Oh bother, our internets playing up and the photo's will only half load for me. I'll have to come back later, but I'm loving what I can see; especially the bone-script pieces and those white ink on black paper works; those are really unusual. And that rinsho piece; such personality! I saw fluid calligraphy like that for the first time in the Shanghai museum. Of course, I couldn't take any photos, but I clipped out some of the pictures from the pamphlet for my journal: http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs36/i/20...i_by_r05km.jpg (and doodled around them)

All Japan Calligraphy Art and Literature Org. is an old school. Copying Chinese manuscripts is base of our study. I begin every day with at least one hour of rinsho. I remember my teacher scolding me for writing sousaku (創作, own composition) too often and neglecting rinsho. It is the only way to understand how powerful writing can be.

That is the reason why calligraphy of some of the masters is so hypnotizing. No shortcuts, only hard core writing. I tell you, this rinsho of Huai Su was amazing. That thing was massive, whilst the original is small. Creating powerful rinsho of this scale, given that the original is one of the most respected works in cursive script ever written, is beyond amazing. The entire event was a feast for the soul.

This one on the pamphlet looks like Zhang Zhi's writing.

I was trying to see what RINSHO means.

dear Piotr thanks for all those photographs you sent with the calligraphic exhibition. They are mind boggling.

Thanks Babs!

Rinsho (臨書) means copying masterpieces. The whole idea is not to copy the text exactly as it is, but catch the spirit, rhythm, style and energy of given work. It is the oldest and most proper way of studying calligraphy.

I am currently building a portal with tons of information about calligraphy, I will post a link when it is ready. There will be entire history of both Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, detailed description of styles, information about four treasures of the study (brush, ink stone, ink and paper), possibly interesting stories from lives of famous calligraphers and their theories, pictures and preferably movies, too. Eventually, it will also be a portal via which works can be purchased. The plan is to bring together all forms of Far Eastern calligraphy together.

I will also prepare a dictionary of calligraphic terms that may be somewhat confusing. The idea was brought to life as I find it alarming that there is a lot of misleading and incorrect information on the internet about calligraphy. The reasons are very simple. One is the language barrier, and two; only those who actually study this art can precisely convey the knowledge, and such people are usually too concentrated on studies to be able to post information on the internet. Only recently I was discussing with my teacher translation of my book about calligraphy into Japanese, and he said that only a Japanese that actually studied calligraphy can understand meaning of many phrases and idioms as this knowledge comes through practice in a form of enlightenment. Most of the Japanese I talk to are absolutely clueless about calligraphy.

Anyways, this website you have linked more or less explains what essence of rinsho is. The rest of it is not very correct. For instance Chinese characters started to appear in Japan on imported goods from China around 1st century C.E. or earlier. Another error is hidden in this sentence:

"Each Kanji has a meaning in itself, and could have multiple ways to pronounce the letter. "

Kanji are not letters nor symbols, but a logographic script originally derived from pictographs, but not only (kanji is devided into 6 groups based on their etymology, such as pictographs, semasio-phonetic characters, etc).
Both kanas are syllabaries.

I am too scared to read the rest of it. :)

As you can see one needs to be careful when reading sites like this, where people have no idea what they are talking about.


edit: well I read a bit more and it was a terrifying experience.

"This was created in Japan around the 8th century after Kanji was adopted. The origin of Kana letters is cursive writing of Kanji, but you can hardly tell which Kanji letter was used for each Kana letter."

This whole paragraph is erroneous. Kana was not created but naturally evolved, although it is being accredited to Kukai (famous Buddist monk). Again kana are not letters, and it was not 8th century, rather 9th. Also, we can precisely tell which kana syllabary derives from which manyougana (cursive kanji used for phonetic postfixes and grammar, developed from 5th century C.E. )

Kana has not replaced manyougana at first as it was not commonly accepted (especially by men) and it is in use even today, although very rare. There were around 1000 characters used as manyougana in 12th century, hence the name : kana of ten thousand leaves (words).


"The main difference between Shodo(Japanese Calligraphy) and Chinese Calligraphy is that Japanese Calligraphy has multiple types of characters for writing compared to Chinese Calligraphy."

This is also incorrect. Not many people know about nushu. Nushu is a bit similar to kana, it is also a syllabary. In short it is a phonetic writing system, developed by women of one Chinese province around 2000 years ago, discovered by accident in mid 20th century. Not all of the characters are based on Chinese characters, therefore it is different than kana. Aslo, there are around 1700 of them.

example of nushu

Oh dear Piotyr, thats typical isn't it. anyway I shall look forward to your great LIFE WORKS.


I agree there must be so much misinformation on many websites.

I truly admire you for your dedication.


thanks again for all that you do.

Babs.

I will remove that website then.

Awesome
 

Awesome, simply awesome!
How many of your pieces of work were hanging on that wall?

ah, don't worry about it Babs, leave it as a warning for those who may follow. :D .
It pains me though when info like this is being published. It needlessly confuses people.

Once I am "content with the content" I will post a link to the site. There should be around 20.000 words+ of text once i am done, so a small novel.

Thanks MJC. I have displayed one work. I think only grand masters were allowed for more than one. It was a true privilege to have my work there as out of come 20.000 members of All Japan Calligraphy Art and Literature Assoc. only around 800 people had a chance to post their calligraphy. I think it took me 6 month to prepare, and out of 2000 works I chose 250, then my teacher chose 1. It was a long run, haha.

my humble calligraphic attempt is below:

嶺上雲 - mountain peak above the clouds

調　pitch, tone, mood






不撓　　unbending, tenacity



結　a bond

素　plain, unadorned






真心 sincerity

勇　courage




力　strength




宙　space,　midair




白石清松　beauty of nature (lit. white stones and bright pines)