Page 27 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

vases, often with loop-handles set low on the body. Though the
walls are thin, the forms are robust, their generous contours beau-
tifully enhanced by the decoration in black pigment which was
clearly executed with a crude form of brush. Some of the designs
are geometric, consisting of parallel bands or lozenges containing
concentric squares, crosses, or diamonds. The lower half of the
body is always left undecorated; it may have been set in the sandy
ground to prevent it from overturning. Many vessels are adorned
with sweeping wavclike bands that gather into a kind of whirl-
pool; others make use of the stylised figures of men, frogs, fishes,
and birds. Shards found at Ma-chia-yao in Kansu (c. 2500 B.C.) re-
veal a quite sophisticated brush technique, in one case depicting
plants each of whose leaves ends in a sharp point with a flick of the
brush—the same technique that was to be used by the Sung artist,
three thousand years later, in painting bamboo. Naturalistic mo-
tifs, however, are rare, and the majority are decorated with geo-
metric or stylised patterns whose significance is still a mystery.
Until recently it was thought that the painted pottery Yang-
shao culture was more or less directly superseded by a totally dif-
ferent culture centered on Shantung, and represented by the bur-
nished black pottery of Lung-shan. But under the impact of a
succession ofnew discoveries, this rather simple picture has given
way to a more complex and interesting one. First of all, the beau-
tiful painted pottery from Ma-chia-yao and Pan-shan in Kansu
(sec Fig. 7, c. 2400 B.C.) is now known from carbon- 14 analysis to
be as much as two thousand years later in date than the painted
pottery of the Yang-shao village of Pan-p'o, which has yielded a
date as early as 4865 B.C. ± 1 10 years/ This seems to suggest a cen-
trifugal movement of the nuclear Yang-shao outward from the 3 Bowl. Pottery decorated with
scrolled ornament in red and white slip.
Central Plain (Chung-yuan) and to disprove the old theory that Excavated at P'ei-hsien. Kiangsu.
Ch'ing-lien-kang culture, late Neolithic
the Chinese painted pottery was the product of a great eastward
period.
movement, if not of peoples, then of an essentially Western
Asiatic culture. That there may have been some crossfcrtilisation
with Western Asia is possible, particularly in the later Neolithic
period, but in their lively, uplifted forms and, still more, in the dy-
namic linear movement of their brush decoration the Chinese
painted vases reveal qualities that are uniquely Chinese.
Every year as new sites in eastern and southeastern China are
discovered, the native origins of Chinese Neolithic culture arc
more firmly established. In 1973-74, for instance, atHo-mu-tuin
northern Kiangsu, remains of a village of about 5000 B.C., at least
as early as Pan-p'o, were unearthed. The houses were built on tim-
ber posts over marshy land; the inhabitants cultivated rice, had
pottery, knew the elephant and rhinoceros. • Another related
phase in the eastern China Neolithic is seen at Ch'ing-lien-kang in
northern Kiangsu, which produced the elegant bowl on this page,
decorated with swirling patterns in red, white and black. As we
move further northward up the coast, and later in time, we come
to Ta-wcn-k'ou in southern Shantung. The pottery jar from
Ning-yang-hsien illustrated here is a product of the Ta-wen-k'ou 4 Jar. Pottery decorated with black and
culture, which, beginning perhaps as early as 4000 B.C., spread white slip. Excavated in Ning-yang-
hsien, Shantung. Lung-shan culture,
outward, even to influence the painted pottery tradition of Yang- late Neolithic period.
Cop