International experimental calligraphy

ABSTRACT

A visual presentation of Zhang Qiang’s experimental calligraphy is set alongside a reading of the notion of ‘International Experimental Calligraphy’. This term serves a dual purpose. Historically, it provides a framework to understand and acknowledge calligraphy from ancient times and unconventional writing practices within the context of Chinese calligraphy. It also serves to validate Western abstract expressionism as an experience aligned with calligraphy, so enriching a genealogical account of ‘visual history’. In doing so, the poet and calligrapher, Su Shi, is a representative figure. His early thinking offers an important reminder that for Chinese calligraphy to be recognized as modern and contemporary, it needs to move beyond the confines of merely an intangible cultural heritage, and rather be understood an integrated aspect of an international, genealogical visual history.

KEYWORDS:

• Su Shi
• visual history
• experimental calligraphy
• Zhang Qiang

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zhang Qiang

Zhang Qiang, born in Feicheng, Shandong Province, is a provincial and ministerial expert with lifetime honor of ‘Liangjiang Scholar’, a second-class professor at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, a member of the school’s Academic Committee, and a director of the International Experimental Calligraphy Advanced Research Center. He is an editor in chief of the Visual History System of Ancient Chinese Statues (Cultural Relics Press 2023), of the Complete Works of Monk An Dao Yi (Qingdao Press 2022) and of the Complete Works of Zheng Daozhao (Qingdao Press 2022). He is the main researcher of the 2023 ALTERGRAPHY CE54 project of the French National Research Agency (ANR), ‘Reconstructing the History of Calligraphy: Taking the history of Middle cliff stone carving and the acceptance of epigraphism as the object’. At present, he is in charge of the post-funded project of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education of China: ‘Half-open’ Image: Resolving Doubts in Space. Academic and artistic representation as Zhang Qiang’s Art Study System (60 volumes, published by Culture and Art Press in 2013).

Han Jiarui

Han Jiarui is a master’s student on the Urban and Regional Planning program at the School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-Sen University. Her research interests encompass planning history and theory, as well as design theory research.