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The Upright Brush: Yan Zhenquing's Calligraphy and Song Literati Politics
by Amy McNair
In the history of Chinese calligraphy, few are more famous than the eighth century statesman Yan Zhenquing (709 - 785). his style is still taught today as a standard and Chinese bookstores the world over stock inexpensive reproductions of his works for sale as copy books. Yet Yan's style cannot be called conventionally attractive. Correct, severe, serious, forceful, are terms habitually used to describe his writing - rarely has his calligraphy ever been called graceful or beautiful.
How, then, did Yan earn such an eminent place in the history of art? In the Upright Brush, Amy McNair argues for the political rather than the purely aesthetic basis for Yan Zhenquing's artistic reputation. She shows how his prominent position was made for him in the 11th century by a handful of influential men, highly educated in philosophy, literature, and art, who sought to advance their own position by associating themselves with Yan's reputation for uprightness.
Equating style with personality, they adopted Yan's calligraphic style as a way to clothe themselves in his persona. They collected and copied his works, incorporated elements of his style into their own original and striking art, and celebrated his incorruptible reputation and forceful style as the finest model in their critical writings on art.
The Artistic Biography of Yan Zhenquing, which forms the core of this study, begins with Yan's illustrious family and his meteoric early career and ends with his crowning appointments to high national office and his martyrdom.
The author focuses on several calligraphic masterpieces, ranging from the eighth written draft of the eulogy for his nephews, with its painful emotion and artless style, to the rugged grandeur of his cliff-engraved Paen to the Resurgence of the Great Tang Dynasty.
The content and style of Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian works are explained and situated within Yan's life and contemporary events in Tang Dynasty China ( 618- 907). Responses to Yan and his art by the literati of the Song dynasty ( 960- 1279) are woven into this framework, revealing how calligraphy assumed moral, political, personal, and institutional values.
Sophisticated, informed, and intelligent, The Upright Brush Illuminates an Episode in the History of Chinese Culture Where the creative reinterpretation of the past was used for Contemporary Political means.
Amy McNair is assistant professor of Chinese art at the University of Kansas.
Condition: Hard Cover, no dust jacket as published, first edition first printing, crisp and new, 177 pages, illustrated.
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