Script

7 Art from Calligraphy
Chinese Writing Turns into

Pictorial Images, Performative
Actions, Design Products and
Graffiti Works
Adriana Iezzi
Introduction
In China, anything which can claim to be a work of art has some
connection, obvious or subtle, with calligraphy.
Chiang (1973, 239)
‘Calligraphy’ (shufa 书法) has always been a central tenet of Chinese civi-
lization and ‘the chief of all the arts’ (Chiang 1973, 239). In China, it is
much more than the art of producing beautiful writings by hand, but it
represents one of the most important art forms that have been practiced
and appreciated in China from ancient times until now. It was one of the
so called ‘three perfections’ (sanjiue 三绝), together with painting and po-
etry, the art forms that every educated official in China was expected to
master in the past (Sullivan 1974) and one of the four traditional skills that
cultivate the minds of the literati (Li 2009, 1).1 Owing to its strict connec-
tion with the literary tradition and the classical writings, calligraphy has
consistently contributed to the continuity of Chinese artistic and cultural
tradition for about one and half millennia. Being based on the Chinese
characters, a fundamental identity factor for the Chinese that retraces the
whole history of China,2 it is an art that is strictly linked with the notion
of national, cultural, and personal identity (Pellat, Liu, and Chen 2014,
29). Being closely connected to a logographic writing system, it has an
aesthetic characterization and ornamental beauty that no other writing
system possesses. Most of the characters, in fact, are indeed graphs, but
originally they were drawings, images, which therefore easily lent to crea-
tive artistic manipulation. Because the content of each calligraphic work is
a meaningful text, in each calligraphy the artistic expression and linguistic
communication perfectly match and blend into each other, configuring cal-
ligraphy as the maximum vehicle of self-expression for Chinese artists.
DOI: 10.4324/9781032712970-12
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
166 Adriana Iezzi
From a philosophical point of view, calligraphy is a means of represen-

tation of the universal dynamism as a reflection of the ‘flowing energy’
(qi 气) that permeates not only the macrocosm but also the natural micro-
cosm and the human body (Liu 2000).3 Calligraphy also affects the politi-
cal and social sphere, representing a political instrument of social control
and an implement of social cohesion for the political and cultural élite of
the Chinese literati in imperial China (Ledderose 1986), an emblem of
the ruling class and its authorities (Kraus 1991) and a sign of power, per-
sonality, authority, glamour, and national belongings for today’s cultural
economic élite (Yen 2005, 15–32).
Another characteristic of Chinese calligraphy is the powerful and ex-
tremely coherent tradition of its practice:4 from the fourth century onwards,
classical models were canonized, and aesthetics and stylistic standards were
established so that traditional calligraphies seem to all be very similar to an
untrained eye.5 It was only by the end of the nineteenth century that the
impressive stability and cohesiveness of this art began to fade (Xue 1998),
and in contemporary times, in particular from the mid-1980s, thanks to
the uneven growth of the new commercial economy and the new politics of
the Communist Party, which ‘re-opened’ China to the rest of the world and
to a free confrontation with its past tradition, calligraphy has undergone a
radical change and exploded into a plethora of different forms in all fields
of visual and performing arts, entering the international contemporary art
arena (Iezzi 2013a). Calligraphy has been contaminated by other artistic
forms, modifying its rigid rules, forms, tools, materials, aesthetic canons,
and conceptions, sometimes even being unrecognizable. In this context,
Chinese writing turns into pictorial images, performative actions, design
products, and even graffiti works.
Chinese Writing Turns into Pictorial Images

The first examples of innovative ways to use Chinese calligraphy in con-
temporary artworks are those in which Chinese writing turns into ‘pic-
torial images’. This means first the rework of Chinese characters based
on their pictographic forms so that they do not seem to be characters
anymore but primitive and stylized images of what they represent, such as
animals, objects, and persons. This is possible because ‘many early writ-
ten signs in Chinese originated from sketches of objects, thus they bore a
physical resemblance to the object they represented, like pictures, which is
why they were called pictographs’ (Li 2009, 75).
An example is the work entitled ‘Horses’ Ma 马 (1990, Figure 7.1) by
Gu Gan 古干 (1942–2020), one of the first Chinese artists who experi-
mented with new forms of calligraphy starting from the mid-1980s. In this
oeuvre, the artist wrote the character ma 马 (horse) several times, using
Art from Calligraphy 167
Figure 7.1 Gu Gan, Horses, 1990, ink on rice paper, 70 × 66 cm. Courtesy of the
author.
its pictographic forms, and arranged the 11 pictographic versions of the

character6 freely on the sheet of paper in order to recreate the pacey move-
ment of a herd of horses. As a result, the viewer can appreciate the naïf
representation of the primitive fears, even if does not know that they are
actually Chinese characters.7
Using a similar conception, Luo Qi 洛齐 (b. 1960), another leading
figure in the panorama of the modernization of Chinese calligraphy, from
2004 to 2009, created three different series of artworks in ink and color
on paper entitled ‘Godbird Series’ (Shenniao xilie 神鸟系列, Figure 7.2),
‘Godfish Series’ (Shenyu xilie 神鱼系列) and ‘Flying Fish Series’ (Feiyu
xilie 飞鱼系列) reworking the ancient pictographic forms of the charac-
ters niao 鸟 (bird) and yu 鱼 (fish) with an increasingly greater degree of
abstraction.
In the first artworks of these series, the analogy with the pictographic
forms of the related character is very strong, but then it becomes increas-
ingly tenuous in favor of a greater resemblance to the real images of birds
and fish or to their conventional way of being drawn. In the last examples,
they turn into compositions of lines that only vaguely recall the shapes of
168 Adriana Iezzi
Figure 7.2 Luo Qi, Godbird Series, 2004–2007, ink and color on paper, 68 ×
68 cm (each). Courtesy of the author.
birds and fishes.8 Furthermore, in the last series, the ‘Flying Fish Series’, in-
augurated in 2009 and composed of 38 works, the artist fused together the
ideas of the first two series in the new concept of ‘flying fishes’ (feiyu飞鱼)
that are fantastic creatures who blend together the characteristics of the
fishes and birds painted previously, adding conventional elements and
shapes such as hearts, crosses, dots, flowers, triangles, etc. In these three
series, there is a fusion between different levels of representation: the ar-
chaic forms of the characters, the stylized drawings of real images, the
linear abstraction, and the rework of conventional elements. The aim is to
connect these various levels in order to create a new language that gives in-
finite possibilities of representation of the same subject. This is the idea of
‘combinatorial and asymmetric modularity’9 which characterizes much of
Luo Qi’s artistic production and can be found in two other series based on
the rework of Chinese archaic characters named ‘Love Writings’ (Qingshu
情书, 1990–2002)10 and ‘Sound Images’ (Shengyin de tuxiang 声音的图像,
2023). In these two series, Luo Qi created a childish, archaic drawing writ-
ing, in which the characters have been heavily reshaped and contaminated
with simple figurative elements. This non-formalized ‘writing’ is no longer
linguistically readable, but visually appreciable, opening itself to universal
aesthetic enjoyment.
The ‘pictographic’ approach used by Gu Gan and Luo Qi was trans-
ported to the third dimension by Xu Bing 徐冰 (b. 1955), another
Figure 7.3 Xu Bing, The Living Word, 2011, installation, The Morgan Library
and Museum, New York. © Xu Bing Studio.
revolutionary artist in the field of contemporary calligraphy, in an ex-

tremely suggestive installation called ‘The Living Word’ (Niao fei le 鸟飞
了, 2001, Figure 7.3).
This is an installation composed of a series of plexiglass cutouts of the
various forms of the character niao 鸟 (bird), from the most ancient form
in ‘oracle bone script’ (jiaguwen 甲骨文) to the modern standard, in which
each form is rendered with a different color.11 The character hovers from
a platform placed on the ground, with the transcription of the dictionary
definition of the word niao (bird), breaking away from the confines of the
literal definition and taking flight through the installation space. Rising
into the air, the character gradually changes from its simplified modern
form to non-simplified traditional forms written in different calligraphic
styles, and finally to the ancient Chinese pictograph for ‘bird’. The flight of
this character is a journey back in time and space that retraces the whole
history of Chinese writing from its roots. Its rainbow colors create a magi-
cal and fairy-tale quality. This installation is a flying ‘flock of birds’ and at
the same time an ‘animated writing’: the linguistic sign frees itself from the
preceptive constraints of writing to transform itself into something else,
170 Adriana Iezzi
Figure 7.4 Xu Bing, Landscript, 2002, ink on paper, 99.5 × 174 cm. © Xu Bing
Studio.
into something more alive and truer, and it does so simply by recovering its
original form. It is a game made possible only thanks to the formal evolu-
tion of Chinese writing which, thanks to its peculiarities, and in particular
to its pictographic nature, can come back to life.
In another series by Xu Bing entitled ‘Landscript/Read View’ (Wenzi
xiesheng 文字写生/Du fengjing 读风景, 1999–ongoing, Figure 7.4), the
artist used Chinese characters as pictorial elements to arrange landscape
paintings. In this way, characters for ‘stone’ (shi 石) make up images of
rocks; the character for ‘tree’ (mu 木) makes up trees; the character for
‘grass’ (cao 艸) grass, for ‘leaves’ (ye 叶) leaves, for ‘clouds’ (yun 云) clouds,
and so on. The characters that vary from regular and cursive scripts to
simplified forms as well as such archaic forms as bronze and oracle-bone
scripts are the ones he uses the most because of their pictographic value. In
this series, started in 1999 when the artist went to the Himalayas sketching
natural ‘scenes’ with Chinese characters, Xu Bing transforms visual images
of landscapes into linguistic forms, inviting the viewers to reassess the dis-
tinctiveness of Chinese culture hidden within traditional landscape paint-
ings, and offers a unique approach to ‘read a scene’.12 Chinese characters,
becoming pictorial elements, regain their value as semantic elements.
Another artist of the calligraphic avant-garde who also focuses on
the creative re-elaboration of the pictographic sign is Pu Lieping 濮列平
(b. 1959). In some of his works, for examples, he intersected pictograms,
rewriting them repeatedly in an increasingly creative way in order to cre-
ate organic compositions of great liveliness and calligraphic vividness.13 In
Figure 7.5 Pu Lieping, Knowing and doing, 2011, ink and colors on paper, 65 ×
65 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
another set of artworks (Figure 7.5), Pu Lieping refers to a particular form

of seal script called ‘bird seal script’ (niao zhuan 鸟篆) that is a kind of ar-
tistic script in common use during the late Warring States period (475–221
BC), characterized by avian elaborations decorating each character. In this
script ‘the lines are gently and intricately curved and decorated with bird
design’ (Ouyang and Fong 2008, 85), the strokes are replaced by bird
shapes, and the writing possesses a unique decorative style. Taking inspira-
tion from this particular script in the artwork ‘Knowing and doing’ (Zhix-
ing 知行, Figure 7.5), Pu Lieping transcribes the two characters of the title,
transforming the strokes of each character into heads of birds, bodies of
fishes, profiles of horses, swimming turtles, flower stems, and corollas,
depicting an imaginative natural scenario that seems to have nothing to do
with Chinese characters.
172 Adriana Iezzi
All the artworks analyzed above are examples of what can be defined as
‘pictorial calligraphy’ (huihua shufa 绘画书法) or ‘pictographic calligraphy’
(xiangxing shufa 象形书法),14 a form of visual (ri)elaboration of Chinese
characters based on their pictographic forms, sometimes incorporating the
use of colors. The first important examples of this type of calligraphy date
back to the ‘First Exhibition of Chinese Modern Calligraphy’ (Zhongguo
xiandai shufa shouzhan 中国现代书法首展), held in October 1985 at the
National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) in Beijing, which represents the
birth of ‘Chinese Modern Calligraphy’ (Zhongguo xiandai shufa 中国现
代书法)15 and of the Modernist calligraphic movement.16 The 72 artworks
displayed were neither calligraphies nor paintings (Liu 2000, 33), but they
were something that participated both in calligraphy practice and painting
conceptions.17Among them, there are several calligraphies composed of pic-
tographic forms, such as Tiandao chou qin 天道酬勤 (‘God help those who
help themselves’, 1985) by Li Luogong 李骆公 (1917–1992), a forerunner
in the use of pictographic forms,18 and Jia shan ting yu 家山听雨 (‘From
my refuge in the mountains I hear the tinkling of the rain’, 1985) by Huang
Miaozi 黄苗子 (1913–2012), another leading figure of the modernist calli-
graphic movement. There are also artworks in which the pictographic char-
acters create real visual images, such as Buxing 步行 (‘Walking’, 1985) by
Ma Chengxiang 马承祥 (b. 1937), composed of the two characters of the
title ‘步’ and ‘行’ reproduced in their bronze script forms which consist of
two footsteps at the intersection of four roads ; Chun 春 (‘Spring’, 1985)
by Zou Hanqiao 左汉桥 (b. 1946), in which the character ‘春’ is reworked
starting from its seal form , which represents ‘vegetation’ cao 艸 reviving
under the influence of the ‘sun’ ri 日; and, finally, Yue zhou 月舟 (‘Moon
and boat’, 1985) by Xu Futong 许福同 (b. 1944) in which the two charac-
ters of the title in bronze script ( and ) compose a night seascape. As
demonstrated in these last examples, a ‘pictorial approach’ to calligraphy
not only means the use of pictographic characters but also a new disposal of
the characters in the composition as elements of a painting. The most rep-
resentative example in that sense shown in this exhibition was the artwork
entitled Li Bai shi 李白诗 (‘Li Bai’s poem’, 1985) by Su Yuanzhang 苏元章
(1924–2002). In this oeuvre the artist transcribes a poem by Li Bai, China’s
most famous poet, using calligraphic forms and characters disposition to
mimic the forms of the landscape painting described in the poem19 so that
‘the image, essentially pictorial in structure, is organically united with that
of the poem’ (Zhang 1998, 15).
Starting from these first experiments, there are many artists who have
continued this type of research,20 like those mentioned above, and many
others who opened new paths for experimentation, (1) turning calligraphy
towards abstract art with artworks focused on the expressiveness of the cal-
ligraphic line, but where Chinese characters are no longer recognizable,21
(2) using new tools, from a corn broom to an augmented reality headset
with related touch controllers,22 (3) using new supports/materials to cre-
ate mixed media or multimedia artworks, from calligraphic collages and
combining paintings to digital works.23
The use of digital art applied to ‘pictographic calligraphy’ was indeed
pioneering in the history of Chinese contemporary experimentation and
goes beyond national boundaries. The first example of ‘pictographic cal-
ligraphy’ in digital form was in fact the cartoon titled ‘Thirty-six Char-
acters’ Sanshiliu ge zi 三十六个字, designed in 1984, one year before the
First Exhibition of Modern Calligraphy, telling a story using 36 movable
pictograms shaping in calligraphic forms.24 The transposition of picto-
graphic calligraphy in digital form was moreover the source of inspiration
of an artwork titled ‘Passo 1’ (Path n. 1, 2018) made by a foreign artist,
the Italian Guido Ballatori (b. 1983), who edited a video (the digitalization
of a paper flipbook) in which the artist creatively animates the two char-
acters Mo 墨 ‘ink’ and Yue 樂 ‘music’, the title of the exhibition in which
the work was exhibited,25 taking inspiration from the pictographic form
of the component parts of the characters and creating a story.26 Another
important experiment in that sense was the animation “The Character of
Characters” (Wenzi de xingge 汉字的性格) by Xu Bing, a video commis-
sioned by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in 2012 inspired by
a calligraphy masterpiece by Zhao Mengfu 赵孟𫖯 (1254–1322). In this
video, calligraphy strokes were transformed into figurative elements, char-
acters became visual signs, calligraphic practices and conceptions were
transposed into stories, and also the similarities between painting and cal-
ligraphy were embodied into animated symbols.27
As declared by Liu Zijian (1999):
Early works of modern calligraphy, such as the works of artists

like Gu Gan and Li Luogong, demonstrated a tendency to simulate
painting by trying to symbolize Chinese characters. People feel a cer-
tain element of freshness in such works because they look more like
paintings. […] The purpose is to seek visual effects and weaken the
recognizability of calligraphy. Traditional calligraphy as a complete
writing system has its inaccessible classical nature, which is already
impossible to be repeated in a changed cultural context. Calligraphy
can be a live source for new art only when it suspends the consistent
thinking that writing and recognizability of characters are essential
in calligraphy, and rather chooses to develop towards visual art and
seek roads beyond the edges of traditional calligraphy.
Starting from being something to refresh Chinese calligraphy from

within, ‘pictorial/pictographic calligraphy’ makes Chinese calligraphy not
174 Adriana Iezzi
only easier to read and more accessible to a wider audience but even more
easily usable abroad, still referring to something extremely identifying:
the pictographic nature of Chinese writing. The eternal struggle between
‘local’ and ‘global’ that characterized the recent history of contemporary
Chinese calligraphy seems to be resolved in a glocalization perspective (Wu
2008) with reversed roles in which it is the local that acts on the global.
Chinese Writing Turns into Performative Actions

The use of calligraphy in contemporary artworks goes beyond the produc-
tion of material visual artworks but results also in performative actions,
such as artistic performances, contemporary dance ballets, and musical ex-
ecutions. Calligraphy shares the idea of rhythm, dynamism, and harmony
with these art forms. In writing practice, in fact, the artist manipulates
and elaborates on the balance between opposites, a reference to the Daoist
philosophy of yin and yang, emphasizing diversity within parts and the
harmony of the whole, creating the rhythm of movement and generating
an innate flowing vitality so that ‘the beauty of Chinese calligraphy is es-
sentially the beauty of plastic movement, like the coordinated movements
of a skillfully composed dance’ (Li 2009, 179).
The most famous example of the use of calligraphy in a contemporary
performance is Zhang Huan’s ‘Family Tree’ Jiapu 家谱 (2000, Figure 7.6).
In this performance, Zhang Huan 張洹 (b. 1965) invites three callig-
raphers to write words and phrases on his face. He tells them what they
should write and to always keep a serious attitude when writing the texts
even when his face turns dark. His face follows the daylight till it slowly
darkens. At the end, his identity disappears. Most of these words and
phrases derive from the ancient Chinese art of physiognomy, which seeks
to map personality traits and divine the future based on one’s facial fea-
tures and/or cultural or political associations, such as the four characters
on his forehead that refer to a well-known fable often invoked by Mao
Zedong entitled, ‘The Foolish Old Man Removes the Mountain’ (Yugong
yishan 愚公移山).28 But rather than elucidate Zhang’s character and fate,
these traditional divinatory marks ultimately obscure his identity beneath
a dense layer of culturally conditioned references. Because both his body
and mind have been conditioned by his race and his upbringing, Zhang’s
autonomy as an individual is constantly in danger of being overwhelmed
by his heritage (Hearn 2014, 66). Words and calligraphy, instead of help-
ing the artist to know better himself and its culture, obscure his identity
and are means of personal and cultural disorientation.29
This performance is directly linked by another famous work by Qiu
Zhijie 邱志杰 (b. 1969), a leading figure of the contemporary calligraphic
movement, titled ‘Copying the Orchid Pavilion Preface a Thousand Times’
Figure 7.6 Zhang Huan, Family Tree, 2000, 9 photos of the performance, 224 ×
175 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
(Chongfu shuxie yi qian bian Lantingxu 重复书写一千遍兰亭序, 1990–

1995, Figure 7.7).
The ‘Orchid Pavilion Preface’ is the most famous calligraphic piece of
the Chinese history, written in 353 by Wang Xizhi 王羲之 (303–361), the
father of Chinese calligraphy, and it has been copied repeatedly by all
those who wish to learn the rudiments of calligraphic art. To denounce
176 Adriana Iezzi
Figure 7.7 Qiu Zhijie, Copying the Orchid Pavilion Preface a Thousand Times,
1990–1995, five chromogenetic prints, 49 × 99 cm (each). Courtesy of
the artist.
the senselessness of the calligraphy teaching method, based on the slavish

reiteration of what already exists, which completely kills any form of indi-
vidual creativity and expressiveness, Qiu Zhijie decided to dedicate three
years of his life to copying this work, repeating the operation a thousand
times on the same sheet of paper and documenting his work through a
video. By continuing to overwrite, even once the surface was completely
blackened, Qiu Zhijie arrived at the total annihilation of the work. Callig-
raphy so becomes a metaphor for social orthodoxy and cultural reproduc-
tion, reducing culture to a mere mechanical practice, in which there is no
possibility of criticism and renewal.30
There are also two female artists who took inspiration from Qiu Zhijie’s
performance, Ni Li 倪立 (b. 1989) and Wu Xixia 吴析夏 (b. 1993). On
April 28, 2018, during the finissage of the exhibition ‘The Music of Ink’
held at the Braidense National Library in Milan (21 March – 28 April
2018), Ni Li held a performance entitled ‘Calligraphy and Thousand Char-
acter Classic Thousand Character Classic’ (Figure 7.8) that consisted of the
repetitive writing of another classic of Chinese calligraphic tradition, the
‘Thousand Character Classic’ (Qianzi wen 千字文)31, on a big white panel
until its surface was completely blackened by the calligraphic strokes.
Otherwise, in 2021 in Macau Wu Xixia held a performance entitled
‘Writing the Orchid Pavilion Preface One Time’ (Shuxie Lanting xu yibian
书写兰亭序一遍). She entered in an airtight inflatable sphere that symbol-
izes the uterus and begins to write the ‘Orchid Pavilion Preface’ replacing
the different forms of the twenty zhi 之 characters present in the poem
with red-ink male phalluses. During the writing process, the oxygen inside
the sphere is gradually depleted, infusing it with carbon dioxide. Just be-
fore suffocating, the artist will ask for help to get out of the sphere.32
Figure 7.8 Ni Li, Calligraphy and Thousand Character Classic Thousand Char-
acter Classic, photograph of the performance, 2018. Courtesy of the
artist.
178 Adriana Iezzi
In both performances, a mechanism of reapproval of the calligraphic

tradition, characterized by masculine supremacy, is put into action by the
female counterpart. In the first example, there is the denunciation of a dull
tradition based on the mechanical and repetitive gesture; in the second
case there is the open denunciation of a patriarchal and chauvinist culture
symbolized by calligraphy and in particular by 之 zhi character, which has
deprived women of any possibility of self-expression.
The four performances are all attempts to deconstruct the calligraphic
tradition,33 and in particular, the first three are example of the so-called
‘anti-calligraphy’ (Jiang and Wang 2005; Qian 2000; Qu 200834; Zhang
1999) because they produce a subversion of traditional calligraphy and a
sort of negation of it.35 They can be defined as a form of ‘blackened cal-
ligraphy’ or ‘performance of blackened calligraphy’.
Starting from the assumption that calligraphy is ‘the dance of the wrist
and the ink’ and its aesthetic is directly linked to the conception of the ‘phys-
ical execution’ of harmonic movements (Kao 1991, 74–83), calligraphy
has also become the source of inspiration for Chinese contemporary dance
companies, choreographers, and dancers.36 The most important example is
‘Cursive: A Trilogy’ Xingcao sanbuqu 行草三部曲 (2001–2005, Figure 7.9)
by the Cloud Dance Theatre of Taiwan (Yumen wuji 云门舞集), a dance
company funded by Lin Hwai-min 林怀民 (b. 1947) in Taipei in 1973. The
trilogy is composed of three different ballets: ‘Cursive’ Xingcao 行草 (2001,
Figure 7.9), ‘Cursive II’ Xingcao er 行草二 (2003)37 renamed ‘Pine Smoke’
(Song yan 松煙) in 2012, and ‘Wild Cursive’ Kuangcao 狂草 (2005). 38 This
cycle focuses on the cursive style of calligraphy, known for its swirling and
surprising nature. Its meandering, energetic, and flexible lines shift between
continuous and compact to disconnected and loose ones, marked by its sud-
den and unpredictable variations, with its dynamic and easy movements,
it resembles the representation of an overwhelming dance captured on pa-
per, which is precisely what it turns into. What the choreographer wants
to capture, in fact, is ‘the concentrated energy with which the calligraphers
“danced” while they were writing’, that he recognized as a ‘common ele-
ment’ of all the masterpieces of Chinese calligraphy (Schmidt 2006).
In Cursive I (Figure 7.9), the dancers experience the kinetic energy aris-
ing during the act of writing and follow the diverse ink flows. Following
the energy assimilated from the traditional calligraphies projected on the
stage, the dancers try to reproduce with their movements the dynamism of
calligraphic lines, to animate the written signs and to mimic the dialectic
of yin and yang and the harmony that arises therein.39 The movements
of the dancers’ bodies all originate from the inside out, just like callig-
raphy, which emphasizes the movement of the brush in contact with the
air, leaving empty spaces around. Also, the music composed by the inter-
nationally renowned composer Qu Xiaosong 瞿小松 (b. 1952), in which
several drums contrast to a single cello, is full of empty spaces to merge
Figure 7.9 Cloud Gate Theatre of Taiwan, Cursive I, 2001. The dancer Chou
Chang-ning moves her body in front of the calligraphy Pan 磐 (hard
stone) by Tong Yang-tze. (Photo by Liu Chen-hsiang. Courtesy of the
dance company.)
calligraphy and dance movement into a unique flow. Like ink on rice pa-
per, the dancers wear black costumes and perform on a white stage. The
fusion with contemporary calligraphy materializes in the ninth of the ten
chapters of the ballet when the dancer moves in front of a panel with the
character pan 磐 (hard stone) written in cursive script by the famous fe-
male contemporary calligrapher Tong Yang-Tze 董陽孜 (b. 1942) (Figure
7.9). The dancer is wearing a long black dress with 510-cm long sleeves
(a reference to Chinese opera) and moves the heavy, long sleeves to evoke
weightlessness, like a ‘flying dragon and a dancing phoenix’ (long fei feng
wu 龙飞凤舞)40 moving like a brush on the soft rice paper.
180 Adriana Iezzi
In Cursive II, the reflection is on the ‘colors’ of calligraphy, on the five

different shades of black ink that can be identified in calligraphic artworks,
and in particular with the lighter nuances of color found in this artform.
The choreographer himself paints with the bodies of the dancers on the
background of enlarged sections of photos of white porcelain from the
Song dynasty (960–1279) and on the notes and long silences of the ‘Asian
period’ of John Cage’s experimental music.
The aesthetic and lyrical abstraction already very present in Cursive II
becomes even more evident in Wild Cursive, a hymn to movement improv-
isation and free expression, which are the elements from which the wild
cursive calligraphic form arose. This loose, unrestrained, and extempora-
neous script arose in fact from the hands of two extraordinary perform-
ers, Zhang Xu (675–750?) and Huai Su (737–789), the first two Chinese
calligraphers who turned calligraphy into a dancing performing action,
inspired by Madame Gongsun’s Sword Dance. In Lin Hwai-min’s chore-
ography, on the background made of strips of white rice paper stained by
signs and drops of black ink during the performative action, the dancers
dressed in black move their bodies freely as powerful brushes that create
wild cursive calligraphy on the notes of music composed by the young Tai-
wanese composers Jim Chum and Liang Chun-ma, which largely consists
of hard drumbeats and wind noises.
The strict correlation between music and calligraphic principles41 has
also influenced the artistic activities of composers inspired by the calli-
graphic gestures, calligraphers who conform their artistic conception to
music principles, and both musicians and calligraphers who work to-
gether in the so-called ‘musicalligraphy performances’. The first example
of a contemporary composer inspired by calligraphy is the Sino-American
Chou Wen-chung 周文中 (1923–2019), who in 1964 composed the clas-
sical piece entitled ‘Cursive’ 42 inspired by cursive style. As he explained:
Cursive refers to the type of script in which the joined strokes and
rounded angles result in expressive and contrasting curves and loops
[and musically the cursive concept influences] the use of specified
but indefinite pitches and rhythm, regulated but variable tempo and
dynamics, as well as various timbres possible on the two instruments
[I used in the composition, the piano and the flute]. The piano serves
as reflection of the flute by “extending” its range into the lower reg-
ister and by matching the flute’s varied timbral resources, such as
microtonal trills and flutter tonguing, using plucked piano strings
and foreign materials between these strings.43
A more recent example is the musical piece ‘Song of Ink’ (2022) by

the Chinese composer Chen Yeung-ping 陳仰平 (b. 1983). It is a piece for
flute, violin, qin, pipa, and piano, inspired by a set of monumental callig-
raphies44 displayed in the Main Hall at M+ (a contemporary art museum
in Hong Kong). The five calligraphies were made by Tong Yang-tze in
2020 for the opening of the museum and conceived as a sort of site-specific
installation; they are written in a mix of running and regular scripts in an
extremely free and dynamic disposal arrangement, typical of the artist’s
style. The text of the five pieces is: ‘the movement of heaven is powerful’
(tian xing jian 天行健), ‘renew oneself daily’ (ri xin 日新), ‘delight in the
existence of heaven and understand its order’ (le tian zhi ming 樂天知命),
‘at the auspicious moment, act without delay’ (jian ji er zuo 見機而作),
and ‘embracing the way of heaven brings progress’ (he tian zhi qu, Dao
da xing ye 何天之衢, 道大行也). These expressions are excerpts from the
I Ching (Book of Changes)45 and aim to open the viewer’s mind to philo-
sophical reflection on the meaning of human life, world existence, and the
relationship between human and Heaven. The musical piece is also divided
into five sections that represent the personal response of the composer to
the texts of calligraphy. The five sections are ‘Heaven’ (Tian 天), ‘Human’
(Ren 人), ‘Self-awareness’ (Zizhi 自知), ‘Overcome ego’ (Zi sheng自勝),
and ‘Unity’ (Heyi 合一). As he said:
Calligraphy is like music; its lines are what stimulate me greatly. This
composition, Song of Ink, captures the singing qualities and dynamic
of the ink I have perceived from Tong’s work.46
This is the first example of a musical composition directly inspired by

contemporary calligraphy.47
There are also examples in which calligraphy, music, and dance work
together to create multimodal and extremely captivating ‘musicalligra-
phy-dance performances’. One recent example is ‘Sound MAP (Musical-
ligraphy Augmented Performance)’,48 a multidisciplinary performance
of calligraphy, music, dance, and augmented reality that was held on
12 October 2023 at the Museo internazionale e biblioteca della musica
in Bologna during the opening of the exhibition ‘Sounds of Ink: Luo
Qi and 30 Years of Calligraphyism’ (12 October – 5 November 2023).
The performance involved two calligraphers, Luo Qi and Silvio Ferra-
gina (b. 1960), the pianist and impro-performer Giusy Caruso (b. 1976),
the contemporary dancer Agnese Gabrielli (b. 1997), and the Chinese
composer Zhang Zhenzhen 张桢珍 (b. 1987), with the technological
support of the Milan-based firm LWT3. The performance was divided
into three main parts: in the first part, starting from the silence, the pia-
nist began to ‘act’ on the piano, firstly plucking the piano strings and
creating distortion effects on them and then doing improvisations using
both keyboard and strings; her gestures were inspired by the gestures of
182 Adriana Iezzi
the calligraphy master Luo Qi, who meanwhile wrote on a rice paper
scroll sticking out of the piano the four characters of the title of the
exhibition (shuimo shengyin 水墨声音), using his personal style. When
he finished, he began to ‘translate’ the music into concatenations of cal-
ligraphic signs inspired by the oldest Chinese musical notation system,
the ‘Dunhuang music score’ (Dunhuang yuepu 敦煌乐谱),49 reshaping it
according to his personal and original interpretation and transforming
it into a ‘visual and visible musical score’, strongly rhythmic and dy-
namic, with an inextricably calligraphic thread.50 In the second part of
the performance, the pianist played the contemporary piece ‘Shadows’
(2012) by the Chinese composer Zhang Zhenzhen, interacting with the
improvisation of the dancer who moved her body in consonance with
the music rhythm and the pianist’s gestures. In the last part of the perfor-
mance, the Italian calligrapher Silvio Ferragina wrote the 18 characters
Fu zhi zai shan shui, qin biao qi qing, kuang xing zhi bi duan, li jiang
yan ni 夫志在山水, 琴表其情, 况形之笔端, 理将焉匿 (‘If it is possible for
a man’s impressions of mountains and rivers to find expression in his lute
playing, how much easier it must be to depict physically tangible forms
with a brush, from which no inner feeling or idea can be successfully
hidden’51) from the classical literary work entitled ‘The Literary Mind
and the Carving of Dragons’ (Wen xin diao long 文心雕龍) by Liu Xie 劉
勰 (ca. 465–522), using seal script and its pictographic forms. The text
creates a similarity between music and the art of the brush which, thanks
to their expressiveness, transform every type of vision, feeling, and hu-
man idea into art. The interaction between these two art forms is exactly
what was acted out on stage: while the calligrapher was shaping the 18
characters on a 15-meter-long scroll placed at the center of the room, the
pianist was playing a musical score (also with improvisations) that was
the translation in music of the strokes of those characters. This transla-
tion follows the strict rules of a sophisticated mathematical system called
‘Musicalligraphy Project’ (2013–ongoing) designed by Silvio Ferragina
that converts the strokes of the characters and the blank spaces between
them into musical notations and pauses.52 In this way, for the first time
the calligrapher and the musician play the same ‘musicalligraphic score’.
In this last part of the performance, technology was also part of the ac-
tion: while the calligrapher was writing, the characters he wrote were
projected on a screen placed in the background of the stage. Thanks to
a sensor placed on the brush, the movement of the calligrapher’s wrist
interacted with the projected characters that were deformed on the basis
of the calligraphic gesture. The pianist also had a sensor on her wrist that
modified the movement of the projected characters in accordance with
her gestures, generating electronic sounds. In this performance, all the
actors performed and embodied the strict correlation between Chinese
writing, gesture, music, and visuals, creating a real osmosis among callig-
raphy, music, and body movement, and demonstrated the creative poten-
tial of Chinese calligraphy art even through the use of augmented reality.
Chinese Writing Turns into Design Products

In contemporary times, Chinese calligraphy and writing are also systemati-
cally used in the field of decorative and applied arts due to the fascination
they still have in Chinese people. Chinese characters and calligraphic lines
lost their direct connection with the linguistic meaning to become deco-
rative elements; graphic motives; captivating shapes used for commercial
scope, for example on ceramics or design products, in particular graphic
design, fashion design and industrial design products; and also modern ar-
chitecture design.
Among all these manifestations, the use of Chinese writing and calligra-
phy in logo design is particularly interesting because it demonstrates how
Chinese characters, even individually, can be easily manipulated to create
something visually appealing and usable far beyond national boundaries.
Among the numerous logos made of Chinese characters and reproducing
the calligraphic strokes,53 one of the most representative example is the
logo of the Paralympic Games 200854 (Figure 7.10), designed by Paul Liu,
a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, who applied traditional
calligraphic art elements and transformed the Chinese character zhi ‘之’
into a human shape in motion, implying the tremendous efforts a disabled
person has to make in sports as well as in real life.
The character zhi ‘之’ means ‘birth, life’, as well as ‘arrival’ and ‘achieve-
ment’, and in fact its shape is made of twists and turns, which implies the
process of achieving goals and the life of human being. Its original form
(𡳿) is from zhi 止 ‘foot’, with a 一 line below it, so the character also
means ‘to go’. Its shape in fact seems to recall that of a person with a head
(the red dot), arms and torso (the blue line), and a single leg (the green
line) who is running, to symbolize the paralytic condition of some of the
Paralympic athletes who, despite their condition, ‘go, proceed, are in con-
tinuous movement’, going beyond human limit. The use of running script
(xingshu) to shape this character accentuates this idea of movement. The
whole character embodies the Paralympic motto of ‘Spirit in Motion’ and
was dubbed ‘Sky, Earth and Human Being’ (Tiandiren 天地人) because it
reflects the integration of heart, body, and spirit in human beings and of
human spirit and natural world, which is the core of the philosophy of
Chinese culture. The three colors in the logo in fact represent the sun (red),
the sky (blue) and the earth (green), that when integrated shape the human
figure. The words ‘Beijing 2008’ under the character are also written in a
calligraphic font similar to the character zhi and recall the lower part of
184 Adriana Iezzi
Figure 7.10 The logo of the Paralympic Games 2008. © International Paralympic

Committee.
the logo of the Beijing Olympic Games.55 In the Olympic logo, there is also
a strict correlation with Chinese writing and calligraphy: the shape of the
athlete in motion resembles the character jing 京 ‘capital’ in its seal script
form, standing for the name of the host city (Beijing), and reproduces the
typical Chinese red seal that is always composed of Chinese characters
written in archaic styles and represents the artist’s sign.56
Fashion design is another fertile ground for the interaction between cal-
ligraphy and applied arts.57 An extremely interesting example in this field
is the cross-media experiment called ‘From Ink to Apparel – A Crossover
between Calligraphy Art and Fashion Design’,58 a cycle of three exhibitions
organized by the calligrapher Tong Yang-tze in Taipei, in which calligra-
phy became the source of inspiration for talented young fashion designers.
The first edition was held in 2016: for the exhibition, Tong Yang-Tze in-
vited six up-and-coming Taiwanese fashion designers (Apu Jan, Shao-Yen
Chen, Yu-Ying Chou, Kilin Chen, Shun-min Wang, and Pei Chieh Chen)
to create dresses taking inspiration from twenty of the 100 calligraphies
that comprised her previous exhibition, entitled ‘Silent Music’.59 In 2007
Figure 7.11 The dress collection made by Polly Ho for the exhibition ‘From Ink to
Apparel II’ (2017). Courtesy of the artist.
she repeated the experiment involving the Hong Kong fashion designers
Polly Ho and Otto Tang and the designer Yi-Fen Tsai, in addition to three
veterans of the original exhibition. About the concept and realization of
her collection (Figure 7.11), Polly Ho affirmed:
My inspiration comes from Ms. Tong Yang-Tze. I tried to focus and

explore her masterpieces. Tried to discover the possibilities of her
brush strokes, try to make some collage from her enlarged strokes.
I found out the silhouette of her strokes are so strong and compli-
cated. To express the feeling of these complicated strokes, I cut the
silk fabric with many layers eventually; each layer is coming from
the line of her strokes. I applied these straps of her stroke lines, us-
ing 3D draping on the dummy to make a top. And then I applied
the same technique on the rest of the outfits from simple layers to
complicated layers. And I also developed a print from the collage of
Ms. Tong’s brush strokes, and then I printed on 3 different silk mate-
rials to express the soft and strength of the brush strokes. Moreover,
we added some circular shapes and try to explore the lighting spot
on the clothes to reflect the layers of the strokes in a different way.
186 Adriana Iezzi
In the last edition of ‘From Ink to Apparel’ in 2018, Tong Yang-tze fi-
nally invited three designers from Taiwan (Chou Yu-Ying, Chen Shao-Yen,
and Tsai Yi-Fen), two from Beijing (Li Ying-Jun, and Zhou You), and one
from UK (Pan Bernice) to work on a single character wu 無 (emptiness),
written by her in different calligraphic styles, to create dress collections.
The main aim of the ‘From Ink to Apparel’ experiment is to make the
art of calligraphy easily accessible to the general public through a language
that is easily readable and extremely captivating as fashion design, closer
to everyday practice and with possible commercial implications, and it is
also a way to show many possibilities inherent within the calligraphic art,
to show its creative potentiality in contemporary times, blending with an
artform originated from the West and making sure it doesn’t die.60
This is not the first time that calligraphers collaborated with fashion
designers,61 but is the first time that this collaboration is on large scale,
involving around 20 fashion designers, generating lots of different collec-
tions for a total of around 100 dresses, attracting a very large audience62
and abundant media attention.
Contradicting the theory of the skepticism of commercialization that
usually sees commodification and commodity images as processes that
degrade traditional cultural forms,63 the application of Chinese writing
and calligraphy to logo and fashion design reflects the cultural ‘Chinese’
connotation of the design works, transforms Chinese characters and cal-
ligraphic strokes into captivating, desired design elements, and enhances
and improves Chinese design to an international level.64
Chinese Writing Turns into Graffiti Works

Probably the most unusual and unexpected use of Chinese writing and
calligraphy in contemporary artistic expression is in graffiti art. However,
in China writing and calligraphy are everywhere, especially along the
streets, for example, in the calligraphic ‘signboards’ located on every gov-
ernment, institutional, and religious building; in the commercial, road,
and advertising signs; and even on walls in the scrawled advertisements
by the migrant workers.65
‘Graffiti art’ (tuya yishu 涂鸦艺术) appeared in the Chinese cities in
the mid-1990s, becoming popular in the mid-2000s, declining since the
mid-2010s, and experiencing a new flowering in the post-COVID era.66
Even if most of the Chinese crews/writers were deeply influenced by the
Euro-American tradition of graffiti, using the Latin alphabet, English lan-
guage, and Euro-American styles, there are some others67 that encourage
a process of “Sinicization” of graffiti art (Valjakka 2016), in order to cre-
ate a ‘Chinese graffiti style’ (Zhongguo tese de tuyayishu 中国特色的涂鸦
艺术) (Iezzi 2019b). This means the use of Chinese characters instead of
Latin letters to shape writing pieces, creating ‘charactering’ pieces instead

of ‘lettering’ pieces, and the reference to other Chinese cultural elements,
such as the insertion of calligraphic inscriptions and the use of calligraphic
lines to write graffiti tags.
As to graffiti tags, for example, there are numerous Chinese tags of the
Kwanyin Clan (Guanyin ‘觀音/观音’), one of the most important Beijing
crews,68 usually written with a style very similar to running or cursive
scripts and using the spray can as it were a brush, blending the spray or
moving the can closer and further away from the wall in order to create
different thicknesses of the lines.69 A particular interesting example is in
Figure 7.12; in this tag, the artists reproduced the regular thickness of
the lines typical of the calligraphic ‘great seal style’ (dazhuan shu 大篆书)
and wrote the two characters using their pictographic forms, using an ap-
proach similar to ‘pictographic calligraphy’ (see Chinese Writing Turns
into Pictorial Images Section). They in fact transformed the right part of
the first character Guan 觀 into a face with two big eyes – the meaning of
the character is, in fact, ‘look at, watch, observe’, and the lower part of the
second character yin 音 into an open mouth – the meaning of the character
is, in fact, ‘phone, sound’.
As to calligraphic inscription(s), representative examples are in the
huge graffiti piece ‘Joy in bottle’ (Figure 7.13) made by the ABS crew (an
Figure 7.12 Kwanyin Clan, Tag Guanyin ‘觀音’, spray paint on wall, Sihui: Bei-
jing, Photographed by Llys on 3 March 2007. Courtesy of the artist
and the photographer.
188 Adriana Iezzi
Figure 7.13 ABS crew et al. (Max, Jer, Way Fan, Bllod Bro, Spade, Kayo, Thorn
Donis, Neon, Deb.Roc.Ski etc.), Joy in bottle, 19–21 May 2018,
spray paint on wall, Berlin, Berlin Mural Fest. Courtesy of the artists.
important Beijing crew)70 with other Chinese and foreign writers during
the Berlin Mural Fest in 2018. In this work there are: (1) an inscription
that listed writers’ cities of origin,71 as a modern colophon of travelling
artists, and (2) another inscription with the big writing ‘Po fanlong 破樊
笼’ (‘The birdcage has disintegrated’) and the description of the main fea-
tures of Chinese dragons that ‘summon wind and rain and are omnipotent’
(‘hufenghuanyu, wusuobuneng 呼风唤雨, 无所不能’)72 that references the
gigantic and fierce red Chinese dragon painted on the whole wall.73
As shown in this example, the calligraphic inscriptions in the graffiti
pieces can be used as colophon, as in the calligraphic tradition, or to ex-
plain the meaning of the work, as in the Chinese painting tradition. There
are also inscriptions made by the Kwanyin Clan where the reference to
calligraphy is even deeper because the content of these inscriptions are
Chinese poems, the traditional content of Chinese calligraphy.74
As to ‘charactering’ piece, one representative example is Qingwu tuya
请勿涂鸦 (Please no graffiti, 2020, Figure 7.14) by Corw and Li Qiuqiu
(a.k.a. 0528),75 the father of Beijing graffiti.
The piece has a distinctly political orientation, as it was created on
Jingmi Road, Beijing’s most important hall of fame for some time now,
and once home – as Li Qiuqiu himself says76 – to numerous graffiti. Later,
these were all buffed by the government and replaced by a long, grey, and
anonymous wall dotted with the black stencil inscriptions Qingwu tuya
请勿涂鸦 (“No graffiti”) posted by the government itself. As an act of
Figure 7.14 Li Qiuqiu e Corw, Qingwu tuya 请勿涂鸦 (Please no graffiti), 2020,
spray paint on wall, Beijing, Jingmi Road. Courtesy of the artists.
protest, Li Qiuqiu and Corw decided to paint graffiti with the same text
but using bright colours and fun animations so as to brighten the blank
wall that had once been the heart of a shared creativity. As a result of this
act of artistic rebellion, many other writers followed suit, once more fill-
ing the wall with graffiti: a fine example of a peaceful protest with spray
cans. The political use of Chinese writing is so reactivated not as form of
control and power as in the past but as form of protest precisely against
that control and power exercised from above.
Conclusion
The artworks analyzed in this chapter show how Chinese calligraphy is still
extremely productive in contemporary times and has succeeded in giving
life to new artistic expressions born from the encounter of calligraphy with
other artistic forms. It is the case of the ‘pictorial/pictographic calligraphy’
born from the encounter with painting, the ‘performances of blackened
calligraphy’ born from the encounter with performance and conceptual
art, the contemporary dance and musical pieces inspired by calligraphy as
well as the ‘musicalligraphy-dance performances’ born from the encoun-
ter with dance and music, the logos made of Chinese characters and the
fashion collections inspired by calligraphic strokes born respectively from
190 Adriana Iezzi
the encounter with logo and fashion design, and the ‘charactering pieces’,
calligraphic graffiti tags and inscriptions born from the encounter with
graffiti art. These artistic expressions cannot all be defined as ‘calligraphy’
because they do not respect all the calligraphic principles, but they can be
defined as ‘art from calligraphy’77 because they take inspiration, lifeblood,
techniques, styles, contents, materials, tools, and/or aesthetic and philo-
sophical conceptions from calligraphy.
Through these expressions, calligraphy has merely expressed quali-
ties already inherent in it: with painting, calligraphy shares techniques,
tools, materials, training, philosophical, and aesthetic conception, and the
fact that ‘the earliest forms of the written characters can be regarded as
pictures’ (Chiang 1973, 226), so calligraphy and painting can be seen as
‘branches of the same art’ (ibid.). The rhythm, dynamism and harmony of
calligraphic strokes and gestures reveal the ‘performative quality’ of callig-
raphy. Being based on a highly graphic writing made of sets of meaningful
lines easily recognizable by Chinese people/consumers, calligraphy is ideal
for decorative and applied artistic productions. Like graffiti art, it has al-
ways been a ‘public art’ visible in the public spaces and walls. For all these
reasons, in contemporary times Chinese writing could be transformed into
pictorial images, performative actions, design products, and graffiti works.
In doing so, calligraphy opens itself to a broader understanding, being
easily readable also to a non-Chinese audience and creating artistic expres-
sions that exist comfortably within the global art world while remaining
indelibly Chinese.
Regarding the development of contemporary Chinese art as a transfor-
mation of China’s cultural heritage from within and from without in order
to create a globally comprehensible language (Gao 2011; Hou 2002; Wu
2013), calligraphy is certainly part of this development.
Notes
1 The other three abilities were the ability to play qin 琴 (a stringed musical
instrument), qi 棋 (the board game called ‘Go’) and to produce hua 画 (paint-
ings) (Li 2009, 1).
2 Chinese writing; it is the oldest writing system still in use today.
3 In a calligraphic work, in fact, we can admire and enjoy the reverberation of
this vital energy and universal impulse since the calligrapher, thanks to the
cultivation of his own psychophysical unity (xin 心), is able to guarantee the
openings that allow the flow of qi through his arm, his wrist, the brush, and
reverberations in the calligraphic lines, showing in his works the evident signs
of such a completely obstacle-free flow (Pasqualotto 2007, 105–27).
4 The four writing instruments are paper, writing brush, ink stick, and ink stone,
the so-called ‘Four treasures of the study’ (wenfangsibao 文房四宝); the colors
are black (the ink), white (the paper), and red (the seal that is the artist’s signa-
ture); the three major components of a calligraphic piece are the main text in
the center of the piece, inscription(s) on the sides, and seal(s) (Li 2009, 157–8);
the disposal arrangement of the text is in columns, and the text must be read
from top to bottom and from right to left; the five main calligraphic scripts/
styles are: seal script (zhuanshu 篆书), clerical script (lishu 隶书), regular script
(kaishu 楷书), running script (xingshu 行书) and cursive script (caoshu 草书);
the contents of calligraphies are usually poems and literary texts; the calli-
graphic training is based on tracing and copying from models of calligraphy
masters.
5 In this powerful and extremely coherent tradition there are, however, some
examples of the emergence of innovative elements, always being indicators
of ongoing cultural changes, such as the emergence of ‘wild cursive script’
(kuangcao 狂草) in the Tang dynasty (618–907) (Schlombs 1998), the diffusion
of Chan Buddhist calligraphy in the Song dynasty (960–1127) (Harrist and
Fong 1999), and the advent of ‘Leninist/revolutionary calligraphy’ during the
Maoist period (1949–1976) (Kraus 1991).
6 The artist took inspiration from various versions of the character written in
‘bronze script’ (jinwen 金文), a variety of Chinese scripts written on ritual
bronzes from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 BC–1045 BC) to the Zhou dynasty
(c. 1046 BC–256 BC) and even later. To see the different ‘bronze script’ ver-
sions of the character: https://www.zdic.net/zd/zx/jw/%E9%A9%AC (last ac-
cess 20.12.2023).
7 In a similar work entitled ‘Deer crying’ Luming 鹿鸣 (1990), Gu Gan followed
the same process reiterating the pictographic versions of the two characters of
the title lu 鹿 (‘deer’) and ming 鸣 (‘cry’) in order to recreate the din of a herd
of wailing deer, also adding colors to accentuate the pictorial charge of the
representation.
8 If we compare, for example, the work ‘Bird 1–05’ (2005) and the shape of
the character niao ‘鸟’ in bronze script (jinwen 金文), we see how the anal-
ogy between the two is very strong, as it is between the artwork ‘Fish 7–07’
(2007) and the form of the character yu ‘鱼’ in small seal script (xiaozhuan
小篆, another archaic Chinese script), and between the work ‘Fish 45–07’ and
the shape of the character yu in bronze script. If, however, we focus on other
works in the series, such as ‘Bird 3–05’ (2005) and ‘Fish 45–07’ (2007), we
instead see how this analogy with the archaic forms of characters is lost in
favor of a greater resemblance to the conventional ways of drawing birds and
fishes. Finally, in works such as ‘Bird 07–42,44’ (2007) and ‘Fish 07–40,42,43’
(2007) we see compositions of lines that only vaguely recall the shapes of birds
and fishes (Iezzi 2019a, 249, 256, 258–67).
9 Although starting from the same module (the characters ‘鸟’ and ‘鱼’), irregu-
larity is formalized as a creative principle (each work is different from the
others). In this sense, the form does not end in the original idea (the Chinese
character), but continually evolves, because there is no specularity between
project and execution. The work shows the possibility of an accepted, assimi-
lated, even intentional asymmetry, participating in the mentality of modern art
and modern world, made up of unexpected events and surprises (ibid., 256).
This idea is borrowed from Action painting.
10 The reference is in particular to the artworks of this series he did in 1998 (ibid.,
199–201).
11 The choice to create an installation, that is an art form halfway between sculp-
ture and architecture, is also a point of contact with the art of calligraphy.
There is in fact a strict correlation between calligraphy and both sculpture
192 Adriana Iezzi
and architecture that are ‘plastic arts’, as demonstrated by Chiang Yee (1973,
229–39). There are several contemporary artists that use calligraphy and Chi-
nese writing in their installations.
12 Xu Bing’s official website: https://www.xubing.com/en/work/details/231?
year=1999&type=year, last access: 21.12.2023. For more information about
this series, see Vainker and Xu 2013.
13 For a detailed description of artworks of this kind, such as Chun hu song niu
tu 春虎送牛图 (‘The Year of the Tiger Follows the Year of the Ox’, 2010) and
Qiu Yun 秋韵 (‘Autumn Rhythm’, 2010), see Iezzi (2013b, 63–4).
14 There are several definitions proposed by art critics of this type of calligraphy:
Zhang Yiguo (1998, 19) defines it as ‘paintinglike calligraphy’, Zhu Qingsheng
(2000, 162) as ‘current of calligraphy and painting/current of pictorial charac-
ters’ (Zi hua pai 字画派), Chew Kim Liong as (2001) ‘pictographic calligraphy’
or ‘painting-like calligraphy and calligraphy-dominated painting’, Gao Tian-
ming (2004, 190) as ‘calligraphic painting/pictographic calligraphy’ (shufa
huihua 书法绘画), Chen Dazhong (2005: 96) as ‘Pictographic transformation
of Chinese characters’ (Hanzi huihua hua 汉字绘画化), Liu Zongcao (2006)
as ‘Illustrated character-meaning creations’ (Tujie ziji shi de chuangzuo 图解字
义式的创作), Zhang Aiguo (2007, 158) as ‘Painting of characters/Characters
model in pictorial form’ (Hua zi xing 画字型), Liu Canming (2010, 86–94)
as ‘Pictorialization of Chinese characters’ (Hanzi tuhua hua moxing 汉字图
画化模式), etc. The first to distinguish this tendency was Li Xianting (1991,
254–55), when he wrote that there are some artists that ‘draw Chinese charac-
ters like pictures’ (zihua xiangxing 画字象形, ibid., 254).
15 For an explanation of the meaning of the label ‘Chinese Modern Calligraphy’,
see Iezzi (2015, 206–8).
16 For more information about the Modernist calligraphic movement, see Barrass
(2002, 162–93); Iezzi (2013a, 164–7).
17 The images of all the artworks displayed in the exhibition are visible in the
exhibition catalogue (Wang 1986).
18 Li Luogong began this type of experimentation as early as the 1970s, together
with Huang Miaozi and Zhang Zhengyu (1904–1976). His most famous art-
work in that sense was entitled ‘I Lost My Proud Poplar’ (1973). In this art-
work the Chinese pictograms that are the transcription of a poem written by
Mao Zedong are arranged as in a Fauves painting. This artwork became the
symbol of the exhibition organized in 1973 by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, and the
other members of the so-called ‘Gang of Four’ that gathered exemplary works
of what they considered unacceptable in contemporary art.
19 For a detailed description of this artwork, see Zhang (1998, 15). Xu Bing’s
‘Landscript’ series was probably inspired by this work.
20 Among them, the most important are Dai Shanqing 戴山青 (1944–2004),
Wang Xuezhong 王学仲 (1925–2013), Xie Yun 谢云 (1929–2021), Deng
Yuanchang 邓元昌 (b. 1939), Wang Naizhuang 王乃壮 (b. 1929), Peng Shi-
qiang 彭世强 (b. 1944), who took part in the First Exhibition of Modern Cal-
ligraphy, Huang Yao 黄尧 (1917–1987), Wang Yong 王镛 (b. 1948), Wang
Tianmin 王天民 (b. 1944), Wen Bei 文备 (b. 1953), Wang Dongling 王冬龄
(b. 1945), Bai Di 白砥 (b. 1965), Tong Yang-tze 董阳孜 (b. 1942), Zhu Naiz-
heng 朱乃正 (1935–2013), Xing Shizhen 邢士珍 (1936–2019), Ma Xiao 马啸
(b. 1962), Zhang Aiguo 张爱国 (b. 1967), Liu Canming 刘灿铭 (b. 1963),
Yan Binghui 阎秉会 (b. 1956), Lin Xinchen 林信成 (b. 1952), Wang Gongyi
王公懿 (b. 1946), etc.
21 There are some artists, such as Pu Lieping, Wei Ligang 魏立刚 (b. 1964),
Shao Yan 邵岩 (b. 1960), Luo Qi, Fung Ming-chip 冯明秋 (b. 1951), Qiu
Zhenzhong 邱振中 (b. 1947), and Chen Guangwu 陈光武 (b. 1967), who
greatly deform Chinese characters until they are (nearly) unrecognizable so
that their works seem abstract, even if their starting point is Chinese writing
(Iezzi 2013b, 54–75); and some others, such as Qin Feng 秦风 (b. 1961) and
Zhang Dawo 张大我 (1943–2023), who use real ‘abstract’ calligraphic lines
with no connection with Chinese characters as their stylistic signature (ibid.,
76–84).
22 The corn broom was used by Pu Lieping in 2021 to write a poem by Liu Ji
in the work titled Wu yue shijiu ri dayu 五月十九日大雨 (‘Heavy Rain on the
19th day of the 5th lunar month’), while the augmented reality headset with re-
lated touch controllers was used by Wang Dongling in the same year to create
a 3D virtual calligraphy. Other new tools are the syringe with a small ink tank
using by Shao Yan, cigarettes or incense sticks using by Wang Tiande 王天德
(b. 1960), the flashlight using by Qiu Zhijie 邱志杰 (b. 1969), etc.
23 The first calligraphic collages were made at the end of the 1980s, for example,
by Wang Dongling using newspaper sheets, but it was only in 1998, with the
foundation of the so-called ‘School of the Academics’ (Xueyuanapai 学院派)
by Chen Zhenlian 陈振濂 (b. 1956) that a group of calligraphers focused on
the creation of calligraphic collages and combined paintings; since then, every
kind of support/material has been experimented (plastic, photos, human body,
dresses, gunpowder, neon, etc.); as to digital support, after the first experimen-
tations at the end of the 1980s to shape calligraphic strokes on a computer
screen, the artist who best connected calligraphy to information technology,
GPS technology, and even video games was Feng Mengbo 冯梦波 (b. 1966).
24 To watch the cartoon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=
7Mhz61n8To0 (last access: 09.01.2024).
25 The exhibition ‘The Music of Ink – Calligraphies by Luo Qi and Silvio
Ferragina in dialogue with the Chinese archive collection of the Braidense
Library’ was held at the Braidense National Library in Milan from 21 March
to 28 April 2018.
26 For a detailed description of the video, see Iezzi (2018, 15).
27 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ1mpKlIxhQ (last access: 12.07.2024)
28 As the artist said: ‘This traditional Chinese story is known by all common peo-
ple, and it speaks about a family story. It is about determination and challenge:
if you really want to do something, then it could really happen. Other phrases
are about human fate, like a kind of divination. Your eyes, nose, mouth, ears,
cheekbone, and moles indicate your future, wealth, sex, disease, etc.’ (Zhang
Huan’s official website: http://www.zhanghuan.com/worken/info_71.aspx?
itemid=962&parent&lcid=193, last access 09.01.2024).
29 In 2001, Zhang Huan played a similar performance in Shanghai entitled
‘Shanghai Family Tree’. In this performance, he posed with two other people –
a man and woman – and their faces were also covered by Chinese characters.
The meaning of this performance overwhelms the individuality, defining the
person’s association with society. In 2015, the artist played a new version of
this performance entitled ‘Family Tree 2015’ during the live-art exhibition ‘15
Rooms’ held in the Long Museum of Shanghai. The performance reproduced
the writing process of the original 2000 ‘Family Tree’, but, before the writing
performance, Zhang Huan had interviewed 12 men and women born after
1990 to study the life and dreams of this new generation. Zhang Huan used the
194 Adriana Iezzi
answers given by the interviewees to write them on their faces until their faces
slowly darkened.
30 After this experiment, Qiu Zhijie did a similar performance entitled ‘Heart
Sutra’ (Xin jing 心经) in 1999, copying this ancient Buddhist text a hundred
times until the page was completely obscured. The artist wonders about the
veracity and reliability of a translated text like the Chinese Heart Sutra
that represents a fundamental text for the spread of Chan Buddhism in
China.
31 The ‘Thousand Character Classic’ is a Chinese poem that has been used as a
primer for teaching Chinese characters to children from the sixth century on-
ward; it contains exactly 1,000 characters, and it could be sung in a way simi-
lar to children learning the Latin alphabet singing an ‘alphabet song’. It is also
a phenomenon in the calligraphy realm that has been continuously composed
by numerous famous calligraphy masters through the history.
32 Another similar performance titled ‘Writing the Orchid Pavilion for the Second
Time’ (Shuxie Lantingxu dierbian 书写兰亭序第二遍) took place on Novem-
ber 27, 2022 during the Wuzhen Theater Festival. Wu Xixia wrote inside an
airtight sphere placed in the water. In this performance, the four characters
Zhi hu zhe ye 之乎者也 were written using nü shu 女书 (a ‘secret’ female
writing), the character ye 也 is replaced with the female vagina symbol, and
a long snake-shaped strip surrounded the sphere simulates the shape of an
umbilical cord.
33 The reference is to the Derrida’s notion of deconstruction. The four perfor-
mances are also examples of two of the three categories into which artists
who try to interconnect innovatively calligraphy and performance art can be
divided: Zhang Huan and Qiu Zhijie are contemporary artists/performers who
use calligraphy as a source of inspiration and a medium for their performative/
conceptual works (other examples are by Gu Wenda, Song Dong, and Wu
Wei), while Ni Li and Wu Xixia are female artists/performers who use cal-
ligraphy to ‘give voice’ to the feminine (other examples are by Echo Morgan
and Li Xinmo). The third category is composed of contemporary calligraphers
who try to transform calligraphic modes into a performative action to revital-
ize and modernize calligraphy (e.g., Zhang Qiang, Zhu Qingsheng, Shao Yan,
Pu Lieping and Wang Dongling).
34 All these art critics proposed a different definition, Zhang Nan fanshufa 反书
法 (1999), Qian Qinggui feishufa 非书法 (2000), Jiang Xu & Wang Dongling
feihanzi shufa 非汉子书法 (2005), and Qu Lifeng wuzishufa 无字书法 (2008).
The first to theorize this concept was Wang Nanming (Wang 1994).
35 Many other artworks by the avant-garde movement also belong to this cat-
egory, in particular those by Bai Qianshen 白谦慎 (b. 1955), Gu Wenda 谷文达
(b. 1955), and Xu Bing made of unreadable characters. For more information,
see Iezzi (2013a, 167–9).
36 After the first example of ‘calligraphy-dance performance’ held in 1983 at the
Asia Society Lila Acheson Wallace Auditorium, starting from the idea of ‘danc-
ing ink’ by the Chinese calligrapher Wang Fangyu 王方宇 (1913–1997) (Wang
1984), other examples are the dancing pieces ‘Upon Calligraphy/Beyond Cal-
ligraphy’ (Linchi wu mo 临池舞墨, 2005–ongoing) by the Guangdong Mod-
ern Dance Company, ‘Cursive (Wild Grass)’ (2006) by the Yin Mei Dance,
‘Connect Transfer’ Lianjie zhuanhuan 连接转换 (2004) by the Shen Wei Dance
Arts, and ‘Random Thoughts on Oracle-bone Inscriptions’ (Jiagu suixiang
甲骨随想) (2001) by the dancer Huang Doudou 黄豆豆 (b. 1977).
37 For a detailed analysis of ‘Cursive I’ and ‘Cursive II’ see Ho I L. (2009).

38 The analysis is based on the vision of the three DVDs recording the three ballets:
Xingcao 行草 (Cursive). Part one of Cursive: A Trilogy (2013), Song yan · Xing-
cao er 松煙 · 行草贰 (Pine Smoke · Cursive II) (2013), Kuangcao 狂草 (Wild
Cursive) (2013).
39 In the second chapter of the ballet, for example, the dancer moves her body
in front of a projection of the Chinese character yong 永 (eternal), a character
that contains all the basic variations of brush strokes and gestural vocabular-
ies commonly used in regular script, cursive script, and ‘wild cursive script’
(kuangcao) in Chinese calligraphy. The character is written stroke by stroke,
and the order of the movement of the brush serves as a sequential score of the
dancer’s movement so that the dancer repeatedly writes/dances the yong char-
acter with her whole body.
40 This is a chengyu 成语 (a four-character idiom) that is a common expression to
indicate a particularly vigorous, graceful and powerful calligraphic style. This
expression also underlines the strict connection between calligraphy and dance
at linguistic level.
41 Chinese calligraphy is ‘a musical art’ (Billeter 1990, 89). Similarities between
calligraphy and music go also beyond the concept of harmony (ibid., 89-107):
tone color is like writing nature, acoustic quality is like quality of line, intona-
tion is like accurate writing skill, volume is like writing intensity, tone range
is like the comparison of writing changes, tempo is like pause and transition
when writing, and rhythm in music is like the partial or entire arrangement of
calligraphic works, also called ‘rhythm’ in Chinese.
42 To listen to the song, visit Chou Wen-chung official website: https://chouwen-
chung.org/de/composition/cursive/(12.11.2022).
43 Ibid. In his late compositions (from 1990 to 2003), it is possible to recognize a
correlation between his calligraphies and the musical gestures (Everett 2007).
44 To see the images of the calligraphies, visit the official website of the M+:
https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/exhibitions/m-commission-tong-yang-tze/ (last
access 10.01.2024).
45 The use of excerpts of Chinese classical texts as content of the calligraphies is
a leit motiv in the Tong yang-tze’s artistic production.
46 Official website of the US-China Music Institute of the Bard College Con-
servatory of Music, Ink Art and New Music Project: https://www.barduschi-
namusic.org/news/2022/ink-art-and-new-music-project (last access 10.01.
2024).
47 This experiment is part of the ‘Ink Art and New Music’ project that is a crea-
tive exchange project among the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and M+, in
collaboration with the Bard College Conservatory of Music (New York), that
aims to explore the aesthetic commonality and discover the innovative poten-
tial of ink art and new music. During the second phase of the project, compos-
ers worked on new compositions inspired by individually chosen works from
the M+ collection of twentieth- and twenty-first-century ink art.
48 To see the edited video of the performance: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=1tXrIdYPCqM (last access 11.01.2024).
49 The ‘Dunhuang music score’ is a tablature-notation for pipa (Chinese lute)
discovered in the Mogao Buddhist caves in Dunhuang (Gansu province) by the
French sinologist Paul Pelliot in 1908. It probably dates back to the tenth cen-
tury, and it is composed of 20 tablature symbols which are simple characters,
radicals or phonetic symbols.
196 Adriana Iezzi
50 Luo Qi used the ‘Dunhuang music score’ to translate Italian famous opera and
arias in a series entitled ‘Writing Music – Silent Melodies’ (Xieyue – Wusheng
zhi ge 写乐·无声之歌, 2018–2023).
51 The translation of the 18 characters is by Qian Na and Ying Yuan Qian and
Ying (2020, 77).
52 For a detailed description of the ‘Musicalligraphy project’, see Ferragina (2022,
70–89).
53 These logos can be divided into 4 categories: (1) logos related to interna-
tional event held in China (i.e., for the Paralympic Games 2008, the Olympic
Games 2008, and the Shanghai Expo 2010 inspired by the character shi 世
[‘world’]); (2) institutional logos (i.e., the logo of the China Railway made
of the two characters ren 人 [‘people’] and gong 工 [‘work’], and the logo
of the Hangzhou city in which the character Hang 杭 was transformed into
traditional architectural elements); (3) commercial logos (i.e. the logo of
the cosmetic brand ‘Drawshine’ [Zhuangxie 妆写] made of the pictographic
form of the character zhuang 妆 [‘woman’s adornments’], and the logo of
the ‘Crafts on Peel’ artisans’ organization made of the character shou 手
[‘hand’] that, being mirrored, designed the character wo 我 [‘io’]); (4) logos
of artistic projects (i.e., the CAFA ART INFO that uses a font invented by
Xu Bing and the WRITE project with the character xie 写 [‘to write’] written
by Luo Qi).
54 A brief description of the logo is available at the link: https://web.archive.
org/web/20080720184339/http://en.paralympic.beijing2008.cn/graphic/
n214342413.shtml (last access 11.01.2024).
55 To see the logo, visit the official website of the Olympics Games: https://olym-
pics.com/en/olympic-games/beijing-2008/logo-design (last access 11.01.2024).
56 There are many Chinese logos that reproduce the typical Chinese seal with the
character(s) of the brand/institution/event precisely because the seal represents
the artist’s sign, so it is the way in which the artist is identified; the logo in fact
is nothing more than the way in which a brand/institution/event should be eas-
ily identified.
57 In fashion design, calligraphy plays an important role as: (1) as a source of in-
spiration for both Chinese and foreign stylists (i.e. Christian Dior 1951, Coco
Chanel 1956, Vivienne Tam 2013, Chloe Sung 2016, and Grace Chen 2021–
2022), (2) because of several collaborations between ‘modern calligraphers’
and famous fashion houses/stylists (i.e. King of Koowloon and William Tang
Tat Chi in 1997, Luo Qi and EFEN in 2008–2009, Xu Bing and Calvin Klein
2011), and (3) in the use of dresses as a new support for innovative calligra-
phies (i.e., in some works by Zhang Qiang, Wang Tiande, Shi Yu and Wang
Xinyuan).
58 Tong Yang-tze official website: https://en.tongyangtze.com/crossitem?id=6 (last
access 15.01.2024).
59 In 2016, Tong Yang-tze held the exhibition entitled ‘Silent Music’ inspired by
the relationship between calligraphy and music in Belgium, associated with
a music competition (the 2016 Queen Elisabeth Music Competition) and in
Tapei, where she curated a crossover performance that involved jazz musicians
and contemporary dancers. Using the artworks of this exhibition as source
of inspiration for fashion designers, the cross-media experiment of ‘From Ink
to Apparel’ involved three art forms: calligraphy, fashion design, and music,
respectively a form of visual art, applied art, and performing art.
60 This last statement is reiterated by the artist in the video: https://en.tongyangtze.

com/crossitem?id=6 (last access 15.01.2024).
61 See note 67 (2).
62 The number of visitors of the first two exhibitions exceeded 100,000: https://
en.tongyangtze.com/crossitem?id=6 (last access 15.01.2024).
63 For example, in critical theory the thesis on ‘the culture industry’ by Adorno
and Horkheimer 2002 (1944).
64 Guo Yaojie did a similar affirmation about calligraphy applied to graphic de-
sign Guo (2015, 287).
65 For more details and the significance of these scrawled advertisements, see:
Parke (2018, 261–84). She defined this phenomenon as a ‘public calligraphy
performance’.
66 For a detail analysis of the diffusion of graffiti art in China and in particular in
Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, see: Bisceglia, Merenda, and Iezzi (2024).
67 The most important crews/writes are that seeking for a ‘Chinese graffiti style’,
which means in particular the use of Chinese language in their works, are: the
Kwanyin Clan, the Beijing Penzi, the Yellow Peril, MES, EXAS, Camel, ZEIT,
and MAGE in Beijing; Iron in Xi’an; the OOPS crew in Shanghai; Touchy in
Shenzhen; Xeme and Sinic in Hong Kong; Chen13 and Dohak652 in Guang-
zhou; the Kong2 crew in Changsha; Moon in Quanzhou; Mora in Canton; Gas
and Reset in Chengdu; and Creepymouse and Blackzao in Taiwan.
68 For more information about the Kwanyin Clan, see Iezzi (2019b).
69 To see some examples of this kind of works: ibid., 427 (432), 433.
70 For more information about the ABS crew, see Bisceglia et al. (2024, 93–111).
71 The content of the inscription is: ‘Some people come from afar: Beijing, Tong-
chuan, Chengdu, Yinzhou, Wuhan, Chongqing. Greeting from China’ (You
ming zi yuan lai: Beijing, Tongchuan, Chengdu, Yinzhou, Wuhan, Chongqing
Laizi Zhongguo de wenhou 有明自远方来北京, 铜川, 成都, 银州, 武汉, 重庆
来自中国的问候).
72 These are the last two lines of the calligraphic inscription.
73 There are actually two other brief inscriptions along the very long piece: one is
the title of the work “Joy in bottle”, and the other is the indication of the year
of the execution of the artwork in Chinese (erlingyiba 二零一八,which means
2018) with the name of the festival in Latin letters “Berlin Mural Fest”. All
four inscriptions are dotted by red seals with the writers’ tags so that they look
like real traditional calligraphic inscriptions.
74 For a detailed analysis of these inscriptions, see Iezzi (2019b).
75 For more information about Li Qiuqiu, see Bisceglia et al. (2024, 56–69).
76 Artist’s interview with the author, 13.02.2021.
77 The expression ‘art from calligraphy’ (yuanzi shufa de yishu 源自书法的艺
术) was firstly used by the Chinese calligrapher and scholar Qiu Zhenzhong
(Qiu 2004, 277) as an alternative to the definition ‘Chinese modern callig-
raphy’ (Zhongguo xiandai shufa 中国现代书法) to classify some of the new
expressions of Chinese contemporary calligraphy. Qiu Zhenzhong divided the
artworks into three categories that can be summarized as no-characters, ab-
stract, and conceptual works (ibid., 278–79); created a sub-category called ‘art
from writing’ (yuanzi shuxie de yishu 源自书写的艺术); and distinguished ‘the
art from calligraphy’ from ‘the art from Chinese characters’ (yuanzi Hanzi de
yishu 源自文字的艺术) (ibid., 283). The use of this expression in this chapter
does not follow Qiu Zhenzhong’s classification.
198 Adriana Iezzi
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7 Art from Calligraphy

Chinese Writing Turns into

Chiang (1973, 239)

From a philosophical point of view, calligraphy is a means of represen-

Chinese Writing Turns into Pictorial Images

its pictographic forms, and arranged the 11 pictographic versions of the

revolutionary artist in the field of contemporary calligraphy, in an ex-

another set of artworks (Figure 7.5), Pu Lieping refers to a particular form

Early works of modern calligraphy, such as the works of artists

Starting from being something to refresh Chinese calligraphy from

Chinese Writing Turns into Performative Actions

(Chongfu shuxie yi qian bian Lantingxu 重复书写一千遍兰亭序, 1990–

the senselessness of the calligraphy teaching method, based on the slavish

In both performances, a mechanism of reapproval of the calligraphic

In Cursive II, the reflection is on the ‘colors’ of calligraphy, on the five

A more recent example is the musical piece ‘Song of Ink’ (2022) by

This is the first example of a musical composition directly inspired by

Chinese Writing Turns into Design Products

Figure 7.10 The logo of the Paralympic Games 2008. © International Paralympic

My inspiration comes from Ms. Tong Yang-Tze. I tried to focus and

Chinese Writing Turns into Graffiti Works

Latin letters to shape writing pieces, creating ‘charactering’ pieces instead

37 For a detailed analysis of ‘Cursive I’ and ‘Cursive II’ see Ho I L. (2009).

60 This last statement is reiterated by the artist in the video: https://en.tongyangtze.

Iezzi, Adriana, ed. 2018. La musica dell’inchiostro. Calligrafie di Luo Qi e Silvio

Zhang, Nan. 1999. “A Criticism of the Complex of Modern Calligraphy at the

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Chinese Writing Turns into Pictorial Images

Chinese Writing Turns into Performative Actions

Chinese Writing Turns into Design Products

Figure 7.10 The logo of the Paralympic Games 2008. © International Paralympic

Chinese Writing Turns into Graffiti Works