Youth Calligraphy Highlights “Beauty of Chinese Characters”in Russia
Opening Ceremony of the Exhibition Titled “Beauty of Chinese Characters”
Calligraphy by PENG Shuanglong
Local Audiences Viewed the Exhibition
Calligraphy by ZENG Jinxi
Calligraphy by TI Junfeng
From September 11 till 16, “Beauty of Chinese Characters” Chinese Youth Calligraphers’ Works Exhibition sponsored by CFLAC and China Calligraphers Association (CCA) was held at Chinese Culture Center at Moscow of Russia. In the wake of UNESCO’s listing Chinese calligraphy into the World Intangible Cultural Heritage, this exhibition has become another calligraphy gala in Moscow after its sessions in the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris of France, Australia, Mexico, Canada, Portugal and EU Headquarters in Belgium. Distinguished guests such as LI Yi, executive vice president of CFLAC and head of CFLAC delegation, HE Qiyetu, vice president of CCA, GONG Jiajia, cultural counselor of Chinese Embassy in Russia, LI Zhi, deputy director general of Chinese Culture Center at Moscow, as well as over 100 experts, scholars, artists and representatives from Municipal Duma of Moscow, Surikov Fine Arts Academy of Russian Academy of Arts, Krasnodar State Academy of Culture and Arts and State Lenin Library, along with local media and audiences, attended the opening ceremony
This exhibition involves calligraphy in the contents of ancient Chinese poetry, prose and mottos created by 39 contemporary Chinese young calligraphers. In multiple types and styles of calligraphy, their works highlight the ancient tradition of Chinese philosophy, the unique attraction of Chinese calligraphic art and the contemporary young artists’ inheritance and exploration of Chinese calligraphy as a carrier of Chinese aesthetic spirits.
“Russia is a beautiful country as well as a cultural power in the world. Its geographic coverage on both Asia and Europe leads to the integration of two civilizations of Orient and Occident. Thanks to the constant occurrence of many masters in arts in history, Russia exerts a significant impact upon the global arts. China is the motherland of calligraphic art, As a particular traditional art, chinese calligraphy is blessed with a solid foundation in culture and enjoys extensive participation. Chinese calligraphy of profound connotation and colorful presentation has become an excellent name card of China that demonstrates its national image to the rest of the world.” HE Qiyetu concluded. As far as he can see, the “Beauty of Chinese Characters—Chinese Calligraphy Exhibition” series sponsored by CFLAC and CCA in recent years have managed to disseminate this art in an active way and establish a friendship bridge to connect the world in calligraphic art. Moreover, in the respect of promoting traditional Chinese culture both at home and abroad, and enhancing international art exchange and communication, this series have played positive role and achieved remarkable in fluence.
As GONG Jiajia, cultural counselor of Chinese Embassy in Russia put, different from the alphabetic letters of Russian language, Chinese characters, as a time-honored ideographic language, have undergone a prolonged evolution from the initial inscriptions on bones and shells of tortoise to that on bronze objects, then to seal characters and official scripts, and finally to the current standard scripts. Despite the change of either writing materials from bronze to bamboo, from silk to paper, or writing tools from graver to brush, Chinese characters have maintained amazing continuity and coherence. Today’s Chinese people are still able to read through those ancient classics of thousands of years ago and conduct dialogues with their ancestors, which is quite rare in the world linguistic history. Along with the establishment, development and maturity of characters, Chinese calligraphy becomes an independent art and shares its own development process closely bound up with that of Chinese language. “Calligraphy is an art of lines. It is a unique treasure of Chinese culture. Chinese intellectuals insist that a person’s calligraphy is a reflection of his or her personality. In other words, to achieve a perfect calligraphy, one must not only keep perseverant practice with writing skills, but also keep perfecting internal harmony and virtue. Viewers can feel momentum and wisdom from a person’s calligraphy as well. Therefore from this exhibition, Russian audiences can appreciate the varied forms and styles of Chinese calligraphy and experience the beauty of chinese characters, chinese calligraphy and Chinese culture.” she said.
From the perspective of cultural exchange between China and Russia, Lanzman, vice chair of capital cultural artists coordination committee of Culture, Social Media Committee of Moscow Duma, spoke highly of this Chinese calligraphy exhibition and stressed that this exhibition may bring more Russian people into familiarity with this particular Chinese art discipline. As Pedrov, professor and People’s painter from Surikov Fine Arts Academy of Russian Academy of Arts expressed, during the course of his artistic creation, Chinese calligraphy inspired him with the beauty of lines and rhythm. In the opinion of Kobzev, director of Chinese studies at Oriental Research Institute of Russian Academy of Science, Chinese calligraphy is the unique cultural phenomenon of art and language integration, and thus hard for those in the cultural background of letter languages in Europe and Russia to fully understand. In this case, he deliberately gave a lecture to Russian audiences about the relationship between Chinese calligraphy and characters as well as the aesthetic effect of black-and-white calligraphy.
As Chinese President Xi Jinping remarks, “frequent exchanges are essential to amity between peoples which in turn is the key to sound relations between states”. Such event as “Beauty of Chinese Characters” Chinese Youth Calligraphers’ Works Exhibition will help establish a strong platform of cultural exchange between China and Russia, deepen mutual understanding of each other’s cultures, promote dialogue and friendship between the two peoples and enhance the interaction between the two civilizations.
