Page 269 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

Cat. 95, detail

cates the pervasiveness of Zhou forms and fashions, although its surface decoration points to
an emerging Chu style; thereafter, Chu culture assumed a distinctive and individual identity.
Chu art, characterized by lush interlaced openwork decoration (particularly on the ap-
pendages or flanges of objects) often incorporated themes associated with shamanism or spirit
worship, evidenced in bronzes such as the cranelike figure with deer antlers (cat. 100) and a
lacquered wood guardian animal that incorporates a crown of real antlers (cat. 101). Although
chimerical combinations of animals or entirely imaginary creatures were characteristic ele-

ments of Shang art as well, Chu representations disclose an impassioned spiritual flamboyance;
the Shang creatures, by contrast, suggest a more somber, religious introspectiveness.
Ensuring a comprehensive representation of Chu culture in this exhibition to some extent
takes place at the expense of other contemporaneous cultures whose artifacts offer added tes-
timony to the glory of the Eastern Zhou period. The burial artifacts from the tomb of the King
of Zhongshan in northern China shed some light, however, on the depth and the range of the
era's cultural efflorescence. The Zhongshan kingdom was much less powerful than Chu, but it
did produce works that rival those of Chu artisans and constitute an artistically coherent mar-

268 CH U AN D OTHE R C U L T U R E S