The Upright Brush: Yan Zhenqing's Calligraphy and Song Literati Politics (review)

Amy McNair's The Upright Brush: Yan Zhenqing's Calligraphy and Song Literati Politics is a well-researched and original analysis of the relationship between calligraphy and politics. The nominal subject of this book is the cultural legend Yan Zhenqing (709-185) of the Tang dynasty (618-907), but the author pays more attention to his influence on the literati of the Song dynasty (960-1297), about two hundred years after Yan's era. In her book, McNair argues that the later literati respected Yan as an exemplar in calligraphy not only because of his powerful writing style but also because of his outstanding political reputation.

Upright Brush can be divided into three sections. In the first (chapter 1), McNair elaborates on the concept of "characterology," which is key to her interpretation of the Song reception of Yan Zhenqing's calligraphy. According to McNair, characterology is a Confucian concept in calligraphy criticism by which calligraphic works are evaluated in terms more of the moral character of their makers than of the level of their aesthetic achievement. Under this approach, which is deeply Confucian, critics of calligraphy held a deeply rooted belief that "writing expresses the personality of the writer" (p. 1). Complicating this attitude toward artistic personality was the fact that "by the eleventh century, great political significance came to be attached to the choice of a model in calligraphy" (p. 3). In this section, the author also provides readers with a brief history of calligraphy before Yan's time and analyzes the political context of calligraphy during the Song period.

McNair also pays close attention to Wang Xizhi (ca. 303-ca. 361), the "sage calligrapher" of China, and his contribution to the art. McNair points out that owing to the enhancement of his reputation by the Tang emperor Taizong (r. 626-649), from Tang times Wang Xizhi was considered the supreme calligraphic artist. However, in the Song dynasty, a group of reform-minded literati changed calligraphic tastes. The seed of this change can be traced to Han Yu (768-824), a bold promoter of Confucian values in the Tang period. Han challenged the authority of Wang by criticizing his art as "vulgar calligraphy [that] took advantage of its seductive beauty" (p. 13). Countering Wang's influence, Han pursued a calligraphic style that was simple and clear.

A Song admirer of Han, the leading literary figure Ouyang Xiu (1007-1072), absorbed Han's spirit and elaborated it into a major approach to calligraphy among the scholar-official circles of his time. Ouyang's approach to calligraphy has three features: "the amateur aesthetic, the equation of style and personality in the choice of models, and the study of epigraphy" (p. 10). From the author's perspective, Wang Xizhi's Daoist background made it impossible for him to attain the Confucian ideals of calligraphic styling as exemplified by these three features.

The second part of McNair's book, contained in chapters 2 through 7, deals with three major concerns: the development of Yan's style, the canonization of this style in the Song, and selected aesthetic aspects of Yan's calligraphy. To outline the process by which Yan's style was formed, McNair narrates the history of the Yan family on the Tang historical stage almost in the manner of an epic. Yan was born into a prominent family, and his educational background and social status greatly affected his calligraphy. The author singles out several works whose styles effectively represent different phases of Yan's life. For instance, McNair discusses Yan's Draft Eulogy for My Nephew Jiming against the political backdrop of the An Lushan Rebellion (pp. 44-59). The Rebellion was the turning point of the Tang dynasty, and it had a tremendous impact on Yan's life. During the eight years of this civil war, the rebels killed both Yan's brother...