The British Museum Han Yu (1931-) Among the Neo-Classicists, Han Yu is admired for his painterly use of ink and making his characters 'dance'. As a writer, he is renowned for the perceptiveness of his observations. To maintain his creativity as a calligrapher he keeps a close eye on everyday life, like fashion designers who draw inspiration from what teenagers are wearing on the streets. See his poem 'Falling Leaves'.

The British Museum Sa Benjie (1948-) Sa is one of the most imaginative Neo-Classicists. Through his friendship with Wang Shixiang, the great scholar and collector of Chinese furniture, he became fascinated by the history of individual pieces of furniture. Sa was able to imbue furniture with human qualities, as can be seen in 'Golden Wedding'.

The British Museum Zhang Sen (1942-) Zhang Sen is one of China's leading Neo-Classical calligraphers. The elegant rhythms and balances of his brushwork and the magic quality of the poetry he quotes have made his work very popular in China. Besides being a professor at the Shanghai Institute of Chinese Painting, he is also a leading member of the Chinese Calligrapher's Association. See his beguiling poem, 'The Lantern Festival'.

Alongside the reforms and the relaxation of restrictions, there was an upsurge of activity in painting and calligraphy. For the first time since the early 1960s, books about Western art could be purchased in China. There were exhibitions of Western art in Beijing and Shanghai, and dozens of Chinese artists were allowed to travel overseas. Western styles of painting were avidly copied, and paintings of female nudes were seen in China for the first time since the 1940s.

The change in the political atmosphere provided Professor Zhang Ding, President of the Central Academy of Design, with a welcome opportunity to press for calligraphy to be revitalized. To this end, he argued, calligraphers should draw upon the lessons to be learned from both Western and Chinese art. Zhang Ding's views carried weight not only because of his influential position as head of the Academy, but also because he enjoyed the rare distinction of being the only Chinese painter from the People's Republic of China to have met Pablo Picasso.

Calligraphy soon became more popular than ever before. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, many people had turned to calligraphy in the hope of finding solace in the calm repetition of its exercises. Then, in 1981, the authorities took the lead in setting up a Chinese Calligraphers' Association, the first such nationwide body ever to be established in the country. Membership fees were usually paid in cash and the Association had to buy two machines to count up the huge influx of banknotes.

The British Museum Qi Gong (1912-) Qi Gong, a descendant of China's last imperial family, is a renowned scholar, poet and wit. He creates calligraphy of seemingly effortless elegance through the skilful interplay between the proportions of his characters. For several years he served as chairman of the Chinese Calligraphers' Association.

The British Museum Liu Zengfu (1932-) Among the Neo-Classicists, Liu belongs to the tradition of the scholar-calligrapher. He is a distinguished professor of Classical Chinese and was taught calligraphy by the renowned Chen Yinmo. The slightly naive quality of Liu's clerical script reflects his deep knowledge of the characters written on oracle bones.

The Association's appointed chairman was Shu Tong, a respected veteran of the Communist Party to whom Mao had paid the back-handed compliment of describing him as the best calligrapher in the Red Army. Because of his background, however, Shu Tong was able to persuade people that it was now acceptable to engage themselves publicly in the art. His three vice-chairmen--Qi Gong, Sha Menghai and Chen Shuliang--were all renowned scholar-calligraphers.

Within a few years, hundreds of thousands of calligraphy enthusiasts had enrolled for the Association's provincial activities across the country, with the top few thousand belonging to the body at national level. Calligraphy exhibitions and competitions soon became fashionable at all levels: some were devoted to the works of children, others to those of university students, retired officials and senior citizens. At times, public interest in such events was so intense that crowds would force their way into exhibition halls before opening time in their eagerness to see who had been awarded prizes. Several people who have become well known in the world of calligraphy first came to prominence though the awards they won in these early competitions, for example, Wang Dongling, Wang Nanming, Qiu Zhenzhong and Zhang Yiguo.

However, the impact of the Cultural Revolution on calligraphy was all too apparent. Among the young there was an overall absence of good technique, scant knowledge of the classics, and certainly no ability to write clever variants of classical poems. One positive note was that some of the young adults who had learnt to write big-character posters during the Cultural Revolution had developed a much freer style than could be achieved by the older, classically trained calligraphers.

Both inside and outside the new Chinese Calligraphers' Association there were still artists, such as Sha Menghai, Qi Gong and Lin Sanzhi, who could produce classical works in the grand tradition of Chinese calligraphy. There was also a great deal of work available to keep good calligraphers busy. They were invited to rewrite the calligraphy for the name plaques and other inscriptions at the thousands of cultural monuments that had been damaged by Red Guards or neglected during the Cultural Revolution. Most calligraphers were also able to publish books about their work and to sell the originals to local customers and foreign visitors.

The Neo-Classicists
At the end of the twentieth century there still remained a handful of elderly Classical calligraphers in China. Even so, there was no possibility of maintaining the Grand Tradition they represented. The whole society and culture that had sustained the art of calligraphy for almost 2,000 years had all but vanished within the past half-century. Although politics played its part in the demise of Classical calligraphy, the main cause was modernization.

In the modern age it was inconceivable that the Chinese would continue to write with a brush, let alone spend hours every day practising using one. There was no longer time for people to learn the classics by heart, or encouragement for them to write their own poetry. As in Western countries, there was a general decline in the ability to analyse one's feelings and express them with refinement and elegance--and without these capabilities, artists could not hope to match the most admired social graces of traditional Chinese society. They would simply not develop the mental agility that would enable them to combine phrases from different works into beautifully matched couplets or to rework them elegantly to suit some new situation.

The ending of the classical tradition did, however, open up exciting opportunities to refresh an ancient art and make it accessible to a modern audience still enthralled by the richness of Chinese culture. The Neo-Classicists took to heart the words of the famous painter Shi Tao (1642-1710), who said that 'the ink should follow the times'.

Few Neo-Classical calligraphers believe that they will ever be able to match the mastery of the brush that was achieved by the great practitioners of the past. Nevertheless, they feel free to push forward experiments with the classical styles of calligraphy, like the innovators of the first half of the twentieth century, by modifying the structure of the characters, using a wider range of ink effects, taking a more painterly approach to composition and choosing their words with care.

The majority of Neo-Classical works pay homage to the Grand Tradition. Sometimes an artist will follow closely the style of one of the great masters of the past, but the more imaginative will use the inspiration they have derived from the past to create something fresh.

Although most Neo-Classical calligraphy is written in the traditional format of vertical columns (and occasionally horizontal panels that are written from left to right), some artists have varied the size of characters and placed them on the paper in different positions to make them look more interesting. In works of this sort the centre of the composition may feature just one, two or three characters, conveying such ideas as gentle rain, fleeting clouds, or some broader concept that is explained by a line of verse written in much smaller script. At this point there is an overlap between the works produced in this style by the Neo-Classicists and those done by the early Modernists.

The attraction of a Neo-Classical piece is often greatly enhanced by the elegance of its content. Zhang Sen, who is one of the leaders in this field, insists that because calligraphy is an art, its content can never be the text of a mundane letter to one's mother or something as banal as a laundry list. There must, as he puts it, 'be magic in the words', and there is no lack of such magic in Chinese poetry.