Zhang Yinlin: A Preface to Chinese Calligraphy Criticism (1931)

Written in 1931, Zhang Yinlin’s treatise “A Preface to Chinese Calligraphy Criticism” has long been neglected by researchers of twentieth-century Chinese calligraphy theory. The main part of this article is a translation of this treatise. In an introduction, the translator briefly reviews the development of the aesthetics of Chinese calligraphy in the early twentieth century. The influence of Western aesthetics on Chinese calligraphy theory in the early twentieth century is manifest, and Zhang’s treatise, quoting directly from some contemporary English books on aesthetics, is of this nature