書畫名家沈周(1427–1509) 於其晚年時，開始創作一系列以〈落花〉為主題的詩、書、畫。 其創作不但次數頻繁，而且佳作纍纍。1503 年，沈老因病錯失花季，不勝悵惘之中，首度創作了十首落花詩。這些落花詩作原本只是抒發一己對時光流逝與人生無常的慨嘆，沒料到，當這些詩作與其友朋、門生以及江南名士們分享時，原本屬於個人哲思的創作卻起了基本上的變化。備受景仰的耆碩沈老的落花詩作，不但成為人人稱頌的對象，還在文風濃郁的蘇州城裡傳唱開來。這其中甚至包括沈周自己一而再、再而三的多次和韻之作。在他去世之前的1504 年到1508 年之間，沈周一共創作了五十多首落花詩，以及不計其數的落花詩跋與畫作。意會到個人生命將殘，因而有意識地藉寓落花，以詠時傷春。落花詩，因之成為沈周生命與創作最後的絕響。這種以落花起興、賦形的種種創作，引發了許多值得思索的議題。例如，從基本上的書畫實際真偽鑒定，到饒人興味的一些論點，包括沈周如何以風格來作為個人的化身並以之倡導其晚年的藝術特質，以及十六世紀初蘇州的藝術認同與流傳。本文將以沈周的書跡為主軸，引介與落花唱詠有關的主要材料，包括沈周自己與朋友對於藝術創作過程的評論，以此來作綜合性的分析與論述。本文超乎一般書畫鑑別上對於品質、風格與習性的慣常考量，而與藝術創作者的意圖和社會實踐之間，取得一種平衡；並申論書法作為一種視覺資產，在廣義上，乃是文化塑造話語的一部份。

The renowned artist Shen Zhou (1427–1509) began to explore the theme of falling blossoms as a subject for poetry, painting, and calligraphy in his very late years. The theme stands out both for the number of times Shen Zhou worked on it and for the quality of the poems, calligraphies, and paintings that he produced. He began with ten poems in 1503, prompted by an illness that kept him from enjoying the seasonal blossoming of spring fruit trees in the Suzhou area. His intention was to record his meditations on the passage of time and human mortality, but the act of writing these verses quickly shed its private, meditative cloak and became something fundamentally different as Shen Zhou shared them with a number of prominent cultural figures in the Jiangnan region (Suzhou- Nanjing area), including his students. The poems became objects of celebration — admired products from a revered, sage-like elder in the cultured city of Suzhou — and they consequently prompted the rhyming poems of others on the theme. These, in turn, were rhymed again by Shen Zhou. In the end, from the period of 1504–1508, Shen Zhou produced some fifty poems on the theme of falling flowers, as well as numerous calligraphic transcriptions and paintings. Recognizing that his own end could not be far off, and playing off of the falling blossoms theme’s focus on the passage of time and loss of youth, in a highly conscious manner, Shen Zhou made falling blossoms his swansong. The many manifestations of the falling blossoms theme raise a number of issues, from the practical matter of authenticity to more intriguing questions of the role of style in Shen Zhou’s promotion of his late-life artistic persona and the circulation of artistic identity in early sixteenth-century Suzhou. This article introduces the primary materials of the Falling Blossoms project, including important comments made by Shen Zhou and others that address problems related to the artistic process. The focus is on Shen Zhou’s practice of calligraphy. A synthesized approach is presented, in which the usual coordinates of connoisseurship — quality, style, and habit — are balanced by considerations of intention and social practice, and the visual properties of calligraphy are recognized as part of a broader discourse on culture-formation.