Chinese art

The art Chinese , which indicates the Chinese classic art in general, is one of the artistic inheritances oldest and richest of the human history. Single fact on this scale, the concept of art in China gave place to a historiography and an autonomous critical literature, independent of their Western equivalents. The first steps of this art, going back to 10.000 before Jesus Christ, are most of the time simple Poterie S and Sculpture S, and are commonly regarded as fragments of art of the Stone Age . Then several dynasties followed one another, which lasted for the majority several hundred years. Taiwanese art and that of the Chinese immigrants can be also regarded as Chinese art insofar as these works are based on the heritage of traditional Chinese art.

The use of the Four treasures of the well-read man in particular opened an original way with the creative process artistic, specific to the Chinese cosmological designs, in particular through its Calligraphie, requirement with the appearance of its traditional painting.

Chinese art maintained for a long time the direct or indirect relationship with the Occident, influenced for example by draped in the statuary of origin alexandrine, whose echo shows through in the Buddhist representations of the goddess Guanyin, or later in the use of the trigonometrical prospect, then, in a separated type of painting, oil-base paint.

Before the adoption of the standards realistic-Socialists in art at the time of the advent of the Popular republic of China, of the artists influenced by the Ecole of Montparnasse worked in China. Since the years 1980, following the movement of opening and reforms of Deng Xiaoping, the birth of the Contemporary art Chinese, prone to many controversies, confirmed an artistic practice distinct from traditional Chinese art.

Development of Chinese art until 221 before JC

Neolithic pottery

The first forms of art in China were discovered in the Neolithic culture of Yangshao, and date from the sixth millenium before Jesus Christ. Archaeological lucky finds as those of Banpo revealed that the Yangshao manufactured potteries; the first were not painted but presented marks of ropes.

The most outstanding characteristic of the culture Yangshao was the widespread use of painted potteries, generally comprising symmetrical geometrical forms, as well as animals such as fish and human faces. With the difference of the culture of Longshan, Yangshao did not use a turn to manufacture their potteries. According to the archeologists, this culture was based on matriarcaux clans. Excavations made it possible to update children buried in earthenware jars.

Landscapes painted on rollers

The central Museum of the current Republic of China to Beijing, has the most important national collection of paintings, where one can discover the features characteristic of a pictorial Art extremely refined. We learn there that the former Chinese Masters painted on silk or paper rollers; that they used the color in very light keys, by holding the peinceau vertically, which required a great flexibility of the wrist; that they could reproduce a character of only one and very skilful blow of brush. Certain painters were also poets and commented on their work in eloquent sentences, written directly on the painted roller.

The dragon of the prohibited city

In China, in the oldest tales as in the traditional representational art, the dragon S occupy a choice place. They are fabulous characters with the extraordinary force, who symbolize the power of the emperor and his supremacy on the enemies of China. A fantastic representation of this legendary being is in the “city prohibited in Beijing”: it appears in low relief on polychrome ceramics plates and its monstrous head causes admiration… or fear. One calls “quoted prohibited” the protected district where the old palates of the emperor and his court rise. Indeed, formerly when China was “the empire of the medium” nobody could not penetrate in these place, except for the courtiers and of the people attached to the royal services. They, form today immense a Musée, which attracts increasingly many foreign visitors.

Jade culture

The Jade culture of Liangzhu was the last of the Neolithic cultures in the delta of the Yangtze river, and was spread out over one 1300 years period. Jade was worked finely, and constituted various objects like small cylinders, discs and axes, as well as small objects of decoration engraved in plates and representative of the birds, fish or tortoises. The Jade of Liangzhu had a milky white aspect, mainly due to the Tremolite rock and the influence of water in the neighborhoods of the burials. In the centuries spent, many works of art and of craft industry were imported of China. They are the lacquers and jades which by their beauty, astonished the Westerners the most. The Chinese lacquers have a trade secret: the “Rhus succedanea”. This tree of the Far East provides a gum resin which, applied in successive layers, gives to the pieces of furniture, the folding screens and the boxes enamelled an incomparable brilliance. On certain works, twenty layers of lacquer at least had to be affixed to obtain a gloss even more invaluable. The small sculptures of jade-beautiful stone with let us tons green and with the changing reflections constitute another typical Chinese production.

The representation of space in Chinese art and analyzes Chinese art

Chinese art is different from our because the artists who influenced the Europe are not the same ones as them. The problems of religion as well influenced European art as Chinese art but these evolutions are obviously of different nature but also at times which do not coincide between the West and Is world. But for speaking about representation of space it is necessary to do a little history…

Beginnings of Chinese painting

The first vestiges of Chinese art, date from the Paléolithique, i.e. between 300.000 years before Jesus Christ at 120.000 years front J.C. During this period, the men learned how to cut instruments out of stone and as of the paleolithic higher (by 35.000 with 8500 av. J.C), the man started to make art and tools on blade and in bone. One of the vestiges of this time is with Lianyungang, in the province of the Jiangsu, which is in the east of the China, at the border between North and the South, in the province where Shanghai is. In this province, one found engraved Pétroglyphes which do not have for us any significance. These drawings are symbolic systems and are engraved on the stone in a natural state, and does not tell a history and are not either in a cave. These drawings have a religious connotation.

There are also vestiges of the Neolithic , on potteries, the ground of the huts with thatched roof and the objects out of ground. For the paleolithic one, paintings and engravings follow one another over approximately 10.000 years and out of approximately 3000 kilometers of Is in West. These works suppose religious beliefs or chamanic. Among the oldest engraved drawings, in the Mount Yin, there is a surface surrounded by light: it is the sun. One sees there plants, animals, rivers, mountains… and celestial bodies which are an alive aware. They believed that while transforming into visible images, they could influence the natural process of the life. Paintings represent dances, huntings, achievements of ritual sacrifices and wars. The appearance of the arc with the arrows dates from the Neolithic era. the images isolated, static become juxtaposed, in action what shows an evolution. Instead of being a ray, the celestial body becomes a body upright, characters with an arc with the hand, a stick in its other hand and at side, a character with a cover-chief in the shape of feather. This characters represents can be a Shaman because the arc and the stick are in the same hand. It incarnates the solar capacity because out of mirror compared to the character in the sun. Size of the " shaman" is rather large, like its cover-chief what shows that it or it has a great importance.

2.500 years ago, under the Eastern Dynastie Zhou, the use of the brush and of ink is so elaborate that the layout of the forms still did not evolve/move. There are two courses of paintings: one attached to the detailed and technically controlled representation of a scene or an object, under the Tang (618-907) and the Song (960-1279); the other is the representation of an appearance objectve and subjective (beginning of Song). All paintings are on infinite surfaces until the appearance and the invention of the framework and thus of the preparation of the bottom, from where appearance of the manufactured forms, the potteries, architecture with wooden carpentry. Consequently, the supports linked, symmetrical, the regularity of the direction, spacing and grouping, are in harmony with the shapes of the objects as with the ornament of the close parts. Under the dynasty of Zhou Eastern (southernmost area of the Chu in the center of the average area of the Blue River), the characters of a fantastic iconography: the musicians are birds or Quadrupèdes. Another form of art with geometric standards and figurative with very alive human figures which form a complex space reason. For example (drawn from a reason on an enamelled box, fall 2, Baoshan, Jingmen, province of Houbei, 316 av. J.C (10.8cm top and 27.9cm length)) if the characters are back or of profile, those which are back are close to the spectator and are oneself on a tank, to protect their Master, that is to say in the foreground to look at their Master passing in front of them. In both, the staging of the images, the variation of size and the separation of the various plans create a strong impression of depth. Five trees divide the composition which gives a continuous account (see the trees with more or less sheets). A first group of two trees defines the beginning of the history and a second group of two trees marks the end of the history. This history is read from right to left. A civil servant is on a tank drawn by horses, the horses accelerate and the servants course in front. The tank slows down; the civil servant east accommodated by the knelt characters. During this time, a gentleman with a dark dress goes to his meeting. In the final scene, the civil servant is gotten out of the tank, meets his host, but for an unknown reason, it wears a dark dress whereas its host carries white from there. This roller shows progress in space and time. It is a progress in time because the four seasons follow one another correctly. The winter is represented there by the migration of the cranes.

Study and comparison enter Chinese art and the European art (and how to read and include/understand the codes of Chinese painting)

After having observed Chinese paintings one can notice that the prospect existed but that the horizon, the limit between the ground and the sky do not exist because no line delimit it as regards the representation of the animals and/or of the men and the prime coat is the same one for both.

Only the objects or the characters suggest a position in space. It is only thanks to that one guesses what is close or remote and if the pieces of furniture for example are flat or are not it. The objects are in Oblique extreme like are the buildings, the shelter S, and stripped of the European connotation of any tension or a danger. In Chinese art, the extreme oblique is completely innocent and shows that there is a break point, which is always single, some is the time. The characters as for them, are more or less high in work, which determines whether they are in the foreground, the second plan or the background.

The size of the characters is respected in the direction or there is no hierarchy by the size, if not the characters are same size according to their place in the plan. There is also a play of color, as in European works but contrary to these last, it is not to delimit the plans but to treat on a hierarchical basis the characters: the most important characters will be in general in white, the other colors are for the supporting characters, there is thus all the same a will to show the importance of the observers. The drawings in Chinese art are rather simple, it does not have there a portrait and the characters are always shown in the action, as in hunting, the social life, which did not evolve/move since the Préhistoire. The characters never have shade, contrary to European works where the light occupies an important place, Chinese art is not worried any.

The characters evolve/move on a bottom black or white and the horizon is present only in the drawings or paintings of landscapes is still, it is not always delimited. If the proportions were not respected with prehistory, as of year zero of our annual calendar, the Chinese quickly learned how the importance to retranscribe nature such as it is, but with a personal key of the artist while remaining faithful to natural reality. The characters and the animals as for them are represented in a coarse way. One includes/understands their nature only because they have the shape of known animals or man.

In Chinese painting, the landscapes are carried out in such a way that they are identical so that have perceives it, on the level of the layout but it exactly is not followed and employs rather a type of Expressionnisme. When human constructions or the men appear in landscapes they are represented in very small, because they are within a framework complete Cosmologique. The landscapes are in general in blue or of a single color whereas paintings which have as a subject the man, the plants, the animals are rich colors. There is a color gradation: the blue bottom is for the sky, the sea or the mountain because the " quantity of air between the mountain and the eye returns it bleue". The painting of landscape appears as of IVe or 5th century. The Jen Wou (men and things) should not be too worked nor too simple and it is necessary that they have a bond with the landscape (for example the man looks at the mountain and the mountain seems to look at the man). The birds are also a sign of the seasons: for example the migratory bird which leaves in autumn (like the crane) and the young swallows in spring. The houses when they are not insulated, they are tangled up, and none among it can be seen completely.

No object appears unnecessarily in Chinese art: the chairs are made because characters make the movement sit down, the tables there to eat or play failures (different as of our), of the beds to lie down there. In European art, on the contrary, the pieces of furniture which are not useful are represented nevertheless (can be for a preoccupation with a realism). The majority of Chinese works are funerary works because after the separation of the capacity and the many wars, the Chinese focused themselves on the decoration of the tombs and the representation of the Bouddha, which is a similarity with the European art which, since the Moyen-âge and that until the Renaissance, its beginning is centered only on religious works because the others are prohibited. The Break point is almost always located at the center and the perspective as for it, as well as the Creepage distances are always respected as of 500 after J.C whereas in the European countries, it is only as of the Quattrocento that Alberti invents the treaty of the prospect and thus that all the painters will respect the human proportions because with the Renaissance, the European man is nothing any more but one subject of God and that He is higher than the man (with the appearance of humanism). Chinese art is also different from European art because this last tolerates various actions of the same character in the same image, inconceivable thing for the Chinese, except in the case of the rollers, but the various actions are separated by a reason from the decoration which is repeated. The roller is used so that all the history is read and that the eye is not attracted by a thing in particular. The men and the women were always semi realistic, in paintings, they have faces round or oval and only the barbs, the moustache or the hair make it possible to distinguish if it is a man or a woman; because the Chinese do not represent much the women, which is different from the European art which represented women as of the first painting where Marie appears. Thus Europeans caricature the features but respect the reality of the bodies whereas Chinese art does not respect nature, the human features that as of the 20th century. Before the bodies in dresses (are simplified) and the features of the faces (eyes and mouths) are the same ones for all and nowadays, the characteristics are respected. Thus all separates invariable art from Chinese of the art unceasingly changing which is European art.

See too

Chinese Painting
calligraphic Styles Chinese
Contemporary art Chinese
contemporary Chinese Creation

External bonds

Chinese Painting and penmanship

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