Abstract:

The Chinese painting "is called writing rather than drawing", which derives from the lyricism and handwriting consciousness of "writing", displaying a situation of writers' aesthetic taste into painting. As an artistic term, "writing" denotes both "place something" and "transmit something". While the former means "sending this one to that one", the latter signifies "expressing one' s feelings". And by virtue of extension, the former indicates "copying" or "drawing". Beginning from the Song Dynasty, writers began to participate in painting creation so that they could better express themselves in motion. Therefore, painting gradually became a means of expressing one' s feeling. Up to the Yuan Dynasty, painting was used to express a romantic spirit in chest and thus "writing" instead of "drawing" became a fashion. The process from "place something" to "transmit something" is gradual, not only embodying a development of the Chinese painting from emphasis on objective modeling to stress on subjective lyricism, but also disclosing a literary course in China' s painting, during which the painter as a writer play an important part. In the early time, "write a word" was called "draw a word". It was only later that "draw" was changed to "write", which also derived from the two meanings of "place something" and "transmit something". And the change from "paint something" to "write something" just gave a fact that the Chinese painting not only possessed such a consciousness as writing into drawing but also reflected on the common pursuit of "place something" and "transmit something", especially the latter. With the development of writers' painting, nonexperts and their superior artworks were held more and more in esteem. Thus the change from "drawing" to "writing" took place. This indicates that, instead of stressing on the vividness of painting, writers' painting emphasizes on expressing their feelings. And "writing" also marks the difference between writers' painting and experts' painting.

Key words:  writing; word meaning; lyricism; handwriting consciousness; nonexpert; superior artwork