Author ｜
Lingling Chen
Abstract ｜
Since Qing dynasty, archaeology and tablet calligraphy has been keeping flourishing, which expands the subjects of calligraphy, and finally changes the pattern that was unified by hardwood calligraphy. Since the late Qing dynasty, westerners and Japanese participate in the Chinese archaeological activity and write Chinese art history, expanding the field of art history from calligraphy and painting to epigraphy, bamboo slips and Dunhuang Scriptures, and thus change Chinese intellectuals’ views of the art. This paper places Zhou Zuoren’s activities within the framework of the development vein of the tablet calligraphy, to present his rubbings changing and purchasing and site visiting to steles in order to reconstruct the relationship between Zhou Zuoren and literati in the late Ming dynasty. This paper explores Zhou’s view of the tradition and his attitude toward the collaboration by discussing the relationship between Zhou and the genealogy of the tablet school in the period of Japanese occupation, so as to reveal the origin of his thinking and aesthetic ideas. This paper also points out the necessity of cross-cultural interpretation of Zhou Zuoren and his contemporaries.
keywords ｜
tablet school, Zhou Zuoren, May Fourth Movement, the doctrine of “back to the ancients,” genre blending