Sunday, March 22, 2009

Handwriting


In one very real sense I have no right to take an interest in Asian scripts, since I can't read any of them and have never made the smallest attempt to learn. Yet I have felt confident enough to admire in ignorance ever since I began visiting San Francisco's Asian Art Museum back in the 1970s. In those days it was simply called the Avery Brundage Collection, and was an appendage of the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. That building was demolished after the 1989 Earthquake. The Asian Art Museum then found a new & autonomous home in the renovated Civic Center building that formerly housed the public library. And when I go there nowadays one of my favorite occupations is to gaze at the calligraphic scrolls. Sometimes an English translation is printed on a little card attached to the wall nearby, yet I never read those little cards. I don't want to know.






These examples are all from China, and come from a hefty volume recently published by Yale University Press.