Xu Bing's Calligraphy

Square Calligraphy

I love it when there's this thing that's so old, so ancient, we hardly think about it at all even though we use it daily—I love it when someone comes along and reshapes all that's ancient about this thing so we have to think about it—see it—like it was entirely new.

That's what Xu Bing did with Chinese calligraphy. He took the ancient form of Chinese writing and created new characters that had nothing to do with the language. And then he took that idea and blended Chinese character writing with English words. Like in the photo above where he's writing Little Bo Peep as if the letters were native Chinese calligraphy strokes. His projects are at his website Xu Bing.

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