Articles
The Role of Shi Category in the Theory of Chinese Calligraphy and Painting
Vera Belozerova
Vostok/Oriens '2013, №5
The article exposes the aesthetic meaning of shi category that came into treatises on calligraphy and painting from canonical, philosophic and proto-scientific texts before the imperial period. The selection of paragraphs from treatises of the second to the nineteenth centuries CE, given in the author’s translation, shows that in the sphere of dimensional art shi category was regarded as the realization of a dynamic potential of qi global energy medium. The authors of these treatises directly connected shi category with the rules on brush operation, with the plastic principles of shaping and the laws of composition. The author discusses the variants of translation of shi into European languages and suggests that it may be translated as “the trajectory of force”.
Keywords: shi category, energy (qi), energy flow, principles of shaping, interaction (xiang), brush pressure, conception of the work (yi), energy channels (qimai), dynamic structures of the plastic of forms
Pages: С. 75–83
