Chinese artChinese art is art that, whether ancient or modern, originated in or is practiced in China or by Chinese artists or performers. Early so-called "stone age art" dates back to 10,000 BC, mostly consisting of simple pottery and sculptures. This early period was followed by a series of art dynasties,...
is
artArt is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings...
that, whether ancient or modern, originated in or is practiced in
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
or by
ChineseThe term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People who reside in and hold citizenship of the People's Republic of China or the Republic of China . This definition stems from a legal perspective...
artists or performers. Early so-called "
stone ageThe Stone Age is a broad prehistoric time period during which humans widely used stone for toolmaking.Stone tools were made from a variety of different sorts of stone. For example, flint and chert were shaped for use as cutting tools and weapons, while basalt and sandstone were used for ground...
art" dates back to 10,000 BC, mostly consisting of simple
potteryPottery is the ceramic ware made by potters. Major types of pottery include earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain. The places where such wares are made are called potteries. Pottery is one of the oldest human technologies and art-forms, and remains a major industry today...
and
sculptureSculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard and/or plastic material, sound, and/or text and or light, commonly stone , metal, glass, or wood. Some sculptures are created directly by finding or carving; others are assembled, built together and fired, welded, molded,...
s. This early period was followed by a series of art
dynastiesA dynasty is a succession of people belonging to the same family, who, through various means and forms maintain power, influence or authority over the course of generations. Most commonly the term is used specifically in reference to royal houses and imperial dynasties — their authority manifests...
, most of which lasted several hundred years. The Chinese art in the
Republic of ChinaThe Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan, is a state in East Asia that has evolved from a single-party state with full global recognition and jurisdiction over China into a democratic state with limited international recognition and jurisdiction only over Taiwan and minor islands, though it...
(Taiwan) and that of
overseas ChineseOverseas Chinese are people of Chinese birth or descent who live outside the territories administered by the rival governments of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China...
can also be considered part of Chinese art where it is based in or draws on Chinese heritage and Chinese culture.
Neolithic pottery
Early forms of art in China are found in the
NeolithicThe Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BCE in the Middle East that is traditionally considered the last part of the Stone Age...
Yangshao cultureThe Yangshao culture was a Neolithic culture that existed extensively along the central Yellow River in China. The Yangshao culture is dated from around 5000 BC to 3000 BC. The culture is named after Yangshao, the first excavated representative village of this culture, which was discovered in 1921...
, which dates back to the
6th millennium BCDuring the 6th millennium BC, agriculture spreads from the Balkans to Italy and Eastern Europe and from Mesopotamia to Egypt. World population is essentially stable at ca. 5 million people.-Events:...
. Archeological findings such as those at the
BanpoBanpo is an archaeological site first discovered in 1953 and located in the Yellow River Valley just east of Xi'an, China. It contains the remains of several well organized Neolithic settlements dating from approximately 4500 BCE. It is a large area of 5-6 hectares and surrounded by a ditch,...
have revealed that the Yangshao made
potteryPottery is the ceramic ware made by potters. Major types of pottery include earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain. The places where such wares are made are called potteries. Pottery is one of the oldest human technologies and art-forms, and remains a major industry today...
; early
ceramicsIn art history, ceramics and ceramic art mean art objects such as figures, tiles, and tableware made from clay and other raw materials by the process of pottery, so excluding glass and also mosaic, normally made from glass tesserae...
were
unpaintedPaint is any liquid, liquifiable, or mastic composition which after application to a substrate in a thin layer is converted to an opaque solid film.-History:...
and most often cord-marked. The first
decorationPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
s were
fishA fish is any aquatic vertebrate animal that is typically ectothermic , covered with scales, and equipped with two sets of paired fins and several unpaired fins...
and human faces, but these eventually evolved into
symmetricalSymmetry generally conveys two primary meanings. The first is an imprecise sense of harmonious or aesthetically pleasing proportionality and balance; such that it reflects beauty or perfection...
-
geometricGeometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers....
abstract designs, some painted.
The most distinctive feature of Yangshao culture was the extensive use of painted pottery, especially human facial, animal, and geometric designs. Unlike the later
Longshan cultureThe Longshan culture was a late Neolithic culture in China, centered on the central and lower Yellow River and dated from about 3000 BC to 2000 BC...
, the Yangshao culture did not use pottery wheels in pottery making. According to archaeologists, Yangshao society was based around matriarchal clans. Excavations have found that children were buried in painted pottery jars.
Jade culture
The Liangzhu culture was the last Neolithic Jade culture in the
Yangtze RiverThe Yangtze River, or Chang Jiang , Tibetan: Bri-chu, is the longest river in China and Asia, and the third-longest in the world, after the Nile in Africa and the Amazon....
delta and was spaced over a period of about 1,300 years. The Jade from this culture is characterized by finely worked, large ritual jades such as
CongA cong is a form of jade artifact from ancient China. The earliest cong were produced by the Liangzhu culture ; later examples date mainly from the Shang and Zhou dynasties....
cylinders,
BiThe bi is a form of circular jade artifact from ancient China. The earliest bi were produced in the Neolithic period, particularly by the Liangzhu culture . Later examples date mainly from the Shang, Zhou and Han dynasties. They were also made in glass.-Description:A bi is a flat jade disc with a...
discs, Yue axes and also pendants and decorations in the form of chiseled open-work plaques, plates and representations of small birds, turtles and fish. The Liangzhu Jade has a white, milky bone-like aspect due to its
TremoliteTremolite is a member of the amphibole group of silicate minerals with composition: Ca2Mg5Si8O222. Tremolite forms by metamorphism of sediments rich in dolomite and quartz. Tremolite forms a series with actinolite and ferro-actinolite...
rock origin and influence of water-based fluids at the burial sites. Jade is a green stone that cannot be carved so it has to be ground.
Bronze casting
The
Bronze AgeThe Bronze Age of a culture is the period when the most advanced metalworking in that culture utilised bronze. This could either have been based on the local smelting of copper and tin from ores, or trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere...
in China began with the
Xia DynastyThe Xia Dynasty of China is the first dynasty to be described in ancient historical records such as Records of the Grand Historian and Bamboo Annals. The Xia Dynasty was established by the legendary Yu the Great after Shun gave his throne to him...
. Examples from this period have been recovered from ruins of the
Erlitou cultureThe Erlitou culture is a name given by archaeologists to an Early Bronze Age urban society that existed in China from 2000 BCE to 1500 BCE. The culture was named after the site discovered at Erlitou in Yanshi, Henan Province...
, in Shanxi, and include complex but unadorned utilitarian objects. In the following
Shang DynastyThe Shang Dynasty or Yin Dynasty was, according to traditional sources, the second Chinese dynasty, after the Xia Dynasty. They ruled in the northeastern regions of the area known as "China proper", in the Yellow River valley...
more elaborate objects, including many ritual vessels, were crafted. The Shang are remembered for their
bronzeBronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive, but sometimes with other elements such as phosphorus, manganese, aluminium, or silicon. It was particularly significant in antiquity, giving its name to the Bronze Age...
casting, noted for its clarity of detail. Shang bronzesmiths usually worked in
foundriesA foundry is a factory that produces metal castings from either ferrous or non-ferrous alloys. Metals are turned into parts by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal in a mold, and removing the mold material or casting after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metal...
outside the cities to make ritual vessels, and sometimes weapons and chariot fittings as well. The bronze vessels were receptacles for storing or serving various solids and liquids used in the performance of sacred ceremonies. Some forms such as the
ku and
jue can be very graceful, but the most powerful pieces are the
dingA ding or ting is an ancient Chinese vessel with legs and a lid and two handles. They come in two shapes, the round vessels have three legs and the rectangle ones have four legs....
, sometimes described as having the an "air of ferocious majesty."
It is typical of the developed Shang style that all available space is decorated, most often with stylized forms of real and imaginary animals. The most common motif is the
taotieThe Taotie is a motif commonly found on ritual bronze vessels from the Shang and Zhou Dynasty. The design typically consists of a zoomorphic mask, described as being frontal, symmetrical, with a pair of eyes and typically no lower jaw area...
, which shows a mythological being presented frontally as though squashed onto a horizontal plane to form a symmetrical design. The early significance of
taotie is not clear, but myths about it existed around the late
Zhou DynastyThe Zhou Dynasty followed the Shang Dynasty and was followed by the Qin Dynasty in China. The Zhou dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history—though the actual political and military control of China by the dynasty only lasted during the Western Zhou...
. It was considered to be variously a covetous man banished to guard a corner of heaven against evil monsters; or a monster equipped with only a head which tries to devour men but hurts only itself.
The function and appearance of bronzes changed gradually from the Shang to the Zhou. They shifted from been used in religious rites to more practical purposes. By the
Warring States PeriodThe Warring States Period , also known as the Era of Warring States, covers the period from 476 BCE to the unification of China by the Qin Dynasty in 221 BCE...
, bronze vessels had become objects of aesthetic enjoyment. Some were decorated with social scenes, such as from a banquet or hunt; whilst others displayed abstract patterns inlaid with
goldGold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. It has been a highly sought-after precious metal for coinage, jewelry, and other arts since the beginning of recorded history. The metal occurs as nuggets or grains in rocks, in veins and in alluvial deposits. Gold is...
,
silverSilver is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
, or precious and semiprecious stones.
Shang bronzes became appreciated as works of art from the
Song DynastyThe Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...
, when they were collected and prized not only for their shape and design but also for the various green, blue green, and even reddish patinas created by chemical action as they lay buried in the ground. The study of early Chinese bronze casting is a specialized field of
art historyArt history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and look. This includes the "major" arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture as well as the "minor" arts of ceramics,...
.
Early Chinese music
The origins of Chinese music and poetry can be found in the
Book of SongsBook of Songs may refer to:* Shi Jing, also known as Classic of Poetry, one of the Five Classics of ancient China* Kitab al-Aghani, a collection of poems and songs by ninth century Arab scholar Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani]...
, containing poems composed between 1000 BC and 600 BC. The text, preserved among the canon of early
Chinese literatureChinese literature extends back thousands of years, from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the mature fictional novel that arose during the Ming Dynasty to entertain the masses of literate Chinese...
, contains folk songs, religious hymns and stately songs. Originally intended to be sung, the accompanying music unfortunately has since been lost. They had a wide range of purposes, including for courtship, ceremonial greetings, warfare, feasting and lamentation. The love poems are among the most appealing in the freshness and innocence of their language.
Early Chinese music was based on
percussion instrumentA percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound by being hit with an implement, shaken, rubbed, scraped, or by any other action which sets the object into vibration...
s such as the bronze bell. Chinese bells were sounded by being struck from the outside, usually with a piece of wood. Sets of bells were suspended on wooden racks. Inside excavated bells are groves and marks of scraping and scratching made as they were tuned to the right pitch. Percussion instruments gradually gave way to string and reed instruments toward the Warring States period.
Significantly, the character for writing the word
music (
yue) was the same as that for
joy (
le). For
ConfuciusConfucius , lit. "Master Kong," was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher, whose teachings and philosophy have deeply influenced Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese thought and life....
and his disciples, music was important because it had the power to make people harmonious and well balanced, or, conversely, caused them to be quarrelsome and depraved. According to
Xun ZiXun Zi was a Chinese Confucian philosopher who lived during the Warring States Period and contributed to one of the Hundred Schools of Thought. Xun Zi believed man's inborn tendencies need to be curbed through education and ritual, counter to Mencius's view that man is innately good...
, music was as important as the
li ("rites"; "etiquette") stressed in
ConfucianismConfucianism is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius . It is a complex system of moral, social, political, philosophical, and quasi-religious thought that has had tremendous influence on the culture and history of East Asia...
.
MoziMozi , original name Mo Di , was a philosopher who lived in China during the Hundred Schools of Thought period ，born in Tengzhou, Shandong Province. He founded the school of Mohism and argued strongly against Confucianism and Daoism...
, philosophically opposed to Confucianism, disagreed. He dismissed music as having only aesthetic uses, and thus useless and wasteful.
Early Chinese poetry
In addition to the
Book of Songs (
Shi JingShi Jing , translated variously as the Classic of Poetry, the Book of Songs or the Book of Odes, is the earliest existing collection of Chinese poems. It comprises 305 poems, some possibly written as early as 1000 BC...
), a second early and influential poetic anthology was the
Songs of ChuChu Ci , also known as Songs of the South or Songs of Chu, is an anthology of Chinese poems by Qu Yuan and Song Yu from the Warring States period and subsequent imitators of their poetic style...
, made up primarily of poems ascribed to the semilegendary
Qu YuanQu Yuan was a Chinese scholar and minister to the King from the southern Chu during the Warring States Period. His works are mostly found in an anthology of poetry known as Chu Ci...
(c.
340-Persian Empire:* Rhodes falls to Persian forces.* Pixodarus, the youngest of the three sons of King Hecatomnus of Caria, gains possession of the satrapy of Caria by expelling his sister Ada, the widow and successor of her brother Idrieus.-Greece:...
–
278 BC-Seleucid Empire:* After their defeats in Greece, the Gauls move into Asia Minor. The Seleucid king Antiochus wins a major battle over the Gauls leading to his being given the title of Soter...
) and his follower
Song YuSong Yu was a well-known Chinese poet in the State of Chu. He is commonly said to be a nephew of Qu Yuan, but no reliable biographical information is available...
(fourth century BC). The songs in this collection are more lyrical and romantic and represent a different tradition from the earlier
Classic of Poetry (Shi Jing).
Chu and Southern culture
A rich source of art in early China was the state of
ChuChǔ was a kingdom in what is now central and southern China during the Spring and Autumn period and Warring States Period . Its ruling house had the surname mi , and clan name xiong , and originally was of the noble rank of zi, roughly comparable to a viscount.It was originally known as Jing and...
, which developed in the Yangtze River valley. Excavations of Chu tombs have found painted wooden sculptures, jade disks, glass beads, musical instruments, and an assortment of
lacquerwareLacquerware are objects decoratively covered with lacquer. The lacquer is sometimes inlaid or carved. Lacquerware includes boxes, tableware and even coffins painted with lacquer in cultures mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere.-History:...
. Many of the lacquer objects are finely painted, red on black or black on red. A site in
ChangshaChangsha is the capital city of Hunan, a province of south-central China, located on the lower reaches of Xiang river, a branch of the Yangtze River. It covers an area of 11,819 sq. kilometers and has a population of 6,017,600 ....
,
Hunan' is a province of China, located to the south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting...
province, has revealed the world's oldest painting on
silkSilk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from cocoons made by the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...
discovered to date. It shows a woman accompanied by a
phoenixThe phoenix is a mythical sacred firebird which originated in the ancient mythologies mentioned in the Phoenician Mythology and the Egyptian and later the Greek Mythology.- Appearance and Abilities :...
and a
dragonDragons are legendary creatures, typically with serpentine or otherwise reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of worldwide cultures.The two most familiar interpretations of dragons are European dragons, derived from various European folk traditions, and the unrelated Oriental dragons, such as...
, two mythological animals to feature prominently in Chinese art.
An anthology of Chu poetry has also survived in the form of the
Chu Ci, which has been translated into English by David Hawkes. Many of the works in the text are associated with
ShamanismShamanism comprises a range of traditional beliefs and practices concerned with communication with the spirit world. It is a prominent term in anthropological research. A practitioner of shamanism is known as a shaman, , noun...
. There are also descriptions of fantastic landscapes, examples of China's first nature poetry. The longest poem, "Encountering Sorrow," is reputed to have been written by the tragic
Qu YuanQu Yuan was a Chinese scholar and minister to the King from the southern Chu during the Warring States Period. His works are mostly found in an anthology of poetry known as Chu Ci...
as a political allegory.
Qin sculpture
The
Terracotta ArmyThe Terracotta Army are the Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang the First Emperor of China. The terracotta figures, dating from 210 BC, were discovered in 1974 by some local farmers near Xi'an, Shaanxi province, China near the Mausouleum of the First Qin Emperor....
, inside the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, consists of more than 7,000 life-size tomb terra-cotta figures of warriors and horses buried with the self-proclaimed first
EmperorThe Emperor of China refers to any sovereign of Imperial China reigning since the founding of China, united by Fu Xi in 2852 BCE until the fall of Yuan Shikai's Empire of China in 1916. When referred to as the Son of Heaven , a title created no later than Shang Dynasty, the Emperor was recognized...
of
QinThe Qin Dynasty was the ruling Chinese dynasty between 221 and 206 BC. The Qin state was named because the people of is homeland were called the qin. The Qin's strength had been consolidated by Lord Shang Yang during the Warring States Period, in the 4th century BC...
(
Qin Shi HuangQin Shi Huang , personal name Ying Zheng , was king of the Chinese State of Qin from 246 BCE to 221 BCE during the Warring States Period. He became the first emperor of a unified China in 221 BCE. He ruled until his death in 210 BCE at the age of 50.Qin Shi Huang remains a controversial figure in...
) in
210-Roman Republic:* Following the death of his father, Publius Cornelius Scipio, and his uncle, Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus, at the hands of the Carthaginians, the young Publius Cornelius Scipio takes over command of the Roman troops in Spain...
–
209 BC-Roman Republic:* The Romans under Fabius Maximus Cunctator capture Tarentum , which the Carthaginian general Hannibal has held for three years....
.
The figures were painted before being placed into the vault. The original colors were visible when the pieces were first unearthed. However, exposure to air caused the pigments to fade, so today the unearthed figures appear terra-cotta in color.
The figures are in several poses including standing infantry and kneeling archers, as well as charioteers with horses. Each figure's head appears to be unique, showing a variety of facial features and expressions as well as hair styles.
Pottery
PorcelainChinese ceramic ware is an artform that has been developing since the dynastic periods. China is richly endowed with the raw materials needed for making ceramics. The first types of ceramics were made about 11,000 years ago, during the Palaeolithic era...
is made from a hard paste made of the
clayClay is a naturally occurring material composed primarily of fine-grained minerals, which show plasticity through a variable range of water content, and which can be hardened when dried and/or fired...
kaolin and a
feldsparFeldspars are a group of rock-forming tectosilicate minerals which make up as much as 60% of the Earth's crust....
called
petuntsePetuntse , also spelled petunse, is a historic term for a wide range of micaceous or feldspathic rocks. However, all will have been subject to geological decomposition processes that result in a material which, after processing, is suitable as an ingredient in some ceramic formulations...
, which cements the vessel and seals any pores.
China has become synonymous with high-quality porcelain. Most china comes from the city of
JingdezhenJingdezhen , is a prefecture-level city, previously a town, in Jiangxi Province, China, with a total population of 1,554,000 . It is known as the "Porcelain Capital" because it has been producing quality pottery for 1700 years...
in
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
's
Jiangxi' is a southern province of the People's Republic of China, spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River in the north into hillier areas in the south....
province.
Jingdezhen, under a variety of names, has been central to porcelain production in China since at least the early
Han DynastyThe Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the peasant rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...
.
The most noticeable difference between porcelain and the other
potteryPottery is the ceramic ware made by potters. Major types of pottery include earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain. The places where such wares are made are called potteries. Pottery is one of the oldest human technologies and art-forms, and remains a major industry today...
clays is that it "wets" very quickly (that is, added water has a noticeably greater effect on the plasticity for porcelain than other clays), and that it tends to continue to "move" longer than other clays, requiring experience in handling to attain optimum results.
During medieval times in Europe, porcelain was very expensive and in high demand for its beauty.
TLV mirrorA TLV mirror is a type of bronze mirror that was popular during the Han Dynasty in China. They are called TLV mirrors because symbols resembling the letters T, L, and V are engraved into them...
s also date from the Han dynasty.
Han poetry
During, the Han Dynasty, Chu lyrics evolved into the
fuFu may refer to:*Fu - relating to a person - Possessing superior skills in an art; relating to an artifact - representing an expression of high art...
(賦), a poem usually in rhymed verse except for introductory and concluding passages that are in prose, often in the form of questions and answers.
From the Han Dynasty onwards, a process similar to the origins of the
Shi JingShi Jing , translated variously as the Classic of Poetry, the Book of Songs or the Book of Odes, is the earliest existing collection of Chinese poems. It comprises 305 poems, some possibly written as early as 1000 BC...
produced the
yue fuYue fu are Chinese poems composed in a folk song style. The term literally means "music bureau", a reference to the government organisation originally charged with collecting or writing the lyrics.The lines are of uneven length, though five characters is the most common...
poems.
Han Paper art
The most notable invention of the era was
paperPaper is thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....
which spawned two new types of arts. Chinese Paper Cutting became a new concept. The idea of expressing symbols and Chinese characters already a part of calligraphy was now extended to Han paper cut outs. Another art form was the
Chinese paper foldingChinese Paper Folding or Zhezhi is the art of paper folding that originated in China. It is the predecessor of today's origami.-History:...
. While it has its roots in the Han dynasty, later renditions would transform the art into
origamiis the traditional Japanese art of paper folding. The goal of this art is to create a representation of an object using geometric folds and crease patterns preferably without gluing or cutting the paper, and using only one piece of paper....
, after buddhist monks bring paper to Japan.
Other Han art
The Han Dynasty was also known for
jade burial suitA Jade burial suit is a ceremonial suit made of pieces of jade in which royal members in Han Dynasty China were buried, as the Chinese believed that jade had magical properties and would prevent the decay of the body.-Structure of a jade burial suit:...
s. One of the earliest known depictions of a landscape in Chinese art comes from a pair of hollow-tile door panels from a Western Han Dynasty tomb near
ZhengzhouZhengzhou , formerly called Zhengxian is a prefecture-level city, and the capital of Henan province, People's Republic of China.-History:...
, dated 60 BCE. A scene of continuous depth recession is conveyed by the zigzag of lines representing roads and garden walls, giving the impression that one is looking down from the top of a hill. This artistic landscape scene was made by the repeated impression of standard stamps on the clay while it was still soft and not yet fired. However, the oldest known landscape art scene tradition in the classical sense of painting is a work by
Zhan ZiqianZhan Ziqian was a famous painter of ancient China from Yangxin county , Shandong province. His birth and death dates are unknown...
of the
Sui DynastyThe Sui Dynasty followed by the Tang Dynasty and preceded by the Southern and Northern Dynasties in China. It ended nearly four centuries of division between rival regimes....
(581–618).
Period of division (220–581)
Influence of Buddhism
BuddhismBuddhism, as traditionally conceived, is a path of salvation attained through insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha...
arrived in
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
around the
1st centuryThe 1st century was the century that lasted from 1 to 100 according the Julian calendar. It is considered part of the Classical era, epoch, or historical period...
AD (although there are some traditions about a monk visiting China during Asoka's reign), and through to the 8th century it became very active and creative in the development of Buddhist art, particularly in the area of statuary. Receiving this distant religion, China soon incorporated strong Chinese traits in its artistic expression.
In the fifth to sixth century the
Northern DynastiesThe Northern Dynasties included Northern Wei Dynasty, Eastern Wei Dynasty, Western Wei Dynasty, Northern Qi Dynasty, Northern Zhou Dynasty.-External links:*...
, rather removed from the original sources of inspiration, tended to develop rather symbolic and abstract modes of representation, with schematic lines. Their style is also said to be solemn and majestic. The lack of corporeality of this art, and its distance from the original Buddhist objective of expressing the pure ideal of enlightenment in an accessible, realistic manner, progressively led to a research towards more naturalism and realism, leading to the expression of Tang Buddhist art.
Poetry
Historical records indicate
Cao CaoCáo Cāo was a warlord and the penultimate Chancellor of the Eastern Han Dynasty who rose to great power during its final years in ancient China. As one of the central figures of the Three Kingdoms period, he laid the foundations for what was to become Cao Wei and was posthumously titled Emperor Wu...
was a brilliant ruler and poet. Cao Cao was also the father of the well-known poets
Cao PiCao Pi , formally Emperor Wen of Wei , courtesy name Zihuan , was born in Qiao County, Pei Commandery...
and
Cao ZhiCao Zhi was a Chinese poet during the late Eastern Han Dynasty and Three Kingdoms period. His poetry style, greatly revered during the Jin Dynasty and Southern and Northern Dynasties, came to be known as the jian'an style....
.
Cao Pi is known for writing the first
Chinese poemChinese poetry is the most highly regarded literary genre in China. Traditionally, it is divided into shi , ci and qu . There is also a kind of prose-poem called fu . During the modern period, there also has developed free verse in Western style...
using seven syllables per line (七言詩), the poem
燕歌行.
Cao Zhi demonstrated his spontaneous wit at an early age and was a front-running candidate for the throne; however, such ability was devoted to Chinese literature and poetry, which was encouraged by his father's subordinate officials. Later he surrounded himself with a group of poets and officials with literary interests, including some who continually showed off their smartness at the expense of Cao Cao and Cao Pi's subordinates and even Cao Cao himself.
Tao QianTao Qian , also known as Tao Yuanming , born in modern Jiujiang, Jiangxi, was one of the most influential pre-Tang Dynasty Chinese poets....
's poetry influenced the work of many subsequent poets. Approximately 120 of his poems survive, which depict an idyllic
pastoralPastoral, as an adjective, refers to the lifestyle of shepherds and pastoralists, moving livestock around larger areas of land according to seasons and availability of water and food. "Pastoral" also describes literature, art and music which depicts the life of shepherds, often in a highly...
life of farming and drinking.
Calligraphy
In ancient
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
,
paintingPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
and
calligraphyCalligraphy is a type of visual art. It is often called the art of writing . A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner"...
were the most highly appreciated
artArt is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings...
s in court circles and were produced almost exclusively by amateurs, aristocrats and scholar-officials who alone had the leisure to perfect the technique and sensibility necessary for great brushwork. Calligraphy was thought to be the highest and purest form of painting. The implements were the brush pen, made of animal hair, and black
inkAn ink is a liquid containing various pigments and/or dyes used for coloring a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing and/or writing with a pen, brush or quill...
s, made from pine soot and animal glue. Writing as well as painting was done on
silkSilk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from cocoons made by the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...
. But after the invention of paper in the
1st centuryThe 1st century was the century that lasted from 1 to 100 according the Julian calendar. It is considered part of the Classical era, epoch, or historical period...
, silk was gradually replaced by the new and cheaper material. Original writings by famous calligraphers have been greatly valued throughout China's history and are mounted on scrolls and hung on walls in the same way that paintings are.
Wang XizhiWang Xizhi was a Chinese calligrapher, traditionally referred to as the Sage of Calligraphy , lived in Jin Dynasty ....
was a famous Chinese calligrapher who lived in the
4th centuryAs a means of recording the passage of time, the 4th century was that century which lasted from 301 to 400.- Overview :...
AD. His most famous work is the
Lanting XuThe Lantingji Xu or Lanting Xu is the most famous work of calligraphy by Wang Xizhi, composed in year 353. Written in semi-cursive script, it is the most well-known and well-copied piece ever...
, the preface of a collection of poems written by a number of poets when gathering at Lan Ting near the town of Shaoxing in Zhejiang province and engaging in a game called "qu shui liu shang".
Wei ShuoWei Shuo , courtesy name Mouyi , sobriquet He'nan , commonly addressed just as Lady Wei , was a calligrapher of Eastern Jin, who established consequential rules about the regular script. Her famous disciple was Wang Xizhi.Born in modern Xia, Shanxi, Wei was the daughter of Wei Zhan or the daughter...
was a well-known calligrapher of Eastern Jin Dynasty who established consequential rules about the
Regular ScriptThe regular script or standard script, or in Chinese kaishu and Japanese kaisho, also commonly known as standard regular , is the newest of the Chinese calligraphy styles The regular script or standard script, or in Chinese kaishu and Japanese kaisho, also commonly known as standard regular...
. Her well-known works include
Famous Concubine Inscription (名姬帖 Ming Ji Tie) and
The Inscription of Wei-shi He'nan (衛氏和南帖 Wei-shi He'nan Tie).
Painting
Gu KaizhiGu Kaizhi , is a celebrated painter of ancient China. His style name was 'Changkang' . He was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu province and first painted at Nanjing in 364. In 366 he became an officer . Later he was promoted to royal officer . He was also a talented poet and calligrapher...
is a celebrated
painterPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
of ancient China born in
WuxiWuxi is an old city in Jiangsu province, People's Republic of China. Split into halves by Lake Taihu, Wuxi borders Changzhou to the west and Suzhou to the east...
. He wrote three books about painting theory:
On Painting (画论),
Introduction of Famous Paintings of Wei and Jin Dynasties (魏晋胜流画赞) and
Painting Yuntai Mountain (画云台山记). He wrote, "In figure paintings the clothes and the appearances were not very important. The eyes were the spirit and the decisive factor."
Three of Gu's paintings still survive today. They are "Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies", "Nymph of the Luo River" (洛神赋), and "Wise and Benevolent Women".
There are other examples of Jin Dynasty painting from tombs. This includes the
Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, painted on a brick wall of a tomb located near modern Nanjing and now found in the Shaanxi Provincial Museum. Each of the figures are labeled and shown either drinking, writing, or playing a musical instrument. Other tomb paintings also depict scenes of daily life, such as men plowing fields with teams of oxen.
The Sui and Tang dynasties (581–960)
Buddhist architecture and sculpture
Following a transition under the
Sui DynastySui can refer to:* Sui Dynasty of China* Sui , a transcription of two Chinese surnames* Sui , a city in Balochistan, Pakistan* Sui gas field, near Sui, Balochistan, Pakistan...
, Buddhist sculpture of the
TangThe Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
evolved towards a markedly lifelike expression. As a consequence of the Dynasty's openness to foreign influences, and renewed exchanges with Indian culture due to the numerous travels of Chinese Buddhist monks to India from the 4th to the 11th century, Tang dynasty Buddhist sculpture assumed a rather classical form, inspired by the Indian art of the Gupta period.
However, foreign influences came to be negatively perceived towards the end of the Tang dynasty. In the year
845-Events:* March 28—Paris is sacked by Viking raiders, probably under Ragnar Lodbrok, who collect a huge ransom in exchange for leaving.* The Vikings also sack Hamburg and Melun....
, the Tang emperor Wu-Tsung outlawed all "foreign" religions (including Christian
NestorianismNestorianism is the doctrine that the two individual natures of Christ, the human and the divine, are joined in conjunction rather than in hypostatic union. The doctrine is identified with Nestorius , Archbishop of Constantinople...
,
ZoroastrianismZoroastrianism is the religion and philosophy based on the teachings ascribed to the prophet Zoroaster , after whom the religion is named. The term Zoroastrianism is, in general usage, essentially synonymous with Mazdaism, i.e...
and
BuddhismBuddhism, as traditionally conceived, is a path of salvation attained through insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha...
) in order to support the indigenous
TaoismDaoism refers to a variety of related philosophical and religious traditions and concepts that have influenced East Asia for over two millennia and the West for over two centuries. The word 道, Tao , means "path" or "way", although in Chinese folk religion and philosophy it has taken on more...
. He confiscated Buddhist possessions and forced the faith to go underground, therefore affecting the ulterior development of the religion and its arts in China.
Most wooden Tang sculptures have not survived, though representations of the Tang international style can still be seen in
Narais the capital city of Nara Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. The city occupies the northern part of Nara Prefecture, directly bordering Kyoto Prefecture...
,
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. The longevity of stone sculpture has proved much greater. Some of the finest examples can be seen at
LongmenLongmen may refer to:*Longmen Grottoes, collection of Buddhist cave art in Luoyang, China.*Longmen, Zhejiang, town in Zhejiang, southern China.*Longmen, Fujian, town in Fujian, southern China.*Longmen Mountains, mountain range in Sichuan, China...
, near
LuoyangLuoyang is a prefecture-level city in western Henan province, People's Republic of China. It borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to the east, Pingdingshan to the southeast, Nanyang to the south, Sanmenxia to the west, Jiyuan to the north, and Jiaozuo to the northeast.Situated on the...
, Yungang near
DatongDatong is a city in the northern Shanxi Province in China, and is located a few hundred kilometres west by rail from Beijing with an elevation of 1090 meters. It has a population of approximately 3.11 million.- History :...
, and
Bingling TempleThe Bingling Temple is a series of grottoes filled with Buddhist sculpture carved into natural caves and caverns in a canyon along the Yellow River. It lies just north of where the Yellow River empties into the Liujiaxia Reservoir...
, in
Gansu' is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It lies between Quinghai, Inner Mongolia, and the Huangtu plateaus, and borders Mongolia to the north and Xinjiang to the west. The Yellow River passes the southern part of the province. It has a population of nearly 31...
.
One of the most famous Buddhist
Chinese pagodaChinese Pagodas are a traditional part of Chinese architecture, and is evolved from the stupa from the Indian subcontinent. In addition to religious use, since ancient times Chinese pagodas have been praised for the spectacular views which they offer, and many famous poems in Chinese history...
s is the
Giant Wild Goose PagodaGiant Wild Goose Pagoda or Big Wild Goose Pagoda , is a Buddhist pagoda located in southern Xi'an, Shaanxi province, China. It was built in 652 during the Tang Dynasty and originally had five stories, although the structure was rebuilt in 704 during the reign of Empress Wu Zetian and its exterior...
, built in 652 AD.
Golden age of Chinese poetry
Yue fuYue fu are Chinese poems composed in a folk song style. The term literally means "music bureau", a reference to the government organisation originally charged with collecting or writing the lyrics.The lines are of uneven length, though five characters is the most common...
are
Chinese poemsChinese poetry is the most highly regarded literary genre in China. Traditionally, it is divided into shi , ci and qu . There is also a kind of prose-poem called fu . During the modern period, there also has developed free verse in Western style...
composed in a folk song style. The term literally means "music bureau", a reference to the government organization originally charged with collecting or writing the
lyricsLyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...
.
The lines are of uneven length, though five
characterA Chinese character, also known as a Han character , is a logogram used in writing Chinese , Japanese , less frequently Korean , and formerly Vietnamese , and other languages...
s is the most common. Each poem follows one of a series of patterns defined by the song
titleA title is a prefix or suffix added to a person's name to signify either veneration, an official position or a professional or academic qualification. In some languages, titles may even be inserted between a first and last name...
. The term covers original folk songs,
courtThe court of a monarch, or at some periods an important nobleman, is a term for the extended household and all those who regularly attended on the ruler or central figure...
imitations and versions by known
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
s.
From the
2nd centuryThe 2nd century is the period from 101 to 200 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian/Common Era. It is considered part of the Classical era, epoch, or historical period...
AD, the
yue fu began to develop into
shiShi is the Chinese word for "poetry" or "poem". It can be used as an umbrella term to mean Chinese poetry in any form, including ci and qu, but it is most commonly used to refer to the classical form of poetry which reached its zenith in the Tang Dynasty...
—the form which was to dominate
Chinese poetryChinese poetry is the most highly regarded literary genre in China. Traditionally, it is divided into shi , ci and qu . There is also a kind of prose-poem called fu . During the modern period, there also has developed free verse in Western style...
until the modern era. The writers of these poems took the five-
characterA Chinese character, also known as a Han character , is a logogram used in writing Chinese , Japanese , less frequently Korean , and formerly Vietnamese , and other languages...
line of the
yue fu and used it to express more complex ideas. The
shi poem was generally an expression of the poet's own persona rather than the adopted characters of the
yue fu; many were romantic nature poems heavily influenced by
TaoismDaoism refers to a variety of related philosophical and religious traditions and concepts that have influenced East Asia for over two millennia and the West for over two centuries. The word 道, Tao , means "path" or "way", although in Chinese folk religion and philosophy it has taken on more...
.
The term
gushi ("old poems") can refer either to the first, mostly anonymous
shi poems, or more generally to the poems written in the same form by later poets.
Gushi in this latter sense are defined essentially by what they are not; that is, they are not
jintishi (regulated verse). The writer of
gushi was under no formal constraints other than line length and
rhymeA rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes.-Etymology:...
(in every second line).
Jintishi, or
regulated verseConstrained writing is a literary technique in which the writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain things or imposes a pattern.Constraints are very common in poetry, which often requires the writer to use a particular verse form....
, developed from the
5th centuryThe 5th century is the period from 401 to 500 in accordance with the Julian calendar in Anno Domini/Common Era.-Overview:This century is noted for being a time of repeated disaster and instability both internally and externally for the Western Roman Empire, which finally unravelled, and came to an...
onwards. By the Tang dynasty, a series of set tonal patterns had been developed, which were intended to ensure a balance between the four tones of classical Chinese in each
coupletA couplet is a pair of lines of verse. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic couplets....
: the level tone, and the three deflected tones (rising, falling and entering). The Tang dynasty was the high point of the
jintishi.
Notable poets from this era include
Bai JuyiBai Juyi was a Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty. His poems mostly concern his responsibilities as governor of several small provinces. He is also renowned in Japan, where his name is read Hakkyo'i.-Life:...
,
Du MuDu Mu was a leading Chinese poet of the late Tang Dynasty. His courtesy name was Muzhi , and sobriquet Fanchuan .He was born in Chang'an into an elite family whose fortunes were declining...
,
Han YuHan Yu , born in Nanyang, Henan, China, was a precursor of Neo-Confucianism as well as an essayist and poet, during the Tang dynasty. The Indiana Companion calls him "comparable in stature to Dante, Shakespeare or Goethe" for his influence on the Chinese literary tradition...
,
Jia DaoJia Dao , courtesy name Langxian , was a Chinese poet during the Tang Dynasty. He was born near modern Beijing; after a period as a Buddhist monk, he went to Chang'an. He became one of Han Yu's disciples, but failed the jinshi exam several times. He wrote both discursive gushi and lyric jintishi...
,
Li QiaoLi Jiao , courtesy name Jushan , formally the Duke of Zhao , was an official of the Chinese dynasty Tang Dynasty and Wu Zetian's Zhou Dynasty, serving as chancellor during the reigns of Wu Zetian, her sons Emperor Zhongzong and Emperor Ruizong, and her grandson Emperor Shang.- Background :It is not...
,
Liu ZongyuanLiu Zongyuan , courtesy name Zihou , was a Chinese writer who lived in Chang'an during the Tang Dynasty. Liu was born in present-day Yongji, Shanxi, along with Han Yu, he was a founder of the Classical Prose Movement...
,
Luo BinwangLuo Binwang , courtesy name Guanguang , was a Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty. His family was from modern Wuzhou, Zhejiang, but he was raised in Shandong...
,
Meng HaoranMeng Haoran was a Chinese poet during the Tang Dynasty. Unsuccessful in his official career, he mainly lived in and wrote about his birthplace....
,
Wang WeiWang Wei was a Tang Dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman. He was one of the most famous men of arts and letters of his time...
, and
Zhang JiulingZhang Jiuling , courtesy name Zishou , nickname Bowu , formally Count Wenxian of Shixing , was a prominent minister, noted poet and scholar of the Tang Dynasty, serving as chancellor during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong.- Background :Zhang Jiuling was born in 673, during the reign of Emperor Gaozong...
.
Li Bai and Du Fu
Li BaiLi Bai or Li Po was a Chinese poet. He was part of the group of Chinese scholars called the "Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup" in a poem by fellow poet Du Fu. Li Bai is often regarded, along with Du Fu, as one of the two greatest poets in China's literary history. Approximately 1,100 of his poems...
and
Du FuDu Fu was a prominent Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty.Along with Li Bai , he is frequently called the greatest of the Chinese poets. His greatest ambition was to serve his country as a successful civil servant, but he proved unable to make the necessary accommodations...
both lived during the Tang Dynasty. They are regarded by many as the greatest of the Chinese poets.
Over a thousand poems are attributed to Li Bai, but the authenticity of many of these is uncertain. He is best known for his
yue fuYue fu are Chinese poems composed in a folk song style. The term literally means "music bureau", a reference to the government organisation originally charged with collecting or writing the lyrics.The lines are of uneven length, though five characters is the most common...
poems, which are intense and often
fantasticFantastic is a literary term that describes a quality of other literary genres, and in some cases is used as a genre in and of itself, although in this case it is often conflated with the Supernatural. The term was originated in the structuralist theory of critic Tzvetan Todorov in his work The...
. He is often associated with
TaoismDaoism refers to a variety of related philosophical and religious traditions and concepts that have influenced East Asia for over two millennia and the West for over two centuries. The word 道, Tao , means "path" or "way", although in Chinese folk religion and philosophy it has taken on more...
: there is a strong element of this in his works, both in the sentiments they express and in their spontaneous tone. Nevertheless, his
gufeng ("ancient airs") often adopt the perspective of the Confucian moralist, and many of his occasional verses are fairly conventional.
Much like
MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as...
, many legends exist on how Li Bai effortlessly composed his poetry, even (or some say, especially) when drunk; his favorite form is the
juejuJueju is a style of jintishi, or "Modern shi poetry", that grew popular among Chinese poets in the fifth to sixth centuries in the Tang Dynasty...
(five- or seven-character quatrain), of which he composed some 160 pieces. Using striking, unconventional imagery, Li Bai is able to create exquisite pieces to utilize fully the elements of the language. His use of language is not as erudite as Du Fu's but equally effective, impressing through an extravagance of imagination and a direct connection of a free-spirited persona with the reader. Li Bai's interactions with nature, friendship, and his acute observations of life inform his best poems. Some of the rest, like
Changgan xing (translated by
Ezra PoundEzra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century. He is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry...
as
A River Merchant's Wife: A Letter), records the hardships or emotions of common people. Like the best Chinese poets, Li Bai often evades translation.
Since the
Song dynastyThe Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...
, critics have called Du Fu the "poet
historianAn historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all events in time...
". The most directly historical of his poems are those commenting on military tactics or the successes and failures of the government, or the poems of advice which he wrote to the emperor.
One of the Du Fu's earliest surviving works,
The Song of the Wagons (c.
750-Asia:* Gopala is proclaimed as the first ruler of the Pala Empire.* After the defeat of his army in the Battle of the Zab the last Umayyad Caliph, Marwan II, is overthrown and killed. Al-Saffah is proclaimed the first Abbasid Caliph...
), gives voice to the sufferings of a
conscriptConscription is a general term for involuntary labor demanded by an established authority. It is most often used in the specific sense of requiring citizens to serve in the armed forces...
soldier in the imperial army, even before the beginning of the rebellion; this poem brings out the tension between the need of acceptance and fulfillment of one's
dutiesDuty is a term that conveys a sense of moral commitment to someone or something. The moral commitment is the sort that results in action, and it is not a matter of passive feeling or mere recognition...
, and a clear-sighted consciousness of the suffering which this can involve.
Du Fu's work is notable above all for its range. He mastered all the forms of
Chinese poetryChinese poetry is the most highly regarded literary genre in China. Traditionally, it is divided into shi , ci and qu . There is also a kind of prose-poem called fu . During the modern period, there also has developed free verse in Western style...
: Chou says that in every form he "either made outstanding advances or contributed outstanding examples" (p. 56). Furthermore, his poems use a wide range of
registerIn linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, an English speaker may adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal In linguistics, a...
s, from the direct and colloquial to the
allusiveAn allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, a place, event, literary work, myth, or work of art, either directly or by implication. M.H. Abrams defined allusion as "a brief reference, explicit or indirect, to a person, place or event, or to another literary...
and self-consciously literary. The tenor of his work changed as he developed his style and adapted to his surroundings ("
chameleonThe family Chamaeleonidae are a distinctive and highly specialized clade of lizards. They are distinguished by their parrot-like zygodactylous feet, their separately mobile and stereoscopic eyes, their very long, highly modified, and rapidly extrudable tongues, their swaying gait, and the...
like" according to Watson): his earliest works are in a relatively derivative, courtly style, but he came into his own in the years of the rebellion. Owen comments on the "grim simplicity" of the Qinzhou poems, which mirrors the
desertA desert is a landscape or region that receives almost no precipitation. Deserts are defined as areas with an average annual precipitation of less than per year, or as areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration than falls as precipitation. In the Köppen climate classification system,...
landscape (p. 425); the works from his Chengdu period are "light, often finely observed" (p. 427); while the poems from the late Kuizhou period have a "density and power of vision" (p. 433).
Late Tang poetry
Li ShangyinLi Shangyin , courtesy name Yishan , was a Chinese poet of the late Tang Dynasty, born in Henei . Along with Li He, he was much admired and "rediscovered" in the 20th century by the young Chinese writers for the imagist quality of his poems...
was a Chinese poet of the late Tang dynasty. He was a typical Late Tang poet: his works are sensuous, dense and allusive. The latter quality makes adequate translation extremely difficult. Many of his poems have political, romantic or philosophical implications, but it is often unclear which of these should be read into each work.
Li YuLi Houzhu , also known as Houzhu of Southern Tang , personal name Li Yu , né Li Congjia , courtesy name Chongguang , posthumously known as Prince of Wu , was a Chinese poet and the last ruler of the Southern Tang Kingdom from 961 to 975 during the Five...
was a Chinese poet and the last ruler of the Southern Tang Kingdom. His best-known poems were composed during the years after the Song formally ended his reign in
975-Asia:* Emperor Taizu of Song China conquers Hunan Province.* The Southern Tang Kingdom is conquered by the Song Dynasty.* Al-Aziz becomes Fatimid Caliph.-Deaths:* Alp Tigin, Turkic general* July 8 – King Edgar of England* al-Muizz, Fatimid Caliph...
and brought him back as a captive to the Song capital, Bianjing (now
KaifengKaifeng , formerly known as Bianliang , Bianjing , Daliang , or simply Liang , is a prefecture-level city in eastern Henan province, People's Republic of China...
). Li's works from this period dwell on his regret for the lost kingdom and the pleasures it had brought him. He was finally poisoned by the Song emperor in
978-Europe:* Badìa Fiorentina, an abbey in Florence, Italy, is founded by Willa, Margravine of Tuscany.* Ethelred II becomes king of England at age 10, following the assassination of his half-brother King Edward the Martyr....
.
Li Yu developed the
ci by broadening its scope from
loveLove is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection and attachment. The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from generic pleasure to intense interpersonal attraction...
to
historyHistory is the study of the human past, with special attention to the written record. Scholars who write about history are called historians. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence of events, and it often attempts to investigate objectively the patterns...
and
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned...
, particularly in his later works. He also introduced the two-
stanzaIn poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...
form, and made great use of contrasts between longer lines of nine
characterA Chinese character, also known as a Han character , is a logogram used in writing Chinese , Japanese , less frequently Korean , and formerly Vietnamese , and other languages...
s and shorter ones of three and five.
Painting
Beginning in the
Tang dynastyThe Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
(
618- Asia :* The Sui Dynasty ends and the Tang Dynasty begins in China. The first emperor of the Tang Dynasty is Tang Gao Zu.* A civil war begins in Medina.- Deaths :* Pope Adeodatus I* Fíngen mac Áedo Duib, king of Munster in Ireland...
–
907-Asia:* Oleg leads the Kievan Rus' in a campaign against Constantinople .* Abaoji is named Great Khan of the Khitan.* Yelü Abaoji establishes the Liao Dynasty.* The Tang Dynasty is ended....
), the primary subject matter of painting was the landscape, known as shanshui (mountain water) painting. In these landscapes, usually monochromatic and sparse, the purpose was not to reproduce exactly the appearance of nature but rather to grasp an emotion or atmosphere so as to catch the "rhythm" of nature.
Painting in the traditional style involved essentially the same techniques as calligraphy and is done with a brush dipped in black or colored ink; oils were not used. As with calligraphy, the most popular materials on which paintings are made are paper and silk. The finished work is then mounted on scrolls, which can be hung or rolled up. Traditional painting also is done in albums and on walls,
lacquerIn a general sense, lacquer is a clear or coloured varnish that dries by solvent evaporation and often a curing process as well that produces a hard, durable finish, in any sheen level from ultra matte to high gloss and that can be further polished as required.The term lacquer originates from the...
work, and other media.
Dong YuanDong Yuan was a Chinese painter.He was born in Zhongling . Dong Yuan was active in the Southern Tang Kingdom of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period...
was an active painter in the Southern Tang Kingdom. He was known for both figure and landscape paintings, and exemplified the elegant style which would become the standard for brush painting in China over the next 900 years. As with many artists in China, his profession was as an official where he studied the existing styles of Li Sixun and Wang Wei. However, he added to the number of techniques, including more sophisticated perspective, use of pointillism and crosshatching to build up vivid effect.
Zhan ZiqianZhan Ziqian was a famous painter of ancient China from Yangxin county , Shandong province. His birth and death dates are unknown...
was a painter during the Sui Dynasty. His only painting in existence is
Strolling About In Spring arranged mountains perspectively. Because the first pure scenery paintings of Europe emerged after the 17th century,
Strolling About In Spring may well be the first scenery painting of the world..
The Song and Yuan dynasties (960–1368)
Song poetry
CiCi is a kind of lyric Chinese poetry. For speakers of English, the word "ci" is pronounced somewhat like "tsuh". It is also known as Changduanju and Shiyu .Typically the number of characters in each line and the arrangement of tones were determined by one of around 800 set...
is a kind of
lyricLyric poetry usually refers nowadays to a short poem that expresses personal feelings. It need not be set to music. Aristotle, in Poetics 1447a, merely mentions lyric poetry along with drama, epic poetry, dancing, painting and other forms of mimesis...
Chinese poetryChinese poetry is the most highly regarded literary genre in China. Traditionally, it is divided into shi , ci and qu . There is also a kind of prose-poem called fu . During the modern period, there also has developed free verse in Western style...
. Beginning in the
Liang DynastyLiang Dynasty , also known as Southern Liang Dynasty , was the third of Southern dynasties in China, followed by the Chen Dynasty...
, the
ci followed the tradition of the
Shi JingShi Jing , translated variously as the Classic of Poetry, the Book of Songs or the Book of Odes, is the earliest existing collection of Chinese poems. It comprises 305 poems, some possibly written as early as 1000 BC...
and the
yue fuYue fu are Chinese poems composed in a folk song style. The term literally means "music bureau", a reference to the government organisation originally charged with collecting or writing the lyrics.The lines are of uneven length, though five characters is the most common...
: they were lyrics which developed from anonymous popular songs (some of
Central AsiaAsia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent.Various definitions of its...
n origin) into a sophisticated literary genre. The form was further developed in the
Tang DynastyThe Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
, and was most popular in the
Song DynastyThe Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...
.
Ci most often expressed feelings of desire, often in an adopted
personaA persona, in the word everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. This is an Italian word that derives from the Latin for "mask" or "character", derived from the Etruscan word "phersu", with the same meaning...
, but the greatest exponents of the form (such as
Li HouzhuLi Houzhu , also known as Houzhu of Southern Tang , personal name Li Yu , né Li Congjia , courtesy name Chongguang , posthumously known as Prince of Wu , was a Chinese poet and the last ruler of the Southern Tang Kingdom from 961 to 975 during the Five...
and
Su ShiSu Shi was a writer, poet, artist, calligrapher, pharmacologist, and statesman of the Song Dynasty, and one of the major poets of the Song era. His courtesy name was Zizhan and his pseudonym was Dongpo Jushi , and he is often referred to as Su Dongpo...
) used it to address a wide range of topics.
Well-known poets of the Song Dynasty include
Zeng GongZeng Gong , courtesy name Zigu , was a Chinese scholar and historian of the Song Dynasty in China. He was one of the supporters of the New Classical Prose Movement and is regarded as founder of one of the Eight Great Schools of Thought of the Tang and Song dynasties .Zeng Gong was born in Jianchang...
,
Li QingzhaoLi Qingzhao Li Qingzhao (Traditional Chinese: 李清照; Simplified Chinese: 李清照, pinyin: Lǐ Qīngzhào; Wade-Giles: Li Ch'ing-chao,pseudonym Yi'an Jushi (易安居士 “Yi'an Householder”),) Li Qingzhao (Traditional Chinese: 李清照; Simplified Chinese: 李清照, pinyin: Lǐ Qīngzhào; Wade-Giles: Li Ch'ing-chao,pseudonym...
,
Lu YouLu You , was a Chinese poet of the southern Song dynasty.-Early career:Lu You came from a family in which there were some government officials. At that time the southern Song dynasty was frequently invaded by the Jin Dynasty . When he was one, Kaifeng , the capital of Northern Song dynasty had...
,
Mei YaochenMei Yaochen was a poet of the Song dynasty. He was one of the pioneers of the "new subjective" style of poetry which characterised Song poetry....
,
Ouyang XiuOuyang Xiu , was a Chinese statesman, historian, essayist and poet of the Song Dynasty. He is also known by his courtesy name of Yongshu, and was also self nicknamed The Old Drunkard 醉翁, or Householder of the One of Six 六一居士 in his old age...
, Su Dongpo,
Wang AnshiWang Anshi was a Chinese economist, statesman, chancellor and poet of the Song Dynasty who attempted controversial, major socioeconomic reforms...
, and
Xin QijiXin Qiji was a Chinese poet, military leader, and statesman during the Southern Song dynasty.-Life:At the time of his life, northern China was occupied by the Jurchens, a nomadic people from what is now north-east China then regarded as barbarians. Only southern China was ruled by the Han Chinese...
.
Song painting
During the
Song dynastyThe Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...
(
960-Europe:* Edgar the Peaceable is crowned King of England. Dunstan becomes Archbishop of Canterbury and Edgar's chief adviser. He reforms monasteries and enforces the rule of Saint Benedict: Poverty, Chastity and Obedience for monks. He attempts to impose celibacy on the secular clergy without...
–1279), landscapes of more subtle expression appeared; immeasurable distances were conveyed through the use of blurred outlines, mountain contours disappearing into the mist, and impressionistic treatment of natural phenomena. Emphasis was placed on the spiritual qualities of the painting and on the ability of the artist to reveal the inner harmony of man and nature, as perceived according to Taoist and Buddhist concepts.
Liang KaiLiáng Kǎi was a Chinese artist, also known as Madman Liang. He was born in Shandong and worked in Lin An...
was a Chinese painter who lived in the 13th century (
Song DynastyThe Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...
). He called himself "Madman Liang," and he spent his life drinking and painting. Eventually, he retired and became a
ZenZen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism, translated from the Chinese word Chán. This word is in turn derived from the Sanskrit dhyāna, which means "meditation" ....
monk. Liang is credited with inventing the Zen school of Chinese art.
Wen TongWen Tong was a Northern Song painter born in Sichuan famous for his ink bamboo paintings. He was one of the paragons of "scholar's painting" , which idealised spontaneity and painting without financial reward....
was a painter who lived in the 11th century. He was famous for ink paintings of bamboo. He could hold two brushes in one hand and paint two different distanced bamboos simultaneously. He did not need to see the bamboo while he painted them because he had seen a lot of them.
Zhang ZeduanZhang Zeduan , alias Zheng Dao, was a famous Chinese painter during the twelfth century, during the transitional period from the Northern Song to the Southern Song Dynasty, and was instrumental in the early history of the Chinese art style known as shan shui.-Biography:He was a native of Dongwu...
was a notable painter for his horizontal
Along the River During Qingming Festival landscape and cityscape painting. It has been quoted as "China's
Mona LisaMona Lisa is a 16th century portrait painted in oil on a poplar panel by Leonardo da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance. The work is owned by the Government of France and is on the wall in the Louvre in Paris, France with the title Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo...
" and has had many well-known remakes throughout Chinese history. Other famous paintings include
The Night Revels of Han XizaiGu Hongzhong was a Chinese painter during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period of Chinese history....
, originally painted by the
Southern TangSouthern Tang was one of the Ten Kingdoms in south-central China created following the Tang Dynasty from 937-975. Southern Tang replaced the Wu Kingdom when Li Bian deposed the emperor Yang Pu.The capital was located in Jinling , located in present-day Nanjing in Jiangsu Province...
artist
Gu HongzhongGu Hongzhong was a Chinese painter during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period of Chinese history....
in the 10th century, while the well-known version of his painting is a 12th century remake of the Song Dynasty. This is a large horizontal handscroll of a domestic scene showing men of the
gentry classIn imperial China, gentry were the class of landowners who were retired mandarins or their descendants. Their power and influence eclipsed that of the Chinese nobility during the Sui and Tang dynasties when the civil service exam replaced the nine-rank system which favored nobles.Under the...
being entertained by musicians and dancers while enjoying food, beverage, and wash basins provided by maidservants. In 2000, the modern artist Wang Qingsong created a parody of this painting with a long, horizontal photograph of people in modern clothing making similar facial expressions, poses, and hand gestures as the original painting.
Yuan drama
Chinese operaChinese opera is a popular form of drama and musical theatre in China with roots going back as far as the third century CE. There are numerous regional branches of Chinese opera, of which the Beijing opera is one of the most notable.-Dynastic periods:Canjun opera of the Three Kingdoms period was...
is a popular form of
dramaDrama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective...
in
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
. In general, it dates back to the
Tang dynastyThe Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
with Emperor Xuanzong (
712-Europe:* Ansprand succeeds Aripert as king of the Lombards.* From North Africa, Musa bin Nusair reinforces last year's Muslim invasion of Iberia.* June 12—Liutprand succeeds his father Ansprand as king of the Lombards.-Asia:...
–
755-Europe:* Pepin the Short sends his armies into Italy to aid the pope against the Lombards.* Abd-ar-Rahman I lands in Spain, where the next year he will establish a new Umayyad dynasty.* Offa deposes king Bernred of Mercia and takes the kingdom....
), who founded the "
Pear GardenThe Pear Garden or Liyuan , the first known royal acting and musical academy in China. It was founded during the Tang Dynasty by Emperor Xuanzong . It may be the first institutional Academy of Music in the world....
" (梨园), the first known opera troupe in China. The troupe mostly performed for the emperors' personal pleasure. To this day operatic professionals are still referred to as "Disciples of the Pear Garden" (梨园子弟). In the
Yuan dynastyThe Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was both the continuation of the Mongol Empire and the Mongol founded historical state in Mongolia and China, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. Although the dynasty was established by Kublai Khan, he had his grandfather Genghis Khan placed on the...
(1279–1368), forms like the
Zaju (杂剧, variety plays), which acts based on rhyming schemes plus the innovation of having specialized roles like "
DanDan is the general name for female roles in Chinese opera, often referring to leading roles. There are a few different kinds of dan in Chinese opera. The commonly seen ones are 'Guimen Dan', 'Hua Dan', 'Daoma Dan', 'Wu Dan', 'Lao Dan' and 'Cai Dan'...
" (旦, female), "Sheng" (生, male) and "
ChouChou may refer to:* Zhou* Yūichi Nagashima, a seiyū who goes by the stage name "Chō".* Choux pastry* CHOU , a multicultural radio station licensed to Montreal, Quebec, CanadaChou is also a Chinese surname....
" (丑, Clown), were introduced into the opera.
Yuan dynasty opera continues today as
Cantonese operaCantonese opera is one of the major categories in Chinese opera, originating in southern China's Cantonese culture. It is popular in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Malaysia. Like all versions of Chinese opera, it is a traditional Chinese art form, involving music, singing,...
. It is universally accepted that Cantonese opera was imported from the northern part of China and slowly migrated to the southern province of Guangdong in late
13th centuryAs a means of recording the passage of time, the 13th century was that century which lasted from 1201 through 1300 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian/Common Era...
, during the late Southern Song Dynasty. In the
12th centuryAs a means of recording the passage of time, the 12th century is the period from 1101 to 1200 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian/Common Era. In the history of European culture, this period is considered part of the High Middle Ages and is sometimes called the Age of the...
, there was a theatrical form called
Narm hei (南戲), or the
Nanxi (Southern opera), which was performed in public theaters of
Hangzhou' is a sub-provincial city located in the Yangtze River Delta in the People's Republic of China, and the capital of Zhejiang province. Located southwest of Shanghai, as of 2004 the entire Hangzhou Region or Prefecture-level city had a registered population of 6.4 million people...
, then capital of the Southern Song Dynasty. With the invasion of the Mongol army, Emperor Gong (Gong Di (恭帝 Gōngdì)), Zhao Xian (趙顯 Zhào Xiǎn) fled with hundreds of thousands of Song people into the province of Guangdong in 1276. Among these people were some
Narm hei artists from the north. Thus
narm hei was brought into Guangdong by these artists and developed into the earliest kind of Cantonese opera.
Many well-known operas performed today, such as
The Purple Hairpin and
Rejuvenation of the Red Plum Flower, originated in the
Yuan DynastyThe Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was both the continuation of the Mongol Empire and the Mongol founded historical state in Mongolia and China, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. Although the dynasty was established by Kublai Khan, he had his grandfather Genghis Khan placed on the...
, with the lyrics and scripts in Cantonese. Until the
20th centuryThe 20th century of the Common Era began on January 1, 1901 and ended on December 31, 2000, according to the Gregorian calendar.The British Empire, the Russian Empire, the German Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved in the first half of the century, with all but the...
all the female roles were performed by males.
Yuan painting
Wang MengWang Meng Chinese painter during the Yuan dynasty. He was born in Huzhou , now known as Wuxing , Zhejiang.Zi: Shūmíng 叔明
Hao: Xiāngguāng Jūshì 香光居士...
was a
ChineseChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
painterPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
during the
Yuan dynastyThe Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was both the continuation of the Mongol Empire and the Mongol founded historical state in Mongolia and China, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. Although the dynasty was established by Kublai Khan, he had his grandfather Genghis Khan placed on the...
. One of his well-known works is the
Forest Grotto.
Zhao MengfuZhao Mengfu courtesy name Ziang , pseudonyms Songxue , Oubo , and Shuijing-gong Dao-ren , was a prince and descendant of the Song Dynasty, and a Chinese scholar, painter and calligrapher during the Yuan Dynasty.He was married to Guan Daosheng, who was also an...
was a
ChineseChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
scholar,
painterPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
and calligrapher during the
Yuan DynastyThe Yuan Dynasty , or Great Yuan Empire was both the continuation of the Mongol Empire and the Mongol founded historical state in Mongolia and China, lasting officially from 1271 to 1368. Although the dynasty was established by Kublai Khan, he had his grandfather Genghis Khan placed on the...
. His rejection of the refined, gentle brushwork of his era in favor of the cruder style of the eighth century is considered to have brought about a revolution that created the modern Chinese landscape painting. There was also the vivid and detailed works of art by
Qian XuanQian Xuan courtesy name Shun Ju , pseudonyms Yu Tan , Xi Lan Weng , and Zha Chuan Weng was a Song loyalist painter from Hu Zhou Qian Xuan courtesy name Shun Ju (舜举), pseudonyms Yu Tan (玉潭, "Jade Pool"), Xi Lan Weng (习嬾翁), and Zha Chuan Weng (霅川翁) was a Song loyalist painter from Hu...
(1235-1305), who had served the Song court, and out of patriotism refused to serve the Mongols, instead turning to painting. He was famous for reviving and reproducing a more Tang Dynasty style of painting.
Late imperial China (1368-1911)
Ming Poetry
Gao QiGao Qi ,style name Ji Di 季迪, pseudonym Qinqiuzhi 青丘子 is generally acknowledged as the greatest poet of the Ming dynasty in China. He was born and raised in the shore of Wusong River, north of Puli Town near Suzhou...
is acknowledged by many as the greatest poet of the
Ming DynastyThe Ming Dynasty , or Empire of the Great Ming , was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history," was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
. His poems are departure of those of earlier dynasties and
formed a new style of poetry in the Ming dynasty
Ming prose
- Zhang Dai
Zhang Dai was a Ming Dynasty Chinese writer. He was a gentleman essayist who was a biographer of his own privileged aritocratic family, a historian of the Ming Dynasty, and a biographer of notable virtuous figures...
is acknowledged as the greatest essayist of the Ming dynasty.
- Wen Zhenheng
Wen Zhenheng was a Ming dynasty scholar, painter, landscape garden designer, and great grandson of Wen Zhengming, a famous Ming dynasty painter....
, the great grandson of Wen ZhengmingWen Zhengming was a leading Ming Dynasty painter, calligrapher, and scholar.Born in present-day Suzhou, he claimed to be a descendant of the Song Dynasty prime minister and patriot Wen Tianxiang. Wen’s family was originally from Hengyang, Hunan, where his family had established itself shortly...
, wrote a classic on garden architecture and interior design, Zhang Wu Zhi (On Superfluous Things).
Ming painting
Under the Ming dynasty, Chinese culture bloomed. Narrative painting, with a wider color range and a much busier composition than the Song paintings, was immensely popular during the time. As the techniques of color printing were perfected, illustrated manuals on the art of painting began to be published.
Jieziyuan HuazhuanJieziyuan Huazhuan , sometimes known as Jieziyuan Huapu , is a manual of Chinese painting complied during the early-Qing Dynasty...
(Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden), a five-volume work first published in 1679, has been in use as a technical textbook for artists and students ever since.
Matteo RicciMatteo Ricci, SJ was an Italian Jesuit priest, and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China Mission, as it existed in the 17th-18th centuries.-Early life:...
,
Wen ZhengmingWen Zhengming was a leading Ming Dynasty painter, calligrapher, and scholar.Born in present-day Suzhou, he claimed to be a descendant of the Song Dynasty prime minister and patriot Wen Tianxiang. Wen’s family was originally from Hengyang, Hunan, where his family had established itself shortly...
,
Xu WeiXu Wei was a Ming Chinese painter, poet and dramatist famed for his artistic expressiveness. Revolutionary for its time, his painting style influenced and inspired countless subsequent painters, such as Zhu Da, the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, and the modern masters Wu Changshuo and Qi Baishi,...
Qing drama
The best-known form of
Chinese operaChinese opera is a popular form of drama and musical theatre in China with roots going back as far as the third century CE. There are numerous regional branches of Chinese opera, of which the Beijing opera is one of the most notable.-Dynastic periods:Canjun opera of the Three Kingdoms period was...
is
Beijing operaBeijing opera or Peking opera is a form of traditional Chinese theatre which combines music, vocal performance, mime, dance and acrobatics. It arose in the late 18th century and became fully developed and recognized by the mid-19th century. The form was extremely popular in the Qing Dynasty court...
, which assumed its present form in the mid-
19th centuryThe 19th century was a period in history marked by the collapse of the Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Ottoman, Holy Roman and Mughal empires...
and was extremely popular in the
Qing dynastyThe Qing Dynasty , also known as the Manchu Dynasty, was the last ruling dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912...
(1644–1911). In Beijing Opera, traditional Chinese string and percussion instruments provide a strong rhythmic accompaniment to the acting. The acting is based on allusion: gestures, footwork, and other body movements express such actions as riding a horse, rowing a boat, or opening a door.
Although it is called Beijing opera, its origins are not in Beijing but in the Chinese provinces of
AnhuiAnhui is a province of the People's Republic of China. Located in eastern China across the basins of the Yangtze River and the Huaihe River, it borders Jiangsu to the east, Zhejiang to the southeast, Jiangxi to the south, Hubei to the southwest, Henan to the northwest, and Shandong for a tiny...
and
Hubei' is a central province of the People's Republic of China. Its abbreviation is 鄂 , an ancient name associated with the eastern part of the province since the Qin Dynasty. The name Hubei means "north of the lake", referring to Hubei's position north of Lake Dongting...
. Beijing opera got its two main
melodiesFour Great Characteristic Melodies in Chinese opera are Bangziqiang, Huangpiqiang, Kunqiang and Gaoqiang.-Bangziqiang:Qinqiang, Yuju, Jinju, Hebei Bangzi, Sixianqiang in Dianju, Tanxi in Chuanju, etc.-Huangpiqiang:...
,
Xipi and
Erhuang, from Anhui and Hubei operas. Much dialogue is also carried out in an archaic dialect originating partially from those regions. It also absorbed music and arias from other operas and musical arts such as the historic
QinqiangQinqiang or Luantan is the representative folk Chinese opera of the northwest Province of Shaanxi, China, where it was called Qin thousands of years ago...
. It is regarded that Beijing Opera was born when the Four Great Anhui Troupes came to Beijing in 1790. Beijing opera was originally staged for the court and came into the public later. In 1828, some famous Hubei troupes came to Beijing. They often jointly performed in the stage with Anhui troupes. The combination gradually formed Beijing opera's main melodies.
Qing poetry
Yuan MeiYuan Mei was a well-known poet, scholar and artist of the Qing Dynasty.Yuan Mei was born in Qiantang , Zhejiang province, to a cultured family who had never before attained high office...
was a well-known poet who lived during the
Qing DynastyThe Qing Dynasty , also known as the Manchu Dynasty, was the last ruling dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912...
. In the decades before his death, Yuan Mei produced a large body of poetry, essays and paintings. His works reflected his interest in Chan Buddhism and the supernatural, at the expense of Daoism and institutional
BuddhismBuddhism, as traditionally conceived, is a path of salvation attained through insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha...
—both of which he rejected. Yuan is most famous for his poetry, which has been described as "unusually clear and elegant language". His views on poetry as expressed in the
Suiyuan shihua (隨園詩話) stressed the importance of personal feeling and technical perfection.
Early Qing painting
Bada Shanren,
Jiang TingxiJiang Tingxi , courtesy name Yangsun , was a Chinese painter, and an editor of the encyclopedia Gujin Tushu Jicheng .Jiang was born in Changshu, Jiangsu...
,
ShitaoYuanji Shi Tao, born Zhu Ruoji was a Chinese artist.Born in Quanzhou County in Guangxi province, Shi Tao was a member of the Ming royal house. He narrowly avoided catastrophe in 1644 when the Ming dynasty fell to invading Manchurians and civil rebellion...
Shanghai School
The Shanghai School (海上画派
Haishang Huapai or 海派
Haipai) is a very important Chinese school of traditional arts during the
Qing DynastyThe Qing Dynasty , also known as the Manchu Dynasty, was the last ruling dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912...
and the whole of the
20th centuryThe 20th century of the Common Era began on January 1, 1901 and ended on December 31, 2000, according to the Gregorian calendar.The British Empire, the Russian Empire, the German Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved in the first half of the century, with all but the...
. Under efforts of masters from this school, traditional Chinese art reached another climax and continued to the present in forms of "
Chinese paintingChinese painting is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. The earliest paintings were not representational but ornamental; they consisted of patterns or designs rather than pictures. Stone Age pottery was painted with spirals, zigzags, dots, or animals...
" (中国画), or
guohua (国画) for short. The Shanghai School challenged and broke the literati tradition of Chinese art, while also paying technical homage to the ancient masters and improving on existing traditional techniques. Members of this school were themselves educated literati who had come to question their very status and the purpose of art, and had anticipated the impending modernization of Chinese society. In an era of rapid social change, works from the Shanghai School were widely innovative and diverse, and often contained thoughtful yet subtle social commentary. The most well-known figures from this school are
Ren XiongRen Xiong Chinese painter from Xiaoshan, active during during the late Qing dynasty. Ren belonged to the "Shanghai school" in Chinese painting and is known for his bold and innovative style.
...
(任熊),
Ren YiRèn Yí , also known as Ren Bonian, was a painter and son of a rice merchant who supplemented his income by doing portraits. He was born in Zhejiang, but after the death of his father in 1855 he lived in Shanghai. This move placed him in a more urban world that was exposed to Western thinking...
(任伯年, also known as Ren Bonian),
Zhao ZhiqianZhao Zhiqian was a renowned Chinese calligrapher, seal carver and painter in the late Qing Dynasty, "the leading scholar-artist of his day." Zhao's seal carving had profound influence on the later masters, such as Wu Changshuo and Qi Baishi.-Biography:Zhao was born in 1829...
(赵之谦),
Wu ChangshuoWú Chāngshuò is the name for which Wu Junqing is best known. He was born in Zhejiang from a scholarly family and for a time toward the end of the Qing he served as an official in Liaoning. He settled in Suzhou in his twenties.Initially, he devoted himself to poetry and calligraphy with a strong...
(吴昌硕),
Sha MenghaiSha Menghai , born Shi Wenruo , was a great master of calligraphy in China. He is widely regarded as the top one of Chinese modern art of calligraphy. He also was a master of Chinese seal carving , a theoretician of traditional Chinese art, and a master of Shanghai School art. Sha Wenhan is his...
(沙孟海, calligraphist),
Pan TianshouPan Tianshou was a notable painter and art educator of modern China.Pan was born in Guanzhuang, Ninghai County, Zhejiang Province, and graduated from Zhejiang First Normal School . He followed Wu Changshuo to study Chinese traditional painting...
(潘天寿),
Fu BaoshiCredited with revolutionizing Chinese ink painting, Fu Baoshi is considered one of the most important Chinese artists of the last century. From an apprentice in a painting shop to an art-history student in Japan, and later an diligent artist who traveled all over China to capture the country's...
(傅抱石). Other well-known painters are:
Wang ZhenWang Zhen was a celebrated modern Chinese artist of the Shanghai School. His dates are sometimes given as 1877-1930, but are corrected as in the Encyclopedia of Chinese Artists on p. 131. Wang Zhen was also variously known as Bailong shanren and as a devote Buddhist under other names...
, XuGu, Zhang Xiong, Hu Yuan, and
Yang BorunYang Borun , born Yang Peifu , was a well-known Chinese poet, calligrapher, and painter of the Shanghai school.Yang was born to a scholarly family in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, he arrived in Shanghai in the early 1860s. Yang sold his paintings, mostly landscapes, to support the family...
.
Qing fiction
Many great works of art and literature originated during the period, and the Qianlong emperor in particular undertook huge projects to preserve important cultural texts. The novel form became widely read and perhaps China's most famous novel,
Dream of the Red Chamber, was written in the mid-eighteenth century.
Cao XueqinCao Xueqin is the author of Dream of the Red Chamber, believed by many to be the greatest novel written in the Chinese language...
is the author of the famous Chinese work
Dream of the Red ChamberDream of the Red Chamber , originally The Story of the Stone , is a masterpiece of Chinese vernacular literature and one of China's Four Great Classical Novels...
. Extant handwritten copies of this work—some 80 chapters—had been in circulation in
BeijingBeijing is a metropolis in northern China and the capital of the People's Republic of China...
shortly after Cao's death, before
Gao ÊGao E may refer to:*Gao E , Chinese writer in Qing Dynasty, author of part of Dream of the Red Chamber*Gao E , Chinese sport shooter...
, who claimed to have access to the former's working papers, published a complete 120-chapter version in 1792.
Pu SonglingPu Songling was a Chinese author who wrote during the Qing Dynasty.-Biography:Pu was from a poor landlord-merchant family from Zichuan . Possibly he was of Mongol ancestry...
was a famous writer of Liaozhai Zhiyi 《聊齋志異》during the
Qing dynastyThe Qing Dynasty , also known as the Manchu Dynasty, was the last ruling dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912...
. He opened a
tea houseA tea house or tearoom is a venue centered on drinking tea. Its function varies widely depending on the culture, and some cultures have a variety of distinct tea-centered houses or parlors that all qualify under the English language term "tea house" or "tea room." In Central Asia this term could...
and invited his guests to tell stories, and then he would compile the tales into collections such as
Strange Stories from a Chinese StudioStrange Stories from a Chinese Studio or Liaozhai Zhiyi is a collection of nearly five hundred mostly supernatural tales written by Pu Songling in Classical Chinese during the early Qing Dynasty.The compilation was first circulated in manuscript form before it was published posthumously...
.
New China art (1912-1949)
Transformation
With the end of the last dynasty in China, the
New Culture MovementThe New Culture Movement of the mid 1910s and 1920s sprang from the disillusionment with traditional Chinese culture following the failure of the Chinese Republic founded in 1912 to address China’s problems. Scholars like Chen Duxiu, Cai Yuanpei, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, and Hu Shi, had classical...
began and defied all facets of traditionalism. A new breed of 20th century cultural philosophers like Xiao Youmei,
Cai YuanpeiCài Yuánpéi was a Chinese educator and the chancellor of Peking University, known for his critical evaluation of the Chinese culture that led to the influential May Fourth Movement...
,
Feng ZikaiFeng Zikai was a Chinese painter and cartoonist - he graduated from the famous Hangzhou High School .-Background:...
and Wang Guangqi wanted Chinese culture to modernize and reflect the New China. The
Chinese Civil WarThe Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China . The war began in April 1927, amidst the Northern Expedition,. The war represented an ideological split between the Western-supported Nationalist KMT and the Soviet-supported Communist CPC...
would cause a drastic split between the
KuomintangThe Kuomintang of China , translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party, is a political party of the Republic of China , commonly known as Taiwan since the 1970s. It is the founding and the ruling political party of the ROC...
and the
Communist Party of ChinaThe Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and the ruling political party of the People's Republic of China and the world's largest political party...
. Following was the
Second Sino-Japanese WarThe Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany and the Soviet Union...
in particular the
Battle of ShanghaiThe Battle of Shanghai was the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between the National Revolutionary Army, Republic of China and the Imperial Japanese Army, Empire of Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War...
would leave the major cultural art center borderline to a humanitarian crisis. Still, depending on one's view it can be argued that some of the greatest modern art achievements were accomplished during this period.
The Big Three
It is during this time that Shanghai became the birthplace and entertainment hub of the three new major art forms,
Chinese cinemaThe Chinese-language cinema has three distinct historical threads: Cinema of Hong Kong, Cinema of China, and Cinema of Taiwan. After 1949 and until recent times, the cinema of mainland China operated under restrictions imposed by the Communist Party of China. Some films with political overtones...
,
Chinese animationChinese animation or Manhua Anime, in narrow sense, refers to animations that are made in China. In broad sense, it may refers to animations that are made in any Chinese speaking countries such as People's Republic of China , Republic of China , Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.The style of...
and Chinese popular music. These entertainment were heavily inspired by western technology. For the first time, local citizens adopted and molded western culture to fit into Chinese culture in a positive way without any imperial court intervention.
Comics
The most popular form of comics
LianhuanhuaLianhuanhua is a palm-size picture book of sequential drawings found in China in the early 20th century. It is considered the predecessor of manhua.-Terminology:...
which circulated as palm sized books in Shanghai,
GuangzhouGuangzhou , in English formerly known as Canton and also known as Kwangchow, is a sub-provincial city and the capital of Guangdong Province in the southern part of the People's Republic of China.It is a port on the Pearl River,...
,
Wuhan' is the capital of Hubei province, People's Republic of China, and is the most populous city in central China. It lies at the east of Jianghan Plain, and the intersection of the middle reaches of the Yangtze and Han River...
and
Northern ChinaNorthern China or North China may mean:* North China* North China Plain* Northern and southern China - rough geographic regions in China* North China * Northeast China * Northeast China Plain* Northwest China...
. It became one of the most affordable form of entertainment art. The famous
SanmaoSanmao is a manhua character created by Zhang Leping in 1935. He is one of the world's longest running cartoon characters and remains one of the most famous and beloved fictional characters in China today.The name Sanmao means "three hairs" in Chinese...
character would also be born at this time.
Painting
Western style oil painting was introduced to
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
by painters such as
Xiao Tao ShengXiao Tao Sheng is a Chinese painter who specializes in portraying Chinese culture through his Western-style oil paintings, called East in West paintings. He is a class I painter and professor, and currently the vice director of the Sichuan Provincial Art Museum...
.
Selective art decline
The Communist Party of China would have full control of the government with
Mao ZedongMao Zedong was a Chinese revolutionary, political theorist and Communist leader. He led the People's Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976...
heading the
People's Republic of ChinaThe People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the most populous in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately one-fifth of the world's population...
. If the art was presented in a manner that favored the government, the artists were heavily promoted. Vice versa, any clash with communist party beliefs would force the artists to become farmers via "re-education" processes under the regime. The peak era of governmental control came under the
Cultural RevolutionThe Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a period of widespread social and political upheaval in the People’s Republic of China between 1966 and 1976, resulting in nation-wide chaos and economic disarray.It was launched by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China, on May 16,...
. The most notable event was the
Destruction of the Four OldsThe Four Olds or the Four Old Things were Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas. One of the stated goals of the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China was to bring an end to the Four Olds...
, which had major consequences against pottery, paintings, literary art, architecture and countless others.
The loss of the Big Three
Chinese popular music musicians like
Zhou XuanZhou Xuan was a popular Chinese singer and film actress. By the 1940s, she had become one of the Seven great singing stars. She is probably the most well-known of the seven, as she had a concurrent movie career until 1953.-Biography:...
and
Li JinhuiLi Jinhui was a composer and songwriter born in Xiangtan, Hunan, China. He is the "Father of Chinese popular music". He is most notable for creating a new musical form with shidaiqu after the fall of the Qing Dynasty-- moving away from established musical forms. Li was an extremely controversial...
were immediately endangered under the new regime as it labeled the genre
yellow musicYellow Music or was a label used to describe early generations of Chinese popular music in Shanghai, China during the 1920s to 1940s as a reference to pornography....
(
pornographyPornography or porn is the depiction of explicit sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual excitement.Over the past few decades, an immense industry for the production and consumption of pornography has grown, with the increasing use of the VCR, the DVD, and the Internet, as well as the...
). On the contrary,
revolutionary musicGuoyue is a modernized form of Chinese traditional music written or adapted for some form of grand presentation, usually through a large orchestra of Chinese instruments. It was created in mainland China beginning in the early 20th century and is frequently broadcast on radio and television in the...
was promoted and brought to new heights like never before. The
filmThe Chinese-language cinema has three distinct historical threads: Cinema of Hong Kong, Cinema of China, and Cinema of Taiwan. After 1949 and until recent times, the cinema of mainland China operated under restrictions imposed by the Communist Party of China. Some films with political overtones...
and
animationChinese animation or Manhua Anime, in narrow sense, refers to animations that are made in China. In broad sense, it may refers to animations that are made in any Chinese speaking countries such as People's Republic of China , Republic of China , Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.The style of...
industry would make their last run until the Cultural revolution, which would hinder any progress with serious restrictions and unreasonable
censorshipCensorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor.-Rationale:...
. A large number of Shanghai citizens, including artists , immigrated to
Hong KongHong Kong , officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, is a highly autonomous territory of the People's Republic of China, facing Guangdong to the north and the South China Sea to the east, west and south...
. It would fuel the birth of modern Chinese art in the British colony that has until now, been largely dominated by British entertainment. The pop music industry would rebound in
TaiwanTaiwan , also known as Formosa , is the largest island of the Republic of China in East Asia. Taiwan is located east of the Taiwan Strait, off the southeastern coast of mainland China...
and Hong Kong. The animation race would be lost to
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
Painting
Artists were encouraged to employ
socialist realismSocialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style of realistic art which has as its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
. Some
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
socialist realism was imported without modification, and painters were assigned subjects and expected to mass-produce paintings. This regimen was considerably relaxed in 1953, and after the
Hundred Flowers CampaignThe Hundred Flowers Campaign, also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement, refers to a brief interlude in the People's Republic of China from 1956 to 1957 during which the Chinese Communist Party encouraged a variety of views and solutions to national policy issues, launched under the slogan:...
of 1956–57, traditional Chinese painting experienced a significant revival. Along with these developments in professional art circles, there was a proliferation of peasant art depicting everyday life in the rural areas on wall murals and in open-air painting exhibitions. Notable modern Chinese painters include
Huang BinhongHuáng Bīnhóng was an art historian and literati painter born in either Anhui or Zhejiang . He was the grandson of artist Huang Fengliu. He would later be associated with Shanghai and finally Hangzhou. He is considered one of the last innovators in the literati style of painting and is noted for...
,
Qi BaishiQi Baishi was a Chinese painter.Born to a peasant from Xiangtan, Hunan, Qi became a carpenter at 14, and learned to paint by himself. After he turned 40, he travelled, visiting famous scenic spots in China. After 1917 he settled in Beijing...
,
Xu BeihongXu Beihong was born in Yixing, China. He was primarily known for his shuimohua of horses and birds and one of the first Chinese artists to articulate the need for artistic expressions that reflected a new modern China at the beginning of the 20th century...
, Chang Ta Chien,
Pan TianshouPan Tianshou was a notable painter and art educator of modern China.Pan was born in Guanzhuang, Ninghai County, Zhejiang Province, and graduated from Zhejiang First Normal School . He followed Wu Changshuo to study Chinese traditional painting...
, Wu Changshi,
Fu BaoshiCredited with revolutionizing Chinese ink painting, Fu Baoshi is considered one of the most important Chinese artists of the last century. From an apprentice in a painting shop to an art-history student in Japan, and later an diligent artist who traveled all over China to capture the country's...
,
Wang KangleWang Kangle was a Chinese painter born in Fenghua, Zhejiang Province.-Biography:Wang KangLe showed his brilliance in art at a young age and was recruited by the Shanghai Commercial Press at age 18. Wang Kangle worked as a designer in the Images Department of the Shanghai Commericial Press from...
and
Zhang ChongrenZhang Chongren Zhang Chongren Zhang Chongren ( (1907 – 8 October 1998), was a Chinese artist and sculptor best remembered in Europe as the friend of Hergé, the Belgian comics writer and artist and creator of Tintin. The two met when Zhang was an art student in Brussels.-Early life:...
.
Poetry
Modern Chinese poems (新詩 vers libre) usually do not follow any prescribed pattern.
Bei DaoBei Dao is the pseudonym of Chinese poet Zhao Zhenkai . He was born in Beijing, his pseudonym was chosen because he came from the north and because of his preference for solitude...
is the most notable representative of the
Misty PoetsThe Misty Poets are a group of Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution. They are so named because their work has been officially denounced as "obscure" or "misty" poetry...
, a group of Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the
Cultural RevolutionThe Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a period of widespread social and political upheaval in the People’s Republic of China between 1966 and 1976, resulting in nation-wide chaos and economic disarray.It was launched by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China, on May 16,...
. The work of the Misty Poets and Bei Dao in particular were an inspiration to pro-democracy movements in
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
. Most notable was his poem
"Huida" ("The Answer"), which was written during the
1976 Tiananmen demonstrationsThe Tiananmen Incident took place on April 5, 1976 at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. The incident occurred on the traditional day of mourning, the Qingming Festival, and was triggered by the death of Premier Zhou Enlai earlier that year...
in which he participated. The poem was taken up as a defiant anthem of the pro-appeared on posters during the
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, referred to in most of the Western world as the Tiananmen Square massacre and in the People's Republic of China as the June Fourth Incident , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the PRC beginning on 14 April...
.
Xu ZhimoXu Zhimo was an early 20th century Chinese poet. He was given the name of Zhangxu and the courtesy name of Yousen . He later changed his courtesy name to Zhimo ....
is a
romanticRomanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution...
poet who loved the poetry of the English Romantics like
KeatsJohn Keats was an English poet, who became one of the key figures of the Romantic movement. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Keats was one of the second generation Romantic poets...
and
ShelleyPercy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded among the finest lyric poets in the English language...
. He was one of the first Chinese writers to successfully naturalize Western romantic forms into modern Chinese poetry.
Contemporary Art
Contemporary Chinese art (中国当代艺术, Zhongguo Dangdai Yishu) often referred to as Chinese avant-garde art, continued to develop since the 1980s as an outgrowth of modern art developments post-Cultural Revolution. Contemporary Chinese art fully incorporates painting, film, video, photography, and performance. Until recently, art exhibitions deemed controversial have been routinely shut down by police, and performance artists in particular faced the threat of arrest in the early 1990s. More recently there has been greater tolerance by the
Chinese governmentPower within the government of the People's Republic of China is divided among three bodies: the Communist Party of China, the state, and the People's Liberation Army. This article is concerned with the formal structure of the state, its departments and their responsibilities...
, though many internationally acclaimed artists are still restricted from media exposure at home or have exhibitions ordered closed. Leading contemporary visual artists include
Ai WeiweiAi Weiwei , born in 1957 in Beijing, is a leading Chinese artist, curator, architectural designer, cultural and social commentator.-Life and work:...
, Cai Guoqiang, Cai Xin,
Fang LijunFang Lijun is an artist based in Beijing.He has shown work internationally in exhibitions including The Next Ones at Alexander Ochs , Beijing, New Work, New Acquisitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Alors, la Chine? at the Pompidou Centre in Paris...
,
Huang YanHuang Yan may refer to:* Huang Yan * Huang Yan , politician of PR China, former governor of Anhui Province...
,
Huang Yong PingHuang Yong Ping is a contemporary French visual artist of Chinese origin. Huang's work combines many media and cultural influence, but is particularly strongly influence by the intellectual abstraction of Dada and by Chinese numerology traditions...
,
Kong Bai JiKong Bai Ji was a contemporary Chinese artist born in Shanghai, in the People's Republic of China, in 1932 and began painting at age five. His first one-man show took place in 1964 at the Shanghai Arts Hall. In 1976, Kong was appointed head of the Department of Fine Arts at the Shanghai Academy....
,
Lu ShengzhongLu Shengzhong is a Chinese artist who specializes in the ancient Chinese art of paper cutting.-Early Life:Lu was born in the Dayuji village in Shangdong, China, in 1952. Shangdong has long been known for its paper cutting art culture. Lu’s father was a farmer where his mother was a house-wife,...
,
Ma LiumingMa Liuming is a contemporary Chinese painter and pioneer of performance art. He is known most of all for his exploration of the power and poetry of public nudity in China, where such behavior was strictly forbidden...
, Ma Qingyun, Song Dong,
Li WeiLi Wei may refer to:*Li Wei *Li Wei , president of Beihang University*Li Wei , hockey player and member of the Chinese 2006 Men's Hockey World Cup team...
,
Christine WangCristine Wang is a Taiwan-born American architect, new media curator, art critic, and founder of the Wang Museum of Technology.Originally from Taipei, Taiwan, she moved to New York City in 1971, first to Queens, then Great Neck, Long Island...
,
Wang GuangyiWang Guangyi , is a Chinese artist known for being the leader of the New Art Movement circles that erupted out of China after 1989 and for his Great Criticism series of paintings, using the images of propaganda from the Cultural Revolution and contemporary brand names from western advertising...
, Wang Qingsong, Wenda Gu,
Xu BingXu Bing is a Chinese-born artist, resident in the United States since 1990.-Biography:Born in Chongqing in 1955, Xu grew up in Beijing. In 1975, near the end of the Cultural Revolution, he was relocated to the countryside for two years. In 1977, he enrolled at the China Central Academy of Fine...
,
Yang ZhichaoYang Zhichao, Born in 1963 in Gansu province Northern Manchuria, is a Chinese revolutionary and extreme performance artist living and working in Shanghai....
,
Zhan WangZhan Wang is a noted contemporary Chinese sculptor.Born in 1962 in Shandong Province, China, Wang entered the Central Academy of the Arts as a sculpture major in 1983....
,
Zhang DaliZhang Dali is an artist based in Beijing.Zhang trained at the Beijing Central Academy of Art & Design. After studying painting in China, he went to Italy, where he discovered graffiti art...
,
Zhang XiaogangZhang Xiaogang is a contemporary Chinese symbolist and surrealist painter. He has made a Bloodline series of paintings, which are often monochromatic, stylized portraits of Chinese people, usually with large, dark-pupiled eyes, posed in a stiff manner deliberately reminiscent of family...
,
Zhang HuanZhang Huan is a Chinese artist based in New York. He is primarily a performance artist but he also occasionally makes photographs and sculpture.-Life and work:...
, Zhu Yu, Yan Lei,
Ma KeluMa Kelu is an influential Chinese painter. He first rose to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a member of the No Name Group, a circle of largely self-taught, underground artists based in Beijing, who worked in direct contravention of the Chinese government's official sponsorship of...
,
Ding FangDing Fang is a well-known Chinese painter. He graduated from the Nanjing Fine Arts Academy in 1986, where he later taught for several years. After working both as a professional artist and on the editorial staff of Fine Arts in China Magazine, he moved in 2000 to the Institute of Fine Arts at...
,
Shang YangShang Yang was an important statesman of Qin in the Warring States Period of ancient China. With the support of Duke Xiao of Qin, Shang enacted numerous reforms in the state of Qin that helped to change Qin from a peripheral state into a militarily powerful and strongly centralized...
, and
Zhang YueZhang Yue is a Chinese pair skater. She competes with Wang Lei. Together, they are two-time bronze medalists on the Junior Grand Prix.-Career:...
.
Visual art
Beginning in the late 1980s there was unprecedented exposure for younger Chinese visual artists in the west to some degree through the agency of curators based outside the country such as
Hou HanruHou Hanru is a Chinese art curator and critic who lives in United States since 2006.He received degrees from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and moved from China in 1990. He lived 16 years in France before movening to America in 1990...
. Local curators within the country such as Gao Minglu and critics such as
Li XiantingLi Xianting is an independent art critic and curator of contemporary Chinese art.In the late seventies and eighties, Li Xianting was involved in advocating and introducing the avant-garde art form in China. He organized the “Stars exhibition” in 1979, and coined the terms “Cynical Realism” and...
(栗宪庭) reinforced this promotion of particular brands of painting that had recently emerged, while also spreading the idea of art as a strong social force within Chinese culture. There was some controversy as critics identified these imprecise representations of contemporary Chinese art as having been constructed out of personal preferences, a kind of programmatized artist-curator relationship that only further alienated the majority of the avant-garde from Chinese officialdom and western art market patronage.
Revival (2000s - Present)
The new visual art market
One of the area that has revived art concentration and also commercialized the industry is the 798 Art District in
DashanziDashanzi is a 1 square kilometer area in the Chaoyang district of Beijing, northeast of the city center. It lies along the Airport Expressway between the 4th and 5th Ring Roads, south of the Dashanzi Qiao flyover and opposite Wangjing.Most of the area is made up of an industrial park...
of
BeijingBeijing is a metropolis in northern China and the capital of the People's Republic of China...
. The artist
Zhang XiaogangZhang Xiaogang is a contemporary Chinese symbolist and surrealist painter. He has made a Bloodline series of paintings, which are often monochromatic, stylized portraits of Chinese people, usually with large, dark-pupiled eyes, posed in a stiff manner deliberately reminiscent of family...
sold a 1993 painting for
USD $The United States dollar is the unit of currency of the United States. The U.S. dollar is normally abbreviated as the dollar sign, $, or as USD or US$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies and from others that use the $ symbol. It is divided into 100 cents .The U.S...
2.3 million in 2006, which included blank faced Chinese families from the Cultural Revolution era. Some of the biggest names such as
Stanley HoStanley Ho, OBE, GBS, GLM , also known as Ho Hung-sun, Stanley Ho Hung-sun , is an entrepreneur in Hong Kong and Macau. Ho is sometimes nicknamed "The King of Gambling", reflecting the government-granted monopoly he held of the Macau gambling industry for 40 years.Ho is the wealthiest person in...
, the owner of the
Macau CasinosGambling in Macau has been legal since the 1850s when the Portuguese government legalized the activity in the colony. Since then, Macau has become known worldwide as the "Monte Carlo of the Orient", and gambling has become a significant part of the city's economy...
as well as
Stephen WynnSteven Alan Wynn is an American casino resort/real-estate developer who has been credited with spearheading the dramatic resurgence and expansion of the Las Vegas Strip in the 1990s...
, casino developer would capitalize on the art trends. Items such as Ming Dynasty vase and exotic pieces from emperors were auctioned off.
Other arts produced in China or Hong Kong were sold in places such as
Christie'sChristie's is a leading art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
including a Chinese porcelain piece with the mark of Emperor Qianlong sold for
HKD $The Hong Kong dollar is the currency of Hong Kong. It is the 9th most traded currency in the world. In English, it is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or alternatively HK$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies. The dollar is subdivided into 100 cents.-Etymology:In...
$151.3 million. A 1964 painting
"All the Mountains Blanketed in Red" was sold for HKD $35 million. Auctions were also held at
Sotheby'sSotheby's is the world's third oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674 and the second oldest is Uppsala Auktionskammare founded in 1731, both Swedish...
where Xu Beihong's 1939 masterpiece
"Put Down Your WhipPut Down Your Whip is a 1939 oil painting by Chinese Realism painter Xu Beihong. Completed during Xu's stay in Singapore, the painting was exhibited numerous times before its disappearance from public view in 1954...
" sold for HKD $72 million. The industry is not limited to fine arts, as many other types of contemporary pieces were also sold. In 2000 a number of Chinese artists were included in
Documentadocumenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which now takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
and the
Venice BiennaleThe Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it, as is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
of 2003. China now has its own major contemporary art showcase with the Venice Biennale.
Fuck Off"Fuck Off" was a notorious art exhibition which ran alongside the Third Shanghai Biennale , which itself was the city's first attempt at a truly international survey of contemporary art...
was a notorious art exhibition which ran alongside the Shanghai Biennial Festival in 2000 and was curated by independent curator
Feng BoyiFeng Boyi is an eminent independent art curator and critic in China. He has been assistant editor of the China Artists' Association newsletter Artist's Communication since 1988...
and the artist Ai Weiwei.
See also
- History of China
Chinese civilization originated in various city-states along the Yellow River valley in the Neolithic era. The written history of China begins with the Shang Dynasty . Turtle shells with ancient Chinese writing from the Shang Dynasty have been carbon dated to as early as 1500 BCE...
- Timeline of Chinese history
The following is a timeline of the history of China. Between the changing of the dynasties, most dates overlap as ruling periods do not transfer immediately...
- Timeline of Chinese music
This is a timeline that show the development of Chinese music by genre and region. It covers the original region of China including past and present geographic territories of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.-1900s:Hong Kong:...
- History of Chinese Animations
- Along the River During Qingming Festival
- 798 Art Zone
Further reading
- Barnhart, Richard M., et al. Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art: 2002. ISBN 0-300-09447-7.
- Chi, Lillian, et al. A Dictionary of Chinese Ceramics. Sun Tree Publishing: 2003. ISBN 981-04-6023-6.
- Clunas, Craig. Art in China. Oxford University Press: 1997. ISBN 0-19-284207-2.
- Gowers, David, et al. Chinese Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing. Art Media Resources: 2002. ISBN 1-58886-033-7.
- Ebrey, Patricia, et al. Taoism and the Arts of China. University of California Press: 2000. ISBN 0-520-22784-0.
- Harper, Prudence Oliver. China: Dawn Of A Golden Age (200-750 AD). Yale University Press: 2004. ISBN 0-300-10487-1.
- Mascarelli, Gloria, and Robert Mascarelli. The Ceramics of China: 5000 BC to 1900 AD. Schiffer Publishing: 2003. ISBN 0-7643-1843-8.
- Sturman, Peter Charles. Mi Fu: Style and the Art of Calligraphy in Northern Song China. Yale University Press: 2004. ISBN 0-300-10487-1.
- Sullivan, Michael. The Arts of China. Fourth edition. University of California Press: 2000. ISBN 0-520-21877-9.
- Tregear, Mary. Chinese Art. Thames & Hudson: 1997. ISBN 0-500-20299-0.
- Watson, William. The Arts of China to AD 900. Yale University Press: 1995. ISBN 0-300-05989-2.
- S. Diglio, Urban Development and Historic Heritage Protection in Shanghai, in Fabio Maniscalco ed., "Web Journal on Cultural Patrimony", 1, 2006
External links