Contemporary Chinese Calligraphy between Tradition and Innovation

Since the mid-1980s Chinese calligraphy art has undergone a radical change and has opened itself to experimentation. A vivid debate on "Contemporary Chinese Calligraphy" (Zhongguo xiandai shufa) is involving art critics in China nowadays. Wang Dongling and the modernists think that, despite many changes and influences, we can still refer to the traditional calligraphic lexicon to describe the calligraphic production of contemporary Chinese art. They still remain deeply rooted in the signified system of Chinese writing, even if they break with the strict rules of Chinese classical aesthetic (contamination of Western elements and focus on the stylistic exploration). Wang Nanming and the Avant-garde think that “contemporary calligraphy is not calligraphy yet”: It is “anti-calligraphy”, annihilates Chinese tradition, rejects the use of legible characters, experiments with new languages and new media within the idiom of international contemporary art. The result is the creation of works of art that could be assimilated to Abstract art, Abstract expressionism, Conceptual art, Performance art, Contemporary dance, Multimedia art, and even Street art. This paper aims at showing how still valid and extremely productive are both these two theoretical and creative/practical approaches to Chinese calligraphy in China nowadays. They turned the art of calligraphy into a medium for global comprehension and communication.