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.
