Grass script

Foreword to Shupu (“On Calligraphy”) by Sun Guoting , concept writing , 7th century.

The grass script or concept script ( Chinese  草書  /  草书 , Pinyin Cǎoshū , Jyutping cou ² syu ¹ , Japanese 草書 Sōsho ) is one of the five main categories of Chinese calligraphy . It is believed that this writing style was developed by Liu Desheng in the Han Dynasty and expanded by Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi , two calligraphy masters of the Jin Dynasty .

Surname

"Cǎo" (fleeting, careless; draft, concept) comes from the quick manner in which the writing is executed. The word also has the meaning "grass", which through a misunderstanding led to the name "grass font".

Categories and characteristics

There are many sub-categories of the concept font , for example the “ crazy concept font ” ( 狂草 , kuángcǎo ), which is very expressive in its extreme simplification of the characters, but is usually no longer legible for the layman. The common characteristics of all concept font styles are quickly written and flowing lines, an often very simplified structure of the characters, lines running into one another and poor legibility. Of the five styles of Chinese calligraphy, concept font comes closest to abstract art.

Influence on other fonts

The Japanese syllabary hiragana is derived from characters in conceptual form. Some Chinese abbreviations also go back to spelling variants of the concept font.

literature

• Gerhardt Staufenbiel: Holy Dragons Volume 1. Old World - India - China, Verlag tredition GmbH, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3849-11963-8

Web links

Commons : Grass font  - collection of images, videos, and audio files