The Iron Man

VAUGHAN WINTERBOTTOM

THE calligrapher is a humble man, yet as he elaborates on the intricacies of creating a perfectly proportioned Chinese character– if, as he says, there is such a thing – the pride he takes in work shines through. In the world of Chinese calligraphy, Deng Zhiyuan is in a class of his own.

Those who have tried to etch out even the simplest of Chinese characters know the difficulty of the task. Indeed, a chance glance at China town signage anywhere in the world is usually enough to provoke a “wow, that looks complicated” from people unfamiliar with the script. So imagine Deng Zhiyuans task: eschewing the traditional inkstick and brush – the standard material and instrument of Chi- nese calligraphy for thousands of years, Deng uses something a lot, lot harder to work with – iron.

Created in a small, unassuming workshop-residence in Anhui Provinces Changfeng County, an hours drive from the provincial capital of Hefei, Deng Zhiyuans iconic artworks have gained national and international fame as the leading contemporary examples of the Wushan Iron Script.

Iron pictures first appeared in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). The metal was first used for calligraphy in Wuhu, Anhui Province, during the reign of the Qing Emperor Kangxi, roughly 350 years ago. It went dormant for three centuries before being revived in the 1980s by a group of artists, including Deng Zhiyuan from nearby Wushan Town. Now known as the Wushan Iron Script, it has evolved in the last few decades from primitively chipped iron block characters to the fantastically elaborate designs that Deng fashions today.

Appreciated from a distance, its almost impossible to discern that Dengs creations are made of iron; such is his worked irons resemblance to the traditional brushstrokes of Chinese calligraphy. Only as one moves in for closer inspection do the firm contours and full three dimensions of his metallic medium reveal themselves. The iron, colored jet black, flows in effortless contortions on a plain white background to perfectly rep-licate the delicate dashes that characterize ink-and-brush calligraphy. The iron bulges out at strategic points and pivots to mimic the jagged motion of a real brush changing direction on paper.

Master Class

Born in 1955 into a family of humble means, Deng displayed an early affinity for drawing and letters, and settled into painting for a living after graduating from high school in 1976. He continued studying calligraphy in his spare time, and first attempted what would become known as the Wushan Iron Script in 1985 when a friend approached him with the idea of an iron calligraphy piece for a wedding present.

“I thought that first piece didnt turn out very well, but it was well received at the wedding reception. From that moment I decided to concentrate my efforts on becoming proficient in iron, and approached masters for guidance,” says Deng. Its fair to say that since that time, Deng and a small number of other dedicated individuals have thoroughly reinvigorated this once-forgotten art form.

There are many styles of Chinese calligraphy, and through decades of hard work Deng has become a consummate master at bringing any form to life through iron. A walk through his shopcome-exhibition hall in Changfeng is an education in the dizzying array of manifestations individual Chinese characters can take as they appear in different styles.

Dengs pieces also come in a variety of sizes – his smallest iron character measures three centimeters tall, while his largest stands an enormous 10 meters.

While Dengs genius with iron calligraphy is itself extraordinarily impressive– and indeed was the basis for Dengs being awarded with the Anhui regional governments title of “Cultural Inheritor”for the Wushan Iron Script, what has made Deng a national icon are his innovations on established character forms. More precisely, he constructs pictures representing the meaning or symbology of Chinese characters such that the form of the base character is clearly visible in the picture. To a literate Chinese observer, the result is a pleasantly mindbending duality: it is calligraphy, and hence readable, but is also a beautiful painting – made of iron dont forget – in which aestheticism and meaning blend in an intoxicating whole.

Deng first started experimenting with this pictographic form of iron calligraphy in 2001. His first effort was with the Chinese word, 中国人, Zhongguoren, meaning “Chinese people.” “In this piece, I rendered the first character, zhong –meaning center, as two hands on a pair of hips to symbolize indomitable spirit; the second, guo – meaning country, as the geographic shape of China itself; and the third, ren – meaning person or people, as a walking man,” Deng explains. A side inscription, also completed in iron, reads, “A harmonious China, moving forward with the changing times.” The result is stunningly beautiful, and also perfectly intelligible as calligraphy in its own right.

Another standout iron calligraphy pictograph work is simpler: the single character 福, fu, meaning good fortune or happiness. Here, the characters left- hand side becomes a side profile of a standing man, while the upper righthand side is rendered as a mother cradling a baby who seems to be extending a small arm out to touch her. The lower right-hand side largely retains the character fus original shape of a square made of four smaller squares – itself representing a field – but features a triangular top stroke, transforming it into a house. As Deng says, “This represents the familiar ideal of happiness in China: a loving father and mother, a child, a house and some land.”

Deng has received widespread acclaim for his innovative work, and has been profiled by more than 30 domestic newspapers and magazines over the years. A highlight came for him in the run up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, when two of his iron calligraphy pictographs, namely Fu, described above, and Fo, a character-picture of a teaching Buddha, were reproduced 5,000 times and presented as gifts to heads of state and other important guests at the Games in Beijing.

In 2010 Deng received news of perhaps his biggest accolade yet: two of his iron calligraphy pieces, Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection and Lotus Tetralogy were selected to be displayed at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York. Of Preface, a famous piece of calligraphy created in the year 353 by Wang Xizhi, Deng says, “This really is one of the all-time classics of Chinese calligraphy, and I thought immortalizing it in iron would be a cogent symbol of the pieces longevity.” Preface features 324 individual characters, and took Deng three months to complete.

For Deng, appreciation of his work is of course welcome, but he is more concerned with ensuring a new generation takes up his iron mantle and continues the Wushan calligraphic tradition. “My son is now in his 20s, and he is well on his way to outdoing my Wushan efforts to date. As with all of Chinas rich intangible cultural heritages, it is paramount that we ‘inheritors share our skills and pass them on.” It seems certain that Dengs beautiful and enduring lifework guarantees his chosen art form a long and healthy future.