokes."

"The importance of a paper calligraphy manuscript is that it preserves this information to the greatest extent possible. Even with the most sophisticated double-hook copying method, this information will still be lost. If one only focuses on epigraphy, the loss will be even greater."

"However, not all calligraphers have the opportunity to see the calligraphy of their predecessors. This is too rare and expensive. Therefore, most of the time, calligraphers learn calligraphy by studying stone rubbings. The inheritance obtained through this way of study can continue to be carried forward in terms of spacing and word formation, but it is difficult to understand the details that greatly enrich calligraphy, such as the use of brush and ink."

"Coupled with the revolutionary changes in writing media, writing tools and writing methods, this ultimately led to a major change in the style of Chinese calligraphy after the Song Dynasty. Since then, it has been difficult to find the 'orthodox' calligraphy style of the Jin and Tang dynasties." (End of this chapter)