Beholding Tianmen Mountain (Wang tianmen shan望天門山), a poem composed by the Tang poet Li Bai (701–702), was written by Lin Sanzhi in 1978 when he was eighty-one years old. Lin admired the Tang poet so much so that he was buried in the same place as Li Bai. Many of his calligraphic works are transcriptions of Li Bai’s poems.Lin Sanzhi shufa ji林散之書法集 (Suzhou: Guwu xuan chubanshe, 1997): 185. Lin’s familiarity with Li’s poems may be inferred from the fluid way in which he wrote the poem, with no interruptions, no missing or wrong characters. The fluent twists and turns of the brush are especially pronounced in characters such as liu流 in the first column and lai來 in the third column, while linkages smoothly join together other characters. To enhance the visual effect of the calligraphy, certain characters end with long, exaggerated strokes, e.g. in the first column the last stroke of the characters men門 and duan斷. Given the fact that Lin had an accident in 1970, which disabled two fingers, he developed a new way of writing, which might have enabled him to move his brush even more freely.

That is not to imply, however, that he had less control of the brush. The crisp, wiry lines demonstrate a precision and flow which explains the appeal of Lin’s calligraphy to his many admirers. The flow of his calligraphy is in part due to his use of a goat-hair brush, which absorbs more ink and water than many other types. Lin would first soak his goat-hair brush in ink and then water.Qi Kaiyi 齊開義, Zhongguo shufajia quanji: Lin Sanzhi中國書法家全集‧林散之 (Shijia Zhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2003): 87, 98. Not only did this practice enable him to write more characters between intervals of recharging the ink, it also creates a gradual and natural progression, or variation, of ink tone, from dark to pale, wet to dry. These subtle variations are a primary characteristic of his cursive script, and may be credited to the teaching of his mentor Huang Binhong (1865–1955). At age 34 in Shanghai, Lin became a student of Huang Binhong, who taught him the importance of variations in ink tones, as well as irregularity in composition. Ibid: 169. See also Lin Sanzhi, “Preface,” in San Zuokai 桑作楷 ed., Ershi shiji shufa jingdian: Lin Sanzhi juan二十世紀書法經典‧林散之卷 (Shijia Zhuang: Hebei jaoyu chubanshe, Guangzhou: Guangdong jiaoyu chubanshe, 1996): 9.

When Lin’s calligraphy was shown to the public in 1972, he was celebrated as the “Master of Cursive Script.”Qi 2003: 25-33. His contribution, as this scroll demonstrates, resides in the fact that he reinvigorated cursive script by developing a distinctive, individual style which, unlike the work of many more conventional calligraphers, is not imitative of earlier masters.

© 2013 by the Seattle Art Museum