21-+Chinese+Art+after+1280

Chapter 21 - Chinese Art after 1280 Assignment done by Arielle Koppell

__HISTORICAL BACKGROUND__ -The Qin Ling Mountains divide China into nothern and southern regions with distinctively different climates and cultures. -At the beginning of the thirteenth century the Mongols, a nomadic people from northern China, led by Jenghiz Kan (~1162-1227) captured western and central Europe and Islamic lands from Central Asia through Present-day Iraq. His grandson, Kublai Khan, succeeded him to the throne and acquired Chine in 1279. He started the Yuan Dynasty in 1280. -The preceding Song Dynasty (960-1279) practiced a culture of increasing refinement and sophistication, and also a decreased openness to other nearby cultures, instead focusing on China's own traditions and distinguishing the gentle and erudite Chinese from the crude, uncultured "barbarians" outside of the border. -Landscape painting resultantly developed as the most esteemed genre, capable of expressing both philosophical and personal concerns. -Faced with the reality of occupation by these "barbarians", China's inward gaze intensified in spiritual resistance and leading scholars began to seek more challenging and profound ways to express themselves in an artistic fashion that was uniquely and authentically Chinese. __YUAN DYNASTY (1271-1368)__ -The Mongols established their capital at the northern cit of Beijing, but the cultural centers remained in the great southern cities where the Song court had been located for the previous 150 years. This disparity in political and cultural centers called for a new and dynamic situation in the arts: imperial court set tone for artistic taste (artisans attached to the court produced for imperial use)---> painters and calligraphers moved up the social scale gradually ("arts of the brush" were often practiced by scholars and emperors)---> imperial painting academy established during the Song Dynasty made painters of a status equal to that of court officials (*For the literati, painting, calligraphy, and poetry came to be the trio of accomplishments suited to the cultural elite)---> conditions of Yuan rule encouraged a distinction between court taste, ministered by professional artists and artisans and literati taste (which felt that professional art was inherently compromised because it was done to please others and thus impure, and instead developed its own ideals of what painting should be- a form of personal expression that counted for more than mere professional skill- this was of course enabled by the literati not needing to earn an income from their art, though the Yuans continued the imperial role of acting as patrons of the arts for the former types of artists. -Scholars turned inward to express themselves in personal and symbolic terms because high government positions were bestowed onto Mongols and their foreign allies. Ex: Zhao Mengfu- known for his carefully rendered paintings of horses and his creation of another manner of painting, most famous in his landmark painting //Autumn Colors on the Qiao and Hua Mountains// (as pictured below). The mountains and trees of the landscape are not painted naturalistically, but in archaic and elegant manner that recalls the earlier Tang dynasty, presenting a nostalgia for China's past. Aesthetic: the idea that a painting is not done to capture a likeness or to satisfy others, but is executed freely and carelessly for the artist's own amusement. Finished works were generally mounted on silk upon completion. An album comprises a set of paintings of identical size mounted in an accordion-fold book (a single painting from an album is called an **autumn leaf** and the paintings in an album are usually related in subject). Handscrolls and hanging scrolls were both not displayed permanently, but were taken out for a limited time. **Handscrolls** were unrolled only occasionally and placed on a flat surface to be viewed by gradually unrolling it. **Hanging scrolls** were by contrast viewed as a whole- unrolled and put up on a wall, but still were intimate and not intended for public display.Creating a scroll was a time-consuming and exacting process. On a handscroll, a painting was generally preceded by a panel giving the work's title and often followed by a long panel bearing **colophons**, or inscriptions related to the work, such as poems in its praise or comments by its owners over the centuries. Ni Zan's legacy= the painting of the literati was bound up with views of the appropriate journey in life- being a gifted scholar whose spirit was too refined for the dusty state of government service, whom preferred to live as a recluse. His //The Rongxi Studio//, as displayed to the right, shows a landscape in his home district sketched with minimum detail using a **dry-brush technique** (about to run out of ink) to present a sense of simplicity and purity. As Literati styles were believed to reflect the painter's personality, Ni's spare and dry style presents his unworldly spirit and notorious cleanliness __MING DYNASTY (1368-1644)__ -The founder of this dynasty came from a poor peasant family and worked his way into power through the help of scholars, who he later came to distrust. His despotic way of ruling alienated many scholars from the government that they had been trained to serve. This allowed the contrast between the luxurious world of the court and the austere ideals of the literati of the Yuan Dynasty to ensue. COURT AND PROFESSIONAL PAINTING= -Ex: //Hundreds of Birds Admiring the Peacocks//- a large silk painting by Yin Hong. This painting is an example of the birds-and-flowers **genre**, which had been popular with artists of the Song academy. It has symbolic meaning (the birds to the peacocks represent the court officials to the emperor). It has a decorative style (Song), but also a large format and the multiplication of details (Ming). -Ex: //Spring Dawn in the Han Palace//- Qiu Ying brought professional painting to a new high point. He had the opportunity to study many Tang paintings, which concentrate on the figure and leave the background out entirely, and so this painting is based on Tang Dynasty depictions of women in the court of the Han Dynasty. The figures are graceful and elegant and are in a palace engaging in pasttime activities. It also has antique subject matter, refined technique, and flawless taste in color and composition. DECORATIVE ARTS AND GARDENS= -Like the Song Dynasty before it, the Ming has become famous for its ceramics, especially **porcelain**, refined white clay and the mineral feldspar fired together at a high temperature to fuse into a glasslike ceramic that is stronger than it appears. The imperial kilns in Jingdezhen (Jiangxi province) became the most renowned center for porcelain in the world, producing noteworthy **blue-and-white wares** (a clear blue design set sharply against a snowy white background) during the ten-year reign of the Xuande emperor. The flask pictured below is one such example of this by its subtle shape, refined yet vigorous decoration of dragons writhing in the sea, and flawless glazing.
 * Literati Painting**: an educated taste for the 'spirit of the antiquity", unassuming brushwork,, sparingly used subtle colors (or no color), the use of landscape to convey personal meaning, the intended audience of a close friend, small formats like handscrolls, hanging scrolls, or album leaves (book pages) that could be easily transported and shown at small gatherings.

-Chinese furniture reached the height of its development in the 16th and 17th centuries. Chairs were constructed by pieced fitting together on the **principle of the mortise-and-tenon joint** in which a projecting element (tenon) on one piece fits snugly into a cavity (mortise) on another. The patterns of wood grain were subtle and unmarred, emphasizing simplicity, clarity, symmetry, and balance. The overall effect is formal and dignified- not unlike the Chinese virtues of proper human conduct.

ARCHITECTURE AND CITY PLANNING= -Centuries of war have destroyed Chinese architectural monuments, leaving few intact. The most important remaining example of traditional Chinese architecture is the Forbidden City, the imperial palace compound in Beijing, whose principle buildings were constructed during the Ming Dynasty. -The basic plan of Beijing was the work of the Mongols, who developed it as a walled, rectangular city with streets laid out in a grid, which can be traced back as early as the 7th century. The palace's enclosure occupied the center of the northern part of the city, which was left reserved for the Mongols, while the Chinese lived in the southern third of the city. Visitors entered the Forbidden City through the Meridian Gate, a monumental U-shaped gate. At the opposite end of the broad courtyard is the Gate of Supreme Harmony, opening onto an even larger courtyard that houses three ceremonial halls raised on a broad platform. These three halls were the Hall of Supreme Harmony (the most important), the Hall of Central Harmony, and the Hall of Protecting Harmony. Behind these vast ceremonial spaces, still on the central axis in the inner court, is a progression of three more intimate buildings. In its balance and resounding symmetry, the plan reflects ancient Chinese beliefs about the harmony of the universe with the emperor's role, as the Son of Heaven, to maintain the cosmic order from his throne in the middle of the world.
 * The layout of imperial buildings was as important as their site and reflected ancient principles of **cosmology** (ideas about the structure and workings of the universe). Architecture played a major role in expressing this link between imperial and cosmic order.

LITERATI PAINTING= -In the South, especially in the district of Suzhou, literati painting remained the dominant trend. -Shen Zou- studied the Yuan painters and tried to recapture their spirit in works like //Poet on a Mountaintop//, which recalls the freedom and simplicity of Ni Zan's style, but also brings a new theme to the table- the **motif** of a poet surveying the landscape from a mountain plateau. In earlier landscape paintings, figures were often dwarfed by the grandeur of nature, but here the poet has climbed the mountain and dominates the landscape. Before his gaze, a poem hangs in the air, as though he is projecting his thoughts. This reflects **Ming Philosophy** which held that the mind and not the physical world is the basis for reality. (Even the clouds are beneath the poet!) Shen Zhou composed the poem and inscription and the style of the calligraphy is informal, relaxed, and straightforward- qualities that that were believed to reflect the artist's character and personality.

-Dong Qichang: He developed a view of Chinese Art History that divided painters into two opposing schools: northern and southern (not based upon geography, but based on the northern and southern schools of Chan (Zen) Buddhism in China). The **southern school** of Chan, founded by the monk Huineng, was unorthodox and radical, and the **northern school** was traditional and conservative. In Dong's view, the northern school was dominated by professional painters whose academic and often decorative style emphasized technical skill. In contrast, the progressive southern school preferred ink to color and free brushwork to meticulous detail, aiming for poetry and personal expression. He focused on literati painting, which he saw as the culmination of the southern school and fundamentally influenced the way the Chinese perceived their own tradition. He also believed that the proper training for literati painters was **"Read ten thousand books and walk ten thousand miles"**, or in other words to study the works of the great masters and subsequently follow the world of nature. He also theorized that the excellence of a painting does not lie in its resemblance to reality, but instead in its expressive power of language through a construction of brushstrokes. -Dong brought painting close to the realm of calligraphy, which had long been considered to be the highest form of artistic expression in China- he introduced some of the preexisting terms describing formal and expressive properties of brushwork and composition to the criticism of painting. His theories are fully embodied in his painting //The Qingbian Mountains//, which according to him was based on 10th century artist Dong Yuan//.// However, although there is some semblance of foreground, middle ground, and distant mountains, the space is compressed and flattened, as if it is all pressed to the surface of the picture, making the mountains more readily legible as semiabstract forms made of brushstrokes. Interestingly, many of the trees are echoed in the shapes of other trees and anticipate the high peak that towers in the distance almost directly above it. This essential double reading, both abstract and representational, parallels the work's double nature as a painting of a landscape and an interpretation of a traditional landscape painting.

__QING DYNASTY (1644-1911)__ -In 1644, when the Manchu peoples' armies (of northeast China) marched into Beijing, many Chinese reacted with surprise and fright. However, the Manchu had already adopted many Chinese customs and institutions before their conquest and thus after gaining control of all of China, showed great respect for Chinese tradition, allowing all of the major trends of the late Ming Dynasty to continue, uninterrupted, into the Manchu or Qing Dynasty. -Literati painting was now well-established as the dominant tradition. In fact, it had become orthodox. Scholars followed Dong Qichang's recommendation and painted large numbers of their works in the manner of Song and Yuan artists as a way of expressing their technical aptitude and taste. -//A Thousand Peaks and Myriad Ravines//- Wang Hui (1693) exemplifies all of the basic elements and features of Chinese landscape painting, including a poem in the upper right-hand corner of the composition, sharing Wang Hui's thoughts upon painting this work. He was inspired by both Tang dynasty poet Li Cheng, in his subject, and 10th century masters Dong Yuan and Juran in his style.The painting gives the illusion of a film camera slowly pulling away from some small human drama until the actors are barely distinguished from the great flow of nature. *Giving viewers the experience of dissolving their individual identity in the cosmic flow had been a goal of Chinese landscape painting since its first era of greatness during the Song Dynasty. -All of the Qing emperors of the late 17th and 18th centuries were painters themselves, whose conservative tastes were shaped mainly by artists like Wang Hui. Literati painting, long asociated with reclusive scholars, became an academic style practiced at court. -In the first few decades of the Manchu conquest, many Chinese whom were still loyal to the Ming reacted violently. Among them were several painters who, inspired by Don Qichang's conception of painting as a form of personal expression, expressed anger and defiance in their works and cultivated highly original styles. These painters are known as the individualists. -One such individualist was Shitao, who brought his painting to the brink of abstraction in works like //Landscape//, displayed below. Dots, conventionally used to indicate vegetation on rocks, have taken on a life of their own, and the rocks seem ready to swallow up the monk and his hut. Shitao identified with the fallen Ming and felt that his secure world had turned to chaos with the Manchu conquest.

__MODERN PERIOD (~1911-PRESENT)__ -In the mid- and late 19th century, China suffered from crushing military defeats by Western powers and Japan. This led the government to finally realize that these new rivals were unlike the Mongols of the 13th century and that China was no longer at the center of the world. Spiritual resistance was no longer enough to solve problems set on by change, brought on by Western and Japanese influences, which caused a demand to arise for political and cultural reform. In 1911, the Qing Dynasty was overthrown, ending over 2,000 years of imperial rule and China was reconceived as a republic. -At the beginning of the 20th century, Chinese artists traveled to Japan and Europe to study Western art and upon returning home, attempted to introduce the new ideas and techniques they had learned to integrate the two traditions. After the establishment of the present-day Communist government in 1949, individual artistic freedom was curtailed and the arts were suppressed into the service of the state and the vision of a new social order. After 1979, however, cultural attitudes relaxed once more, allowing painters to once again pursue their own artistic pathways. -Wu Guanzhong: He emerged in the 1980's, combining his French artistic training and Chinese background to develop a semi-abstract style while depicting scenes from the Chinese landscape. He usually makes preliminary sketches on site and develops them into free interpretations later based upon his feelings and vision. His //Pine Spirit// (1984) is a mix of two cultures: linking the **Abstract Expressionist** movement to the long tradition of Chinese landscape by depicting the Huang (Yellow) Mountains with grand, sweeping gestures of paint. -Chinese art has felt the strong impact of Western influence and the question remains whether traditional cultural identity will be absorbed in this transformation. However, landscape remains to be its most popular subject, as it has been for over 1,000 years, showing Chinese painters' renewed commitment to seek spiritual communion with nature through their art as a means of coming to terms with human life and the world.

__more information:__ great timelines and lists of key works: http://www.pitt.edu/~asian/week-11/week-11.html ; http://www.pitt.edu/~asian/week-11/week-11.2.html great overview of chinese art in general: http://www.kyrene.org/schools/brisas/sunda/arthistory/china.htm media type="youtube" key="ykUJcwCRUjQ" height="273" width="336" media type="youtube" key="VLg8XYT1eDA" height="273" width="336" align="left"