Calligraphic
Art whose lines carry the rhythm, pressure and flow of handwriting, whether they form readable script or free gestural marks.
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About
A calligraphic line swells and thins with the pressure of brush or pen and records the speed of the hand. In China, calligraphy has been ranked among the highest arts for well over a thousand years; the scholar-painter Dong Qichang (1555–1636) applied the same brush disciplines to writing and to landscape. Across the Islamic world, script adorns manuscripts, ceramics and buildings, and Ottoman and Persian masters refined styles such as thuluth and nasta'liq. Japan developed its own traditions, including the flowing work of Hon'ami Kōetsu in the early 17th century.
Modern artists drew on these sources in different ways. Mark Tobey and Franz Kline made painted gesture read like writing, Iranian artists of the Saqqakhaneh movement, among them Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, turned letters into pattern, and Xu Bing's A Book from the Sky (1987–91) filled scrolls and bound volumes with invented characters that look legible but cannot be read.
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