Ｌｉ Ｍａｏｒｏｎｇ ａｎｄ Ｈｉｓ Ｓｐｅｃｉａｌ Ａｒｔ

A few days after I first met with Mr. Li Maorong， I visited him at the painting academy under the China International Tea Culture Institution. It was an unforgettable experience. His orderly studio oozed a special charm of a traditional Chinese artist. From under a large table， he pulled out two wooden chests. It turned out that Li Maorong created a 12-scroll painting and calligraphic masterpiece based on “The Dream of Red Mansions”， a Chinese classic novel. On the 300-meter-long surface of the twelve scrolls are the complete text of the 120 chapters of the novel scribed neatly in a so-called “fly-head”-sized regular script and 130 figures of the novel painted and more than 200 seals engraved in the seal script. It took Li Maorong 16 years and nine sketches to consummate this tour de force.

I was profoundly impressed also for another reason. I’ve visited quite a few calligraphy exhibitions and know about the preference of most calligraphers. The large-sized cursive script is a favorable calligraphic style for many calligraphers because characters written in this script look elegant and ebullient at exhibitions. Regrettably， not so many calligraphers dedicate themselves to a script suitable mainly for scribing personal letters and essays. Only a small percentage of calligraphers are good at writing the regular script and even fewer excel at writing the small-sized regular script. Li Maorong is one of the rare excellent small-sized regular script calligraphers.

Before I extricated myself out of a sense of overwhelming， I was shown another masterpiece. The small piece displays the full text of “The Book of Tea” by Lu Yu， a scholar of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) who produced the world’s first research book on tea. The text is copied in the small-sized regular script. More amazing is that the text is arranged in such an ingenious way that the blank space left untouched by the characters forms a perfect painting showing Lu Yu sitting and reading his own work.

It is a very special art. I learned how Li Maorong created it. Li is from Yangzhou where he grew up and learned to be a calligrapher. He worked as an air-mapping specialist in the army for years. He came to work as an artist after discharged from the army. The long exposure at the academy to the idea that Zen and tea are one inspired him one day to believe there must be at least one more ingenious way to express the long-standing idea that calligraphy and painting are one. He thought why not try writing a full text in the small regular script into a background while leaving the blank to create a painting composed of untouched space? He experimented. His first creation in this style was a success. It was presented as a gift to Ji Chaozhu， a former Under-Secretary-General of the UN.

The new art opened a brave new world to Li Maorong. He has created more than 2，000 artworks in this genre， featuring ancient poetry and classic texts and paintings of landscape and figures in blank.

While we chatted about his artworks， he sighed that he had pondered for a long while about a proper name for his art but had not been able to comp up with a satisfying title. I pondered for a while and tentatively suggested “why not call it blank painting?” His eyes shone and he clapped his hands. My suggestion of the title might not be the best description and there might have been some artists in history who tried their hands at this genre， but his calligraphic paintings are undoubtedly unique.

Li Maorong is more than an outstanding calligrapher.He is also a photographer， poet， and seal engraver. His calligraphy has been exhibited at home and abroad and many of his artworks have been in the collections of celebrities， museums， and art galleries. □