New Forms of Calligraphy in China: A Contemporary Culture Mirror

Project Information

WRITE

Grant agreement ID: 949645

DOI

10.3030/949645

EC signature date 23 October 2020

Start date 1 November 2020

End date 31 October 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 113 750,00

EU contribution

€ 1 113 750,00

Coordinated by

ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - WRITE (New Forms of Calligraphy in China: A Contemporary Culture Mirror)

Reporting period: 2023-11-01 to 2025-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

WRITE project investigates how the emergence of new forms of calligraphy in contemporary China is re-defining Chinese cultural identity.
WRITE examines the innovative ways in which these new forms of calligraphy have responded to, subverted, or reinterpreted traditional idioms to define a modern artistic identity that exists comfortably within the global art world while remaining indelibly Chinese. WRITE reveals how these new forms powerfully resonate with China’s rich and enduring cultural tradition. At the same time, they arise from the sweeping social, political and economic changes that have taken place in China during the last four decades.

WHY CONTEMPORARY CALLIGRAPHY?
Calligraphy is the quintessence of Chinese culture. The history of China is strictly linked to the history of its writing and calligraphy and the emergence of innovative elements in the powerful and extremely coherent tradition of the calligraphic practice has always been an indicator of ongoing cultural changes.
In the last forty years, 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 revaluation of its past tradition, the panorama of calligraphy has been completely renewed. Calligraphy exploded into a plethora of different forms in all fields of visual and performing arts (from graffiti art to fashion design), as it has never happened before, reflecting the increasing cultural diversification of the Chinese society.
Starting from the artistic analysis of these new forms of calligraphy, and including linguistics, translating, socio-political and economic studies, WRITE project affords a new comprehension of contemporary Chinese cultural trends within and outside its national boundaries.

WRITE OVERALL OBJECTIVES:
1) Create the first artworks dataset representing all new Chinese calligraphic forms;
2) Propose a new taxonomy of the artistic production;
3) Propose a systematic study on the language about these new forms of calligraphy;
4) Evaluate specific socio-political and economic aspects related to the emergence of these new forms of calligraphy;
5) Develop a novel methodology that, analysing calligraphic artworks, mirrors the cultural changes of contemporary China.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In this first period of research, the work of the PI and of the research team focused on 4 main tasks:
1) background historical research/reconstruction on i) the development of Chinese calligraphy in premodern and modern times, ii) Japanese contemporary calligraphy, and iii) Euro-American influences;
2) historical reconstruction of the development of new forms of calligraphy from the 80’s of the XX century (identification of important exhibitions, associations, research institutes, media, etc.);
3) collection and selection of some representative artworks to build the WRITE artworks dataset;
4) analysis of some selected artworks and of their texts.

Despite the impossibility of going to China and doing fieldwork, the main results achieved at this stage of the project are:
1) detailed historical reconstruction of the development of new forms of calligraphy in China, in particular in the fields of “fine and contemporary art”, performing arts and graffiti arts (two books – one published and one about to be published - have been written about these topics), determining the main trends and the most influential artists who uses calligraphy in unconventional ways;
2) creation of the WRITE artwork dataset (ongoing);
3) creation of the technological infrastructure of the WRITE digital archive used to analyze artwork from an artistic, linguistic and socio-political-economic point of view;
4) on the basis of the analysis carried out, identification of new trends and first hypothesis of categorization of the artistic production.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

PROGRESS BEYOND THE STATE OF THE ART:
At this first stage of the research, the most important achievements concern 1) the study of new forms of calligraphy in graffiti art, and 2) “fine and contemporary art”, and 3) the adoption of a novel methodology.
1) As to graffiti art, the research team published a book entitled “I graffiti in Cina” (2022), that is the first scientific publication about graffiti art in China focused on the cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, analyzing for the first time the artworks of 7 different actors, and identifying different trends within the phenomenon and their important socio-political and economic implications. This book also presents the first Chinese-English-Italian glossary about graffiti art. The book was already published in Italian and is about to publish in English.
2) As to “fine and contemporary arts”, another book is about to published presenting the first systematic reconstruction of the development of Chinese contemporary calligraphy (not in Chinese) with hypothesis of periodization from mid-eighties until the first decade of the 2000s. This book also analyzes in detail the artistic production of more than 30 contemporary artists/calligraphers who used calligraphy in innovative ways, presenting a new hypothesis of categorization and a periodization of the artistic production.
3) The research team also has started to adopt a new methodology to study these new forms of calligraphy based on the creation of the WRITE digital archive that combines three levels of analysis of the artworks (artistic, linguistic and socio-political-economic analysis) using digital semantic technologies. The development of this methodology involves scholars from three different disciplines (experts in Chinese art, Chinese linguistics and digital humanists). We are only in the first phase of testing this methodology, but it has already paid off and seems to be very suitable for this kind of research.

EXPECTED RESULTS:
With the completion of the selection of the artworks for the dataset and of their analysis by means of the digital archive, we are expected to give for the first time an overview of the artistic phenomenon of revitalization of calligraphy in contemporary China, identifying its new forms in all the four focuses of the project (“fine and contemporary arts”, decorative and applied arts, performing arts and graffiti art). Through the digital archive it will be also possible to visualize the chronological and geographical development of this phenomenon through timelines and maps. Hypothesis of globally comprehensible categorization of the artistic production will be also proposed in order to describe the deep linkages between calligraphy and all forms of artistic expression analyzed.
The linguistic and textual analysis of the critical texts about these new forms of calligraphy will i) reveal changes of the lexicon about calligraphy, ii) reconstruct the theoretical debate emerged to identify these new forms, and iii) provide new procedures and tools, to support translation process in order to make this new language understandable also to non-Chinese audience.
The analysis of specific socio-political-economic aspects related to the emergence of these new forms will reveal the social, political and economic impact of these new forms of calligraphy on Chinese contemporary culture.

Wang Dongling's performance of calligraphy, 2005_Example of contemporary calligraphy performance