Page 34 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

designs, and many centuries later jade working
became and remained a purely decorative art.
Bronze casting, which begins during the Xia and
Shang dynasties and flourishes into the Han,
follows a similar sequence, in which great early
invention and ingenuity in support of meaningful
iconography are gradually superseded by technical
mediocrity and decorative repetition. The use of
ceramic piece-molds, which permit shape and
surface decoration to be created simultaneously, is
the distinguishing feature of Chinese bronze
technology, and had reached a stage of enormous
complexity and brilliant virtuosity by the Anyang
phase of the Shang dynasty. The vessels cast in these
piece-molds testify to the early Chinese interest in
and aptitude for representing a world of imaginary
and transmogrified creatures, demons, and
grotesques. Many of the early Zhou dynasty bronze
vessels bear inscriptions that constitute important
historical documents, and by the end of the Zhou
these same forms were embellished with the
precious metals and gemstones that enhanced their
new function as visual markers of social and
economic status.
Lacquer as a protective and decorative coating is in
origin Chinese and is known to have been used
very early on, although the first extensive remains
date from the Warring States era of the late Zhou
dynasty. Painted and incised lacquer designs of that
period relate stylistically to contemporaneous
textile and bronze designs. In later centuries
lacquer-working techniques became more
complex; forms and designs were molded using a
variety of techniques, then carved and/or inlaid
with various precious materials. These manifold
techniques as well as cultivation of the lac tree itself imbued with great energy and movement and
spread to Korea, Japan, and Okinawa, and those
cultures continue to benefit from this Chinese
innovation.
Silk manufacture too was an early Chinese
invention, one that had an even more complex
development and greater impact on the larger
world, spreading to the West during Hellenistic and
early Christian times. Paper and printing, appearing
in this exhibition in the form of early paintings and
block-printed books, are even more famous
examples of Chinese inventions that were
instrumental in shaping Asian and European
culture.
Sculptures is represented in the exhibition in clay,
metal, and stone. The first of these mediums
comprises mainly tomb figurines, which manifest
simultaneous concern with this life and with the
afterlife. Proper burials not only served the afterlife
needs of the deceased but testified to the moral
virtues, social responsibility, and pecuniary
INTRODUCTION
substance of their living relations. Upper-class
tombs were abundantly furnished with realistic
effigies of all the familiar objects, animals, and
humans that constituted the material world
—perhaps idealized of the living. These lively and
closely observed tomb figurines, created to
accompany and serve the dead, represent the broad
and complex world of the living and are material
evidence of society over a significant period ol
time. The burial furniture and figurines manifest
artistic creativity, but at the same time their vast
numbers attest to virtual mass production, with
great technical skill and high standards of quality.
The alert and natural figures of animals and humans
provide us with a visual image of their world far
more vivid than the descriptions by historians of
the day.
The coming of Buddhism to China in the mid-first
century CE and its enthusiastic acceptance in the
succeeding centuries brought with it a great figural
style of image making as it had developed in India
and had been transformed as it moved eastward.
The Chinese adapted it rapidly and creatively in all
three mediums, especially in the north; works
produced in this development are remarkably
varied in nature, with strong provincial styles being
created during the fifth and sixth centuries in
Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shandong, Yunnan, and Sichuan.
By the beginning of the seventh century, in the Sui
and early Tang dynasty, a national Chinese style was
emerging. Ultimately this became a truly
international style, prevalent throughout East Asia.
In general, the Chinese intellectual and cultural
elite placed little aesthetic value on the sculptor's
art, especially that in stone. But the protean artisan
image-makers have left a large body of work that
begins in the early Six Dynasties with images
develops by the Tang dynasty into figures ot
worldly and splendid elegance. The sensuous and
rounded volumes of Tang sculptures correspond to
the fashions of female court beauties as revealed in
the early scroll paintings, seen in this exhibition in
photographic reproductions of contemporaneous
wall murals. This is the first exhibition from China
to feature stone Buddhist sculptures in significant
numbers.
Among Chinese contributions to world culture, it
is perhaps porcelain that was most devoutly
admired and fervently sought after in the West. The
course of development ot Chinese ceramics, from
the early high-fired stonewares through various
types of later white- and green-glazed wares to the
pinnacle represented by porcelain, is well
represented in this exhibition. The selection was
based on the quality ot individual pieces as well as
on features that would reveal the intrieuine