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Chinese art
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What is Chinese art?
Chinese art encompasses a variety of forms, including painting, calligraphy, architecture, pottery, sculpture, bronzes, and jade carvings.
Early Chinese art served ritualistic purposes, such as sacrifices to heaven and ancestors. Over time, it evolved to express human understanding of nature through landscapes, bamboo, birds, and flowers, reflecting a Daoist influence. Art also served social and moral functions, depicting exemplary figures and events with a Confucian influence. Traditional Chinese art avoids themes like war and violence, emphasizing instead inspiring, noble, and spiritually refreshing subjects. Symbolism is prevalent, with elements like bamboo and jade representing scholarly spirit and purity, respectively.
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What materials and techniques are commonly used in Chinese art?
Chinese art employs a variety of materials and techniques, with calligraphy holding a supreme position among the visual arts.
Materials
- Brush and ink Chinese painters use the same materials as calligraphers: brush, ink, and silk or paper. The character of Chinese painting is closely bound up with the nature of the medium. The basic material is ink, formed into a short stick of hardened pine soot and glue, which is rubbed to the required consistency on an inkstone with a little water.
- Pigments Mineral sources produce brighter, more opaque pigments for painting on silk, while translucent vegetable pigments are preferred for painting on paper, creating a lighter, more delicate effect.
- Silk Silk weaving became a major industry and one of China’s chief exports in the Han dynasty.
Techniques
- Linear art Painting in China is essentially a linear art. Painters focus on using silk or paper to transmit an awareness of the inner life of things through the rhythmic movement of the brushstroke.
- Mounting The mounting of paintings is a highly skilled craft and, if carefully done, will enhance the appearance of a scroll and ensure its preservation for many centuries.
- Calligraphy The Chinese judge painting by the same criteria they use for calligraphy: the vitality and expressiveness of the brushstroke itself and the harmonious rhythm of the whole composition.
- Symbolism Chinese decoration is usually symbolic and often exploits the double meaning of certain words.
- Jade carving Jade (nephrite and jadeite) is carved in China into objects with many different purposes.
- Lacquer Lacquer, the solidified sap of a tree (Rhus vernicifera), has been widely employed for a variety of decorative purposes on a foundation of wood or, less often, hempen fabric.
- Enameling Enameling on metal is an art that the Chinese learned from Europe.
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What makes Chinese painting different from Western painting?
Chinese and Western painting traditions diverge significantly in their materials, techniques, and artistic goals. Chinese painting emphasizes ink, applied with a brush on absorbent paper or silk, demanding confidence and skill due to the inability to correct mistakes. Color, when used, serves to accent or enhance realism rather than form a structural element, unlike in Western art.
Chinese painting values the artist's personal expression and inner understanding, often incorporating calligraphy and inscriptions as integral parts of the composition. Traditional Chinese art avoids themes like war or violence, seeking instead to inspire and uplift the spirit, with subjects symbolizing aspects of a greater whole. In contrast, Western painting, especially since the Renaissance, often aims to create an illusion of three-dimensional reality using linear perspective and shading.
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Why is calligraphy important in Chinese art?
Since the 3rd century CE, calligraphy has been considered the highest form of visual art in China, setting the standard for judging Chinese painting. It requires skill and judgment and reveals the writer's character and knowledge. Calligraphy has been linked to spiritual communication since the Shang dynasty, when oracle bones were used for divination.
Chinese painters use the same materials as calligraphers: brush, ink, silk, or paper. Chinese art is linear, and paintings are judged by the vitality of the brushstrokes and the composition's rhythm. The aesthetics of calligraphy have also impacted other Chinese arts, like bronzes, sculpture, and enamelware.
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What are some famous types of Chinese ceramics or pottery?
Chinese ceramics and pottery boast a rich history with many famous types.
Celadon is known for its greenish glaze and was valued for resembling jade. Yue ware was the earliest form of celadon. Longquan celadons were popular for export due to the belief that they could detect poisoned food.
Blue-and-white ware is white porcelain decorated with blue under the glaze, which was introduced to China from the Middle East during the Yuan dynasty.
During the Ming dynasty, impressive pottery included sancai ("three-color") wares with floral motifs in turquoise, purple, yellow and deep violet blue.
Song dynasty wares are known for their brilliant glazes and simple forms, including Ru ware, Guan ware, Ge ware, Ding ware, Jun ware, Jian ware, Cizhou ware, and Yingqing ware.
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How has Chinese art changed over time and influenced other cultures?
Chinese art has evolved through various dynasties, each leaving its mark. The Yuan dynasty saw artists seeking inspiration from within and emphasizing personal expression, while also witnessing the rise of blue-and-white porcelain. During the Six Dynasties period, the influence of Daoism and Buddhism grew, impacting art and literature. Xie He introduced the "Six Principles" of Chinese painting, which became a cornerstone of Chinese aesthetic theory.
East Asian motifs have unique symbolism, with the dragon representing a beneficent creature and bats symbolizing happiness. Chinese art has also influenced other cultures, with Chinese rosewood becoming well-known in the West.
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Chinese art, the painting, calligraphy, architecture, pottery, sculpture, bronzes, jade carving, and other fine or decorative art forms produced in China over the centuries.
The following article treats the general characteristics of Chinese art as a whole. For a detailed discussion of each of the arts mentioned above, see Chinese painting, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese architecture, Chinese pottery, Chinese bronzes, Chinese lacquerwork, Chinese jade, and silk.
Aesthetic characteristics and artistic traditions
Art as a reflection of Chinese class structure
One of the outstanding characteristics of Chinese art is the extent to which it reflects the class structure that has existed at different times in Chinese history. Up to the Warring States period (475–221 bce), the arts were produced by anonymous craftsmen for the royal and feudal courts. It is believed that during the Shang and early Zhou periods the production of ritual bronzes was exclusively regulated under the authority of the court, which could grant or withhold authorization for production by regional workshops among the various states or others who paid fealty to the court. Under the careful regulation of court patrons in the Shang and Zhou periods, design features were shared among specialists working in the various media and were remarkably uniform from bronzes to lacquerwares to textiles.
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During the Warring States period and the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce), the growth of a landowning and merchant class brought new patrons. After the Han there began to emerge the concept of cultural practice as the product of the leisure of the educated gentry, many of whom were amateur practitioners of the arts of poetry, music, calligraphy, and, eventually, painting. At this time a distinction began to arise between the lower-class professional and the elite amateur artist; this distinction would have a great influence on the character of Chinese art in later times. Gradually one tradition became identified with the artists and craftsmen who worked for the court or sold their work for profit. The scholarly amateurs looked upon such people with some contempt, and the visual arts of the literati became a separate tradition that was increasingly refined and rarefied to the point that, from the Song dynasty (960–1279) onward, an assumed awkwardness (zhuo) or understatement (pingdan) in technique was admired as a mark of the amateur and gentleman. As a medium of highly individual expression, painting and calligraphy also became important media of exchange in a social economy where the giving of gifts was central to the building of an interpersonal network. Like skill in letters, poetry, or music, skill and expressive quality in the practice of calligraphy and painting helped establish one’s status in a society of learned individuals.
One effect of the revolutions of the 20th century was the breaking down of the class barriers between amateur and professional. During the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76, literati art and artists were denigrated and an emphasis was placed on anonymous, proletarian-made art like that of the Tang dynasty (618–907) and earlier.
The role of linearity in Chinese art
Since the 3rd century ce, calligraphy, or writing as a fine art, has been considered supreme among the visual arts in China. Not only does it require immense skill and fine judgment, but it is regarded as uniquely revealing of the character and breadth of cultivation of the writer. Since the time when inscribed oracle bones and tortoise shells (China’s oldest extant writing) were used for divination in the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 bce), calligraphy has been associated with spiritual communication and has been viewed in terms of the writer’s own spiritual attunement. It is believed that the appreciation and production of calligraphy requires lofty personal qualities and unusual aesthetic sensitivity. The comprehension of its finer points is thought to require experience and sensibility of a high order.
The Chinese painter uses essentially the same materials as the calligrapher—brush, ink, and silk or paper—and the Chinese judge his work by the same criteria they use for the calligrapher, basically the vitality and expressiveness of the brush stroke itself and the harmonious rhythm of the whole composition. Painting in China is, therefore, essentially a linear art. The painters of most periods were not concerned with striving for originality or conveying a sense of reality and three-dimensional mass through aids such as shading and perspective; rather, they focused on using silk or paper to transmit, through the rhythmic movement of the brush stroke, an awareness of the inner life of things.
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The aesthetics of line in calligraphy and painting have had a significant influence on the other arts in China. In the motifs that adorn the ritual bronzes, in the flow of the drapery over the surface of Buddhist sculpture, and in the decoration of lacquerware, pottery, and cloisonné enamel (wares decorated with enamel of different colours separated by strips of metal), it is the rhythmic movement of the line, following the natural movement of the artist’s or craftsman’s hand, that to a large extent determines the form and gives to Chinese art as a whole its remarkable harmony and unity of style. (For more information about Chinese calligraphy, see Chinese calligraphy.)