Page 45 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

kuang, for mixing wine, shaped like a gravy boat, generally with a
cover and provided with a ladle. Other vessels such as the I and
p'an were presumably made for ritual ablutions.
During the fifteen hundred years that bronze-casting was a ma-
jor art form in China, the art went through a series of changes in
style, reflecting ever greater sophistication in technique and deco-
ration, which make it possible to date vessels within a century or
less. Bronzes of the pre-Anyang phase typified by those found at
Chengchow and P'an-lung-ch'cng arc often thinly cast and rather
ungainly in shape. They are decorated with t'ao-t'ieh masks and
dragonlikc creatures with bosses resembling eyes, all either ren-
dered in thin thread relief (Style I) or in a band of ornament that
looks as if it had been crudely carved in the clay model before cast-
ing (Style II). The next stage (Style III), found both at Chengchow
and at Anyang, is much more refined and accomplished, with
dense, fluent curvilinear designs that often cover almost the whole
surface of the vessel. In Style IV the decoration (t'ao-t'ieh, cicada,
26 Ritual vessel, dtit. Bronze. Phase I.
dragon, and so on) is separated from the background of fine curl- Middle Shang period.
ing scrolls by being modelled in dear flat planes. Finally, in Style
V, the main zoomorphic motifs rise in bold relief, and the back-
ground spirals may disappear altogether.
When Professor Max Loehr first identified these five styles in
1953 he suggested that they followed each other in an orderly se-
quence, but subsequent excavations have shown that this was not
so. Styles I and II were contemporary in pre-Anyang bronzes,
while Styles III, IV, and V all appear in the rich collection of ves-
sels discovered in 1976 in the tomb of Fu Hao, consort of the third
Anyang-period king Wu Ting, so all three must belong to the
early Anyang stage. What happened to Shang bronze style after
that was essentially an elaboration and refining of these three later
styles. The zoomorphic motifs which adorn the Shang bronzes
and give them their intense vitality may seem to be innumerable
but arc for the most part variations and combinations of the same
few elements—notably the tiger, water buffalo, elephant, hare,
deer, owl, parrot, fish, cicada, and, possibly, the silkworm. Oc-
casionally, in a frieze around an otherwise plain vessel, these crea-
17 Ritual vessel. U-ho. Bronze. Phase II.
tures may be represented naturalistically, but far more often they Middle Shang period.
arc so stylised as to be barely recognisable; their bodies dissolve,
their limbs break down or take on a life of their own, sprouting
other creatures. The k'uei dragon, for example, may appear with
gaping jaws, with a beak, with a trunk, wings, or horns, or he
may form the eyebrow of that most impressive and mysterious of
all mythical creatures, the t'ao-t'ieh.
This formidable mask, which often appears to be split open on
either side of a flange and laid out flat on the belly of the vessel, is
the dominating element in the decoration of Shang bronzes. Sung
antiquarians named it t'ao-t'ieh in deference to a passage in a third-
century b.c. text, the Lit Shih Ch'un-ch'iu, which runs, "On the
ting of the Chou there is applied the t'ao-t'ieh: having a head but no
body he ate people, but before he had swallowed them, harm 28 Ritual vessel. p'ou. Bronze. Phase
III, Shang Dynasty, early Anyang
came to his body." Thus, by the end of Chou, the t'ao-t'ieh was period.