Live Calligraphy in the Courtyard: Chinese Artist Wang Dongling Performs “Flying Flowers and Scattered Snow” at the Harvard Art Museums | Art

“Flying Flowers and Scattered Snow” (飞花散雪), a title taken from an ancient seven-character Tang Dynasty poem, was performed by Chinese calligraphy artist Wang Dongling in the courtyard of the Harvard Art Museum on September 27. The performance was sponsored by Shining (Christina) Sun, a Ph.D. student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Wang Dongling was born in 1945 in the Chinese province of Jiangsu and was training in fine arts during his studies when his studies were interrupted by the Cultural Revolution in China in 1966 – during which time he wrote political slogans on large-format posters. During the avant-garde movement of the 1980s, Wang began experimenting with writing original characters using a mop-sized brush. Wang then came to the United States as a visiting professor at Minnesota University from 1989 to 1991, where he was able to teach Chinese calligraphy while experimenting with Western art forms. Wang is now a professor of calligraphy and director of the Modern Calligraphy Research Center at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou.

The three poems that Wang brought to the Harvard Art Museums were Su Dongpo’s “West Lake Poems” from the Song Dynasty, which were closely linked to Wang’s second hometown of Hangzhou. The title of the performance, “Flying Flowers and Scattered Snow,” is also taken from a Tang Dynasty poem to describe the chaos and dynamism of its calligraphy.

The performance concluded with remarks by Dr. Sarah Laursen, curator of Chinese art at the Harvard Art Museums. Laursen introduced the performance as a “chaotic script of freedom” (草书), drawing on “an ancient text and traditions of brush painting to create a large gestural work drawing on the sublime West Lake poems of Su Dongpo concentrated.”

Attendees standing on the first and second floors looked out into the Calderwood Courtyard and watched as Wang stepped on the huge white sheet of Xuan paper with a large, broom-like brush. The characters mixed together, creating a special, barely legible style.

Wilson Wang, a first-year graduate student in the Regional Studies East Asian program, commented on the artist’s writing style.

“It’s very fascinating because the characters are really unreadable, so you just let the strokes and the flow guide you. So essentially I saw it as a form of painting rather than calligraphy.”

The performance encompasses both traditional Chinese culture with ancient song poetry and the renewal of modern calligraphy writing techniques with a combination of Western abstract art in an encounter between East and West.

“It’s nostalgic, but it brings something completely new and different,” said Wang, a student from China.

The performance courtyard captured the audience’s attention and played a large role in the audience’s live experience.

Isabel McWilliams, Ph.D. The art and architectural history candidate with a concentration in medieval Chinese art called the performance “hypnotic.”

“He kind of put me in a trance,” McWilliams said. “I thought the sentence really summed up the title, which was ‘Flying Flowers and Scattered Snow,’ and you could definitely get that impression because of the continuity and punctuation.”

What was special about the live performance was the process of being whole with the artist in the moment of his creation.

“It’s as much a creative process as it is a finished work at the end,” McWilliams said.

The calligraphy performance was not only an artistic but also an intercultural experience. Organizer Shining (Christina) Sun originally conceived of the event two years ago when she met Wang in Hangzhou.

“Even people who can read Chinese characters understand it. You get the gesture, the emotion through this action painting. I think it’s a way to get to a more interesting traditional art,” Sun said.

—Staff writer Dailan Xu can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her to X at @Dailansusie.