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Ancient China
Bronze age: Shang- 1700-1050 BCE
Zhou- 1050-221 BCE
1. Bronze was first used in the 2nd millennia along the Yellow river.2. Bronze denoted power and associated with aristocracy.3. Social stature was symbolized by how many bronzes you owned.4. Shang dynasty was an agricultural society with bureaucracy, and urban centers, 5. Shang dynasty started using calligraphic writing system found onOracle bones used for divinations by shamans from the arostacracy class.6. Bronze vessels used curvilinear patterns that blended naturalism and Geometric abstractions.
Zhou:1. A war like society2. Strong influence of Scythian nomads from use of animals transformingInto geometric forms in their art3. Warring states period: 475-221 BCE. Ritual death of household with death of ruling male member. End of bronze age the deaths were substituted by wooden figures (mingi).
Shang face bronze
Bronze face ding
Shang pottery
Zhou dynasty
Late Autumn Spring period
Bi with Dragons, 4th - 3rd century B.C.E., jade, Eastern Zhou Dynasty
Warring States periodJade pendant
Wine containers 800-700 BCE
Interlocked dragons WarringStates period
Daoism (Taoism)
• 6th century BCE., Laozi is founder• Life should be lived with balance and virtue.• Focus on the interdependence of things• There is no total good or evil, positive and
negative, ( Yin, Yang) all nature is a balance of the two.
• De. Having virtue, morality and integrity• Highest achievement is to attain immortality
through breathing, meditation, helping others and elixirs. Gun powder was invented during experimentations with elixirs for immortality.
Confucianism
• Confucianism is viewed as a moral teaching and ethical humanism rather than as a religion.
• Confucius lived in the Spring and Autumn Periods, a time when the established system could not meet the demand of development as the ruling classes of China experienced the transition from a slave to feudalist society.
• Confucianism views individual as a social creature obligated to each other through relationships
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• Proper conduct proceeds not through compulsion, but through a sense of virtue and self-consciousness achieved by learning, observing and practicing.
• Much of his approach to education was avante garde as he promoted the ideas "to educate all despite their social status" and "to teach according to the students' characteristics"
Confucian sayings
• A state, without law-abiding families and trustworthy gentlemen, without knowing the threat of external aggression, will perish.
• "Heaven, when about to place a great responsibilities on a person, always wears out his sinews and bones with toil, exposes his body to starvation, subjects him to extreme poverty, frustrates his efforts so as to stimulate his mind, toughen his nature and make good of his deficiencies.
• "Studying without thinking leads to confusion; thinking without studying leads to laziness."
Qin Iron Age 221-206 BCE
Emporer Quin
All statues and representations of the Buddha contained a very general set of symbols. These symbols could were creatively and differently represented from one Buddha to another, however there were a few particular symbols that all Buddha’s contained.---------- LOTUS – The lotus is used for many things in the Buddhist religion. Monks of the religion greet each other in a way that they form a lotus with their hands. Lotus flowers are often used as decoration. The Lotus flower is a symbol of spiritual purity, spiritual harmony, and Nirvana among many other things. In the case of the Seated Buddha, the Buddha is sitting on a Lotus throne in the Lotus position. The actual throne is the main symbol or representation of Nirvana, a name for a place or state of mind that is achieved through Enlightenment.---------- CHAKRA –Wheel of life; it is made up of the stages of life or existence. Buddhist’s believe in reincarnation of the soul. The wheel refers to different levels of reincarnation based on the soul’s former life. The Chakra is the proper name given to the physical representation of the wheel itself. It is a circular shape similar to a representation of a sun however it contains spokes which, depending on the meaning of the wheel, vary in number. ----------- PHYSICAL MARKS – There are 32 physical marks associated with the Buddha. These symbols, properly named lakshana, are simply physical characteristics of the Buddha Siddhartha. Siddhartha was a noble man as a boy and therefore wore heavy jewelry. This stretched his ears and led to one of the more noticeable lakshana of cave 20’s Buddha, the stretched earlobes. Among some other major lakshana are his long arms (not as obvious in this particular Buddha), golden skin, the chakra impressed upon his hands or feet, monks robes hung over the left shoulder, a small bit of hair between the brows called the urna, and a bun on the top of his head called the ushnisha which is a symbol of his Enlightenment.
Symbols of Buddha Sculptures
Chinese Architecture
Courtyard Style residence
Principle structure on the north side facing southReflected in the design of the Forbidden City
Forbidden City, 15th century, Ming Dynasty, Beijing, China
• Largest most complete Chinese architectural ensemble in existence
• 9,000 rooms• Walls were 30 feet high to keep people out
and those inside in• Forbidden City so named because only the
royal court could enter• Towers on each corner of the rectangle
represented the four corners of the world
This city is in Beijing, China, the outer perimeter This city is in Beijing, China, the outer perimeter wall was 15 miles long and enclosed the walled wall was 15 miles long and enclosed the walled imperial city, with a perimeter of 6 miles.imperial city, with a perimeter of 6 miles.
A few of the emperors that ruled here A few of the emperors that ruled here were,Hongwu who was the first,Yongle was the were,Hongwu who was the first,Yongle was the third , Zhu Yuanzhong led a popular uprising third , Zhu Yuanzhong led a popular uprising that led the last Mongol emperors from Beijing.that led the last Mongol emperors from Beijing.
Hall of Supreme Harmony, Forbidden City (Beijing), Ming and Qing dynasties
Focus of the Forbidden City is the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the throne room and seat of power: wood structure made with elaborately painted beams; meant for grand ceremonies
Right: Great Wild Goose pagoda (Tang dynasty), c. 652-704 CE
Chinese Painting• Album · Albums consist of small square or
rectangular paintings, calligraphies, or artist's sketches on silk or paper that are mounted onto individual pages and assembled in an accordian book-like structure. Fans, removed from their frames, are also mounted onto album leaves. Often albums are created around a single theme or story, and are not necessarily devoted to a single artist
Open album
Fan Paintings · There are two types of fans used in Chinese painting. The
first type is of silk mounted on a rigid frame in a small round or oval shape. The second type, the folding fan, is made of paper pressed into folds with thin sticks of bamboo inserted for support. The folding fan was first introduced to China from Japan and Korea and became a format for painting during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).
Oval fan Folding Fan
Handscroll
• Handscrolls provide the painter or calligrapher with a continuous horizontal surface of silk or paper on which to develop a composition. Though often displayed in their entirety in museums, handscrolls are meant to be viewed by only one or two people and unrolled from right to left two or three feet at a time. In this way, the viewer may "travel" through a story or landscape that conveys a progression of time. Separate papers containing titles or colophons may also be attached and the complete scroll mounted with silk boards. A wooden dowel is attached on the left end of the scroll and a semicircular rod at the other end. After viewing, the scroll is rolled up around the dowel from left to right and secured with ties.
Hanging Scrolls
Hanging scrolls provide the artist with a vertical format for an image. The painting surface of paper or silk is mounted with decorative silk borders. A wooden rod is attached at the bottom to give the scroll the necessary weight to hang smoothly on a wall, as well as a means of being rolled up for storage. A thin wooden strip with a cord is attached at the top for hanging the scroll. The composition of a hanging scroll usually places the foreground at the bottom of the scroll with the middle and far distances moving upward toward the top of the scroll. Hanging scrolls are displayed only for short periods of time and are then rolled up from bottom to top and secured with ties for storage
Landscape Painting
• Highly prized in Chinese art
• Like European paintings at the same time, they do not represent a particular forest or actual scene but reflect an artistic construct to symbolize a philosophical idea.
• The intertwining of open and crowded spaces reflect the Daoist theory of yin and yang, opposites flow into one another
Ma Yuan, Bare Willows and Distant Mountains, late 12th century, album leaf, ink on silk, Museum
of Fine Arts Boston
Dong QiChang, Dwelling In The Qingbian Mountains, 1617, ink on paper, Ming Dynasty, Cleveland Museum of Art
A literati painter, influenced by Daoism
Thick crowded areas alternating with open areasNegative space used to imply clouds
Piling up of forms in a radical arrangement composed of interlocking diagonals and curves
Shitao, Man in a House Beneath a Cliff, ink and color on paper, late 17th century, Qing Dynasty
Literati painter influenced by QiChang
