Asian Calligraphy Exhibit Launches Spring Inclusiveness Events

An exhibition of contemporary Japanese and Chinese calligraphy, on display on the library's fourth floor February 3-28, presents part of the expressive world of Asian art to the College community. It is the first in a series of second-semester inclusiveness programs. To mark the exhibit's opening, master calligrapher Zhongwei Shen will demonstrate the ancient art on February 3 at 4 pm in the library's courtyard.

You don't have to know Chinese to appreciate that language's character for the word "woman." This interpretation of that character was created by Ashfield painter Li Qian especially for the MHC calligraphy exhibition, which opens this week.

Calligraphy--which raises writing to an art form--conveys its messages in both image and text, so it's not necessary to read Chinese or Japanese to appreciate it. "You can read the images just as you read modern art," says Bingyi Huang '98, who organized the exhibition with help from professors Jonathan Lipman and John Varriano. "You look for motion, rhythm, balance, harmony, tension, composition ... all the things you look for in any art form. I just want to present these images to people; you see them and you'll understand."

The collection of some twenty pieces of brush- and ink-work on various kinds of paper is accompanied by a display of the tools used to create the calligraphic art. The artworks are bold and striking images from contemporary artists, including one piece by MHC religion professor Tadanori Yamashita.

Asian calligraphy, Huang says, developed naturally from the characters making up the written Chinese and Japanese languages. Huang commissioned one piece for the exhibit to make this connection explicit. It shows the image of a woman washing her hair by a river within the shape of the Chinese character meaning "woman."

Huang, a combined studio art and art history major, comes by her interest in calligraphy naturally. Although her medium is oil painting, Huang's mother, a doctor, is also a calligrapher. Huang has also researched Chinese painting at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and at Christie's. At Christie's, she met Fangyu Wang, an acclaimed calligrapher and master of contemporary brushwork, according to Huang. He will lecture at MHC on February 20 on how to appreciate Chinese calligraphy.