Online Study Guide

CHINA

China is varied in topography and climate, and is ethnically diverse. While China's spoken language consists of widely varying dialects, the written language has permitted people to share literary, philosophical, and religious traditions. Distinct regional art styles appeared in China, but within a broad cultural unity.

Neolithic China:

China is the only continuing civilization originating in the ancient world. The Chinese archaeological record, extraordinarily rich, goes back to Neolithic times, providing evidence of settled village life as far back as the seventh or early sixth millennium BCE.

Yangshao pottery:

Mastery of pottery occurred at a very early date in China. The potters of the Yangshao Culture, which arose along the Yellow River in northeastern China, produced fine decorated earthenware bowls even before the invention of the potter's wheel. The multiplicity of forms suggests the vessels served a wide variety of functions.

3-1: Yangshao Culture vases, from Gansu Province, China, mid third millennium BCE. Earthenware.

Shang Dynasty

During the past century, China's earliest royal dynasties, long thought to have been mythical, have begun to be confirmed archaeologically. Most recent excavations have found what they believe to be traces of the Xia (ca. 2000 - 1600 BCE), China's oldest dynasty. Much better documented, however, is the Shang dynasty (ca. 1600 - 1050 BCE), the first great Chinese dynasty of the Bronze Age.

Royal burials at Anyang:

Excavations at Anyang, one of the last Shang capitals, revealed a warlike, highly stratified society. Servants, captives, and even teams of charioteers with chariots and horses accompanied Shang kings to their tombs. The tomb furnishings include weapons and a great wealth of objects in jade, ivory, lacquer, gold, silver, and bronze. Inscribed bones and turtle shells, once used for divination, provide information about Shang kings.

Shang bronzes:

Shang dynasty artists perfected the casting of elaborate bronze vessels in piece molds. Many of these vessels served as containers for ritual offerings in divination ceremonies. One of the most dramatic Shang vessel forms is the gong, or covered libation vessel for sacrificial rites. Animal motifs were major decorative elements for Shang bronzes. They ranged from mere suggestions of animal forms to identifiable representations of specific creatures. A major motif is an animal divided in half lengthwise in a bilaterally symmetrical design. The images may represent specific religious concepts or perhaps reflect the early Chinese attitude toward the forces ordering the cosmos.

3-2: Guang, probably from Anyang, China, Shang dynasty, twelfth or eleventh century BCE. Bronze, 6 1/2' high. Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco (Avery Brundage Collection).

Surprising Sanxingdui:

Recent excavations suggest that there were several major centers with distinct aesthetic traditions. For example, pits in Sichuan Province yielded a large, masterfully cast, bronze statue. A stylized human figure stands on a thin platform supported by four legs formed of fantastic animal heads with horns and trunklike snouts.

3-3: Standing figure, from Sanxingdui, China, ca. 1200-1050 BCE. Bronze, 8' 5' high, including base. China Cultural Relics Promotional Center, Beijing.

Zhou Dynasty

Around 1050 BCE, the Zhou, whose dynasty endured until 256 BCE, overthrew the Shang kingdom. The very earliest Zhou art is nearly indistinguishable from that of the Shang. By the fourth century BCE, however, Zhou bronzes featured entirely new designs. Zhou artists produced great quantities of objects in bronze, jade, and lacquer to satisfy the demands of feudal courts.

Jade Dragons:

The carving of jade jewelry and ritual objects for burial with the dead reached a peak of technical perfection during the Zhou dynasty. Jade was a metaphor for the fortitude and moral perfection of superior persons, as well as an important symbol of rank. One example is a bi disk, which may have symbolized the circle of heaven. It features stylized piercework dragons, which symbolized rulers' power to mediate between heaven and earth.

3-4: Bi (disk), from Jincun(?), China, Eastern Zhou dynasty, fourth to third century BCE. Nephrite, 6 1/2' in diameter. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.

Qin Dynasty

During the Warring States Period (475-221 BCE), China endured more than two centuries of political and social turmoil. This was also a time of intellectual and artistic upheaval, when conflicting schools of philosophy, including Legalism, Daoism, and Confucianism, emerged. The ruler of the state of Qin ended the political upheaval by conquering all rival states. During his reign, he ordered the linkage of fortifications along the northern border to form the Great Wall. The empire of Shi Huangdi, the First Emperor of China, set the stage for the Han dynasty and all else thereafter.

The emperor's Army:

For the construction of his tomb, the First Emperor of Qin conscripted thousands of laborers. He had the tomb filled with treasure. The mound itself remains unexcavated, but pits around it contain more than 6,000 life-size terracotta figures, which served as the imperial bodyguard. The terracotta army included cavalry, chariots, archers, lancers, and hand-to-hand fighters. The style of the Qin warriors blends formalism with sharp realism of detail.

3-5: Army of the First Emperor of Qin in pits next to his burial mound, Lintong, China, Qin dynasty, ca. 210 BCE. Painted terracotta, average figure 5' 10 7/8' high.

Han Dynasty

Soon after Shi Huangdi's death, the people who had suffered under his reign revolted and founded the Han dynasty in 206 BCE. The Han emperors created a powerful centralized government and extended China's southern and western boundaries. Chinese armies penetrated far into Xinjiang and began to trade with Rome via the Silk Road.

Painting on Silk:

A T-shaped silk painting, from a tomb that belonged to the wife of the Marquis of Dai, may have been used in the funeral ceremonies. The iconography probably represents heaven, the human realm, and the underworld, in a unified, symmetrical composition. The Chinese ideal of continuity through ancestor veneration has been important since ancient times.

3-6: Funeral banner, from Tomb 1 (tomb of Dai), Mawangdui, China, Han dynasty,

Han ancestral shrines:

The Wu family shrines at Jiaxiang in Shandong Province between 147 and 168 CE contain Han pictorial narratives carved into the stone walls. The shrines document the emergence of private, nonaristocratic families as patrons of religious and mythological art with political overtones. The rubbing of a stone relief shown here shows an archer who is probably the hero Yi, saving the earth from scorching by shooting down the nine extra suns, represented as crows in the Fusing tree.

3-7: The archer Yi (?) and a reception in a mansion, Wu family shrine, Jiaxiang, China, Han dynasty, 147-168 CE. Rubbing of a stone relief, approx. 3' X 5'.

Han houses and palaces:

No actual remains of Han buildings survive, but ceramic model of houses deposited in Han tombs, together with representations such as those in the Wu family shrines provide a good idea of Chinese architecture during the early centuries CE. The construction method, in which the walls do not bear the weight of the roof but serve only as screens separating inside from outside and room from room, typifies much Chinese architecture even today.

3-8: Model of a house, Han dynasty, first century CE. Painted earthenware, 4' 4' high. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.

Period of Disunity

Buddhism reaches China:

From 220 to 589 CE, civil strife divided China into competing states. Buddhism had reached China in the first century CE. An important early Chinese Buddhist image is the gilded bronze Sakyamuni Buddha. In both style and iconography, this Buddha resembles the prototype developed at Gandhara, Pakistan.

3-9: Shakyamuni Buddha, Zhao Dynasty, Period of Disunity, 338. Gilded bronze, 1' 3 1/2' high. Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco (Avery Brundage Collection).

Painting materials and formats:

Secular arts also flourished in the Period of Disunity. Rulers sought calligraphers and painters to lend prestige to their courts. Several distinctive materials and formats characterize early Chinese painting - a round tapered brush, soot-based ink, and either silk or paper. Chinese painters also used richly colored minerals as pigments, finely ground and suspended in a gluey medium, and watery washes of mineral and vegetable dyes. The formats of Chinese paintings (other than murals) tend to be personal and intimate.

Lady Feng's heroism:

The most famous early Chinese painter with whom extant works can be associated was GU KAIZHI (ca. 344-406). A horizontal scroll now in the British Museum, although attributed to Gu Kaizhi in the 11^th century, is not actually by his hand, but it provides a good idea of the key elements of his art. Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies, contains painted scenes between passages of explanatory text. One of the sections depicts a well-known act of heroism, the Lady Feng saving her emperor's life by placing herself between him and an attacking bear. The figures' poses, fluttering drapery, and individualized facial expressions convey animation and movement. Ideas expressed in texts of the time alluded to the importance of representing inner vitality and spirit rather than mere surface appearances.

3-10: GU KAIZHI, Lady Feng and the Bear, detail of Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies, Period of Disunity, late fourth century. Handscroll, ink and colors on silk, 9 3/4' X 11' 4 1/2'. British Museum, London.

The meeting of the two Buddhas:

The following gilded bronze statuette shows how the sculptors of the Northern Wei dynasty had transformed the Gandhara-derived style of earlier Buddhist are in China.

3-11: Shakyamuni and Prabhutaratna, Northern Wei dynasty, 518. Gilded bronze, 10 1/4' high. Musée Guimet, Paris.

Tang Dynasty

The emperors of the Sui dynasty (581-618 CE) reunited China. During the brilliant Tang dynasty (618-906 CE), Chinese armies marched across central Asia, prompting an influx of foreign peoples, wealth, and ideas. By the eighth century, China had become an international cultural center, integrating concepts and forms from farther west and impacting developments to the south and east.

Wu Zetian's cosmic Buddha:

In its first century, the new dynasty continued to support Buddhism. Chinese Buddhist art continued to flourish in great cave complexes built in the Indian fashion. The expanded group of deities associated with Mahayana and later teachings also appeared in the Chinese caves. One of the most spectacular is the colossal rock-cut figure of Vairocana Buddha, the personification of the cosmos, in the Longmen Cave complex. Flanked by Buddhas and bodhisattvas, Vairocana presides over an infinite number of worlds, each with its Buddha, symbolized in his throne's lotus petals. The sculptor suppressed surface detail in the interest of monumental simplicity and dignity.

3-12: Vairocana Buddha, disciples, and bodhisattvas, Longmen Caves, Luoyang, China, Tang dynasty, completed 675. Buddha, approx. 44' high.

North Wall

West wall

South wall

The Dunhuang grottoes:

The westward expansion of the Tang Empire increased the importance of Dunhuang, the westernmost gateway to China on the Silk Road. In the course of several centuries, hundreds of sanctuaries with painted murals were cut into the soft rock of the cliffs near Dunhuang. Known today as the Mogao Grottoes and in antiquity as Caves of a Thousand Buddhas, the caves also contain images of painted unfired clay and stucco.

Paradise of Amitabbha, on the wall of one of the Dunhuang caves, shows how the splendor of the Tang era and religious teaching could come together in a powerful image.

3-13: Paradise of Amitabha, Cave 172, Dunhuang, China, Tang dynasty, mid eighth century. Wall painting, approx. 10' high.

Tang Temples:

A cutaway cross-section and perspective drawing of one of the oldest surviving Buddhist temples in China, the Foguang Si near Mount Wutai in northern China, shows the realization of Tang architectural ideals in temples. A complex grid of beams and purlins, and interlocking brackets, supports the overhang of the eaves and the timbered and tiled roof. China's timber technology reached early maturity in this masterpiece of Tang dynasty architecture.

3-14: Schematic cross-section and perspective drawing of east main hall, Foguang Si (Buddha Radiance Temple), Mount Wutai, China, Tang dynasty, ca. 857 (after L. Liu).

Court painting:

Chang'an, the Tang capital, was perhaps the greatest city in the world during the seventh and eighth centuries. A brilliant tradition of figurative painting developed at the Tang court that reflected the Tang emperors' worldliness and self-assurance. In perfect accord with descriptions of the robust Tang style are the unrestored portions of The Thirteen Emperors, attributed to YAN LIBEN (d. 673), a celebrated painter and statesman. In the work, each emperor stands or sits in an undefined space. Simple shading adds volume and presence.

3-15: Attributed to YAN LIBEN, Emperor Xuan and attendants, detail of The Thirteen Emperors, Tang dynasty, ca. 650. Handscroll, ink and colors on silk, detail: 1' 8 1/4" X 1' 5 1/2"; entire scroll, 17' 5" long. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

A Princess's Painted Tomb:

Wall paintings in the tomb of the Tang princess Yongtai permit an analysis of court painting. Intervals between the rows and the figures' grouping suggest a consistent ground plane. The women assume a variety of poses, which also create a sense of spatial depth. Thick, even, economical contour lines describe faces and suggest solid forms beneath the drapery. These devices produce an air of monumental dignity.

3-16: Palace ladies, detail of a wall painting in the tomb of Princess Yongtai, Qianxian, China, Tang dynasty, 706. Approx. 5' 10' X 6' 6'.

Glazed earthenware sculpture:

Tang potters covered their vessels with colorful lead glazes and invented robust shapes. Tang ceramicists also produced thousands of earthenware figures of people, domesticated animals, and fantastic creatures for burial in tombs. Diverse foreign figures indicate the cosmopolitanism of Tang China. During the period of Tang power, representing horses was a special genre. The horse was crucial to the dynasty's military success and glory. Richly harnessed and saddled, the horse testifies to its rider's nobility.

3-17: Neighing Horse, Tang dynasty, eighth to ninth century. Glazed earthenware, 1' 8' high. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Song Dynasty

The last century of Tang rule witnessed the empire's gradual disintegration. When the dynasty fell in 906 CE, conflicting claims between rival states went unresolved until the Song dynasty consolidated the country once again. During the interim period known as the Five Dynasties (907-960 CE), the styles and techniques of painting monumental landscapes evolved rapidly, reaching a peak in the Northern Song period.

Fan Kuan's landscapes:

Landscape painting flourished even before the Tang dynasty. Daoist nature cults and a new appreciation of landscape themes in poetry provided the stimulus for the early development of landscape painting, which played a much more important role in China than in the West. According to Chinese prevailing theory, landscapes should evoke humanity's ideal harmonious relationship with the order of the cosmos and nature's potential to transform the human spirit.

Travelers among Mountains and Streams, painted by FAN KUAN, is a masterpiece of landscape painting. Massive, vertical mountains rise in the distance, dwarfing the human and animal figures. Paths and bridges lead spectators on a journey through the landscape, facilitated by shifting perspective points. Numerous "texture strokes" model forms and convey a sense of surfaces.

3-18: FAN KUAN, Travelers among Mountains and Streams, Northern Song period, early eleventh century. Hanging scroll, ink and colors on silk, 6' 7 1/4' X 3' 4 1/4'. National Palace Museum, Taibei.

Huizong, emperor and painter:

The Song imperial court employed painters in official government bureaus. Illustrating lines of poetry served frequently as an examination for entrance into the academy. The emperor SONG HUIZONG (1082-1135; r. 1100-1125), an avid art collector and patron, was also renowned for his meticulous pictures of birds.

3-19: Attributed to HUIZONG, Auspicious Cranes, section of a handscroll, Northern Song period, 1112. Ink and colors on silk, 1' 8 1/8' X 4' 6 3/8'. Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang.

Auspicious Cranes

Cizhou Pottery:

Northern and Southern Song artists also produced superb ceramics. Song ceramics commonly had elegant shapes with fluid silhouettes. Many featured monochrome glazes, such as celadon, but a quite different kind of pottery, loosely classed as Cizhou, emerged in northern China. An example is a high-shouldered vase (meiping). Northern Song potters developed the technique of sgrafitto, incising the design through a colored slip.

3-20: Meiping vase, from Xiuwi, China, Northern Song period, twelfth century. Stoneware, Cizhou type, with sgraffito decoration, 1' 7 1/2' high. Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco (Avery Brundage Collection).

Chinese pagodas:

During the Northern Song period, the Liao dynasty briefly ruled part of China. In 1056 CE, the Liao rulers built the great Foguang Si pagoda at Yingxian. The pagoda somewhat resembles the tall tower form of certain Indian temples, and its distant ancestor is the Indian stupa. Like stupas, many early pagodas housed relics and provided a focus for devotion to the Buddha and others transmitting the faith. Later pagodas served other functions, such as housing sacred images. The octagonal Foguang Si pagoda is 216 feet tall and made entirely of wood. The cross-section shows the symmetrical placement of statues of the Buddha, the colossal scale of the ground-floor statue, and the intricacy of the beam-and-bracket system.

3-21: Foguang Si Pagoda, Yingxian, China, Liao Dynasty, 1056.

3-22: Plan and cross-section of Foguang Si Pagoda, Yingxian, China, Liao Dynasty, 1056 (after L. Liu).

Southern Song Period

When the Jin captured Bianliang and the emperor Huizong in 1126 and took control of northern China, Gaozong, Huizong's sixth son, escaped and eventually established a new Song capital in the south at Lin'an. From there, he and his successors during the Southern Song period ruled their reduced empire until 1279.

Emperors, poets, and painters:

Court sponsorship of painting continued in the new capital and, as in the Northern Song period, some of the emperors were directly involved with the painters of the imperial painting academy.

3-23: MA YUAN, On a Mountain Path in Spring, Southern Song period, early thirteenth century. Album leaf, ink and colors on silk, 10 3/4' X 17'. National Palace Museum, Taibei.

Two spheres of being:

Religious painting also flourished under the Southern Song emperors. Neo-confucianism a blend of traditional Chinese thought and selected Buddhist concepts, became the leading philosophy, but Buddhist themes were still the subject of many paintings. Arhats Giving Alms to Beggars, painted by ZHOU JICHANG, expresses this new relationship in Buddhism. Arhats are the Buddha's enlightened disciples who have achieved freedom from rebirth by suppression of all desire for earthly things. The extreme difference in deportment and contrasting features between the arhats and beggars distinguishes their status. The landscape's composition also sharply distinguishes the two spheres of being.

3-24: ZHOU JICHANG, Arhats Giving Alms to Beggars, Southern Song period, 1184. Ink and colors on silk, 3' 8' X 1' 9'. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Liang Kai and Chan:

Chan Buddhism, which stressed the quest for personal enlightenment through meditation, flourished under the Song dynasty. Liang Kai was a master of an abbreviated, expressive style of ink painting that found great favor among Chan monks in China, Korea and Japan.

3-25: LIANG KAI, Sixth Chan Patriarch Chopping Bamboo, Southern Song period, early thirteenth century. Hanging scroll, ink on paper, 2' 5 1/4' high. Tokyo National Museum.

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