Early Chinese Art

Chinese Art

by Wikipedia

Chinese art is visual art that originated in or is practiced in China, Greater China or by Chinese artists. Art created by Chinese residing outside of China can also be considered a part of Chinese art when it is based on or draws on Chinese culture, heritage, and history. Early "Stone Age art" dates back to 10,000 BC, mostly consisting of simple pottery and sculptures. After that period, Chinese art, like Chinese history, was typically classified by the succession of ruling dynasties of Chinese emperors, most of which lasted several hundred years. The Palace Museum in Beijing and the National Palace Museum in Taipei contains extensive collections of Chinese art.

Chinese art is marked by an unusual degree of continuity within, and consciousness of, tradition, lacking an equivalent to the Western collapse and gradual recovery of Western classical styles of art. Decorative arts are extremely important in Chinese art, and much of the finest work was produced in large workshops or factories by essentially unknown artists, especially in Chinese ceramics.

Timeline of Chinese History, Art, and Culture

by NATIONAL MUSEUM of ASIAN ART

Interact with Chinese history by exploring a timeline of key historical figures, dynasties, events, and artworks. Use the arrows to scroll through the centuries, and click on an era or item to learn more!

Ancient Chinese Art

by Mark Cartwright 13/10/17 ANCIENT CHINESE ART

Ancient China covered a vast and ever-changing geopolitical landscape, and the art it produced over three millennia is, unsurprisingly, just as varied. Still, despite continuous indigenous technical developments, changes in materials and tastes, and the influence of foreign ideas, there are certain qualities inherent in Chinese art which make it possible to describe in general terms and recognise no matter where or when it was produced and for what purpose.

Chinese art

by Michael Sullivan, Jerome Silbergeld Britannica

Chinese art, the painting, calligraphy, architecture, pottery, sculpture, bronzes, jade carving, and other fine or decorative art forms produced in China over the centuries.

Arts of Ancient China from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age

by Harvard Arts Museums

As one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations, China has artistic traditions dating back more than seven thousand years. From Neolithic ceramics to archaic jades and ritual bronzes, the arts of China’s ancient past demonstrate technical sophistication, brilliant craftsmanship, and the frequent implementation of large-scale production methods, especially in objects created for the elite.

Buddhist Elements in Early Chinese Art (2nd and 3rd Centuries A.D.)

by JSTOR

Artibus Asiae is a semi-annual publication of original scholarly articles, research notes, and book reviews devoted to the history of art and archaeology of Asia. While the great majority of articles are written in English, some issues contain contributions in German and French. Initiated in 1925 in Dresden, the journal is the oldest of its kind. Since 1991 it has been published by the Museum Rietberg Zurich in cooperation with the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. The journal is supplemented by a series of monographs (Artibus Asiae Supplementa).

Collections: Chinese

by NATIONAL MUSEUM of ASIAN ART

With more than thirteen thousand objects dating from Neolithic times (circa 7000–circa 2000 BCE) to the present, the National Museum of Asian Art’s collections possess one of the finest museum holdings of Chinese art in the world. In addition to containing numerous masterworks, the collections reflect all major periods and materials of artistic production. Special strengths include remarkable ancient jades and bronzes, early Buddhist sculpture, imperial and trade ceramics, lacquer, classical paintings, and calligraphy, all of which are among the greatest treasures of Chinese art outside of China.

Chinese painting

by WIKIPEDIA

Chinese painting (simplified Chinese: 中国画; traditional Chinese: 中國畫; pinyin: Zhōngguó huà) is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. Painting in the traditional style is known today in Chinese as guó huà (国画; 國畫), meaning "national painting" or "native painting", as opposed to Western styles of art which became popular in China in the 20th century.

Chinese Art

by ART INSTITVTE CHICAGO

Fashioned more than 4,000 years ago, the purpose and meaning of this small jade is unknown, though its compelling visual power is undeniable: large staring eyes are topped by arched eyebrows and a gaping mouth reveals bared teeth. Scholars have interpreted this face as that of a deity or a priest-shaman, though no written records exist to confirm its identity. Thin raised lines outline the features—a technique difficult to execute as jade is extremely hard and the background needs to be ground down to leave the lines in relief.

Chinese Painting

by Maxwell K. Hearn 1/6/08 THE MET

Consider Night-Shining White by Han Gan (

1977.78 ), an image of a horse. Originally little more than a foot square, it is now mounted as a handscroll that is twenty feet long as a result of the myriad inscriptions and seals (marks of ownership) that have been added over the centuries, some directly on the painted surface, so that the horse is all but overwhelmed by this enthusiastic display of appreciation.

Buddhism in Chinese Art (2nd century through 907 C.E.)

by Dr. Cortney E. Chaffin smarthistory

The story of Buddhist art in China is one of dynamic cultural and artistic exchange beginning with the earliest images of the Buddha based on Indian and Central Asian prototypes through its eventual Sinicization for a Chinese audience. This chapter explores Buddhist art in China from the Han through the Tang dynasties, a period that saw the introduction of Buddhism to China and its widespread growth as a major religion. After the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 C.E., we will see how non-Chinese rulers who invaded north China during the Period of Division (220–589 C.E.), and then the later Tang dynasty (618–917 C.E.), used the religion and the construction of Buddhist monuments to assert their authority and legitimacy. Their subjects found in Buddhism a religion that could support their spiritual needs.

Early Chinese Texts on Painting

by The University of Chicago Press

For students of Chinese art and culture this anthology has proven invaluable since its initial publication in 1985. It collects important Chinese writings about painting, from the earliest examples through the fourteenth century, allowing readers to see how the art of this rich era was seen and understood in the artists’ own times. Some of the texts in this treasury fall into the broad category of aesthetic theory; some describe specific techniques; some discuss the work of individual artists.

Research on Early Chinese Lacquer Buddhas: Proceedings of the Sixth Forbes Symposium at the Freer Gallery of Art

by NATIONAL MUSEUM of ASIAN ART

The practice of using lacquer to form Buddhist sculptures dates back several hundred years with the earliest known sculpture associated with the late sixth-century Sui dynasty (581–618 CE) shortly after Buddhism came to China. Very few of the often life-size or larger sculptures remain. For the first time in this volume, Buddhist lacquer sculptures and their place in Buddhist practice are discussed holistically by scholars from a range of disciplines. Research on scientific, art historical and historical aspects of the sculptures opens a window into the sculptural lacquer techniques used in their creation. These proceedings, and their companion symposium, coincided with the exhibition, Secrets of the Lacquer Buddha.

Early Chinese Jades in the Harvard Art Museums

by Jenny F. So Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS

From personal ornamentation to funerary practice, from palace decoration to private devotion, jade has played a major role in Chinese social, cultural, and political life for millennia. Exploring the history of this revered stone through the esteemed Grenville L. Winthrop Collection at the Harvard Art Museums—which includes some of the finest examples of ancient and archaizing jades outside China—this volume explains how and why jade developed its special significance.

Time in Early Chinese Art

by Eugene Y. Wang 9/10/15 WILEY.Online Library

The Chinese notion of time has mostly been treated as an abstraction extrapolated from various early texts, leading some scholars to make some assertions about the kind of time concept that dominates Chinese thinking. In an illustrated silk manuscript uncovered from a basket case from a tomb at Zidanku, Changsha, ca. 300 BCE, the design is essentially a calendric chronograph. Manipulation of time remains a key function of early Chinese art.

The Yuan Lacuna: The ‘David’ vases and UK collectors of early Chinese blue-and-white porcelain in the early 20th century

by Sarah Wong 6/25 ScienceDirect

In 1929, R. L. Hobson (1872–1941), Keeper of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum, was the first to publish and formally acknowledge the significance of the pair of Yuan blue-and-white temple vases, now known as the David vases. It was the first time in the United Kingdom that this type of blue-and-white porcelain was firmly established as being made in the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368).

Poetry and Pictorial Expression in Chinese Painting

by Susan Bush 9/10/15 WILEY

This chapter focuses on certain early Chinese paintings and the links between poetry and painting that extended over a period of nearly a millennium from the early medieval period through the Song dynasty. Two artists, Gu Kaizhi and Guo Xi, can serve as exemplary models for the development of Six Dynasties portraiture and Northern Song landscape, respectively, and their lives and art are discussed in the first two sections of the chapter.

Glassmaking of the Qing Dynasty: A Review, New Data, and New Insights

by Hongjiao Ma 12/20 ScienceDirect

Ancient glassmaking has always been a very obscure area of study in China, because glass was a relatively non-essential material, used for decorative and ritual purposes, and was not commonly accessible to Chinese people until the early twentieth century. The lack of glass technology has even been given as an answer to the famous “Needham question”: Why did modern science not develop in Chinese civilization (Martin and MacFarlane 2011).

Time in Early Chinese Art

by Eugene Y. Wang 9/10/15 WILEY

The Chinese notion of time has mostly been treated as an abstraction extrapolated from various early texts, leading some scholars to make some assertions about the kind of time concept that dominates Chinese thinking. In an illustrated silk manuscript uncovered from a basket case from a tomb at Zidanku, Changsha, ca. 300 BCE, the design is essentially a calendric chronograph. Manipulation of time remains a key function of early Chinese art.

A miniature world: Revealing warring states period shell paintings from zhongshan state by multiple-methods

by Dian Chen 2024 ScienceDirect

The use of shells as a medium for painting is an exceptionally rare discovery in archaeology, representing a art form that has been largely overlooked. In this study, we present two shell paintings of the Warring States period (476–221 BCE) discovered in Zhongshan State, Hebei, China. Employing various techniques, including microscopic observation, computed tomography (CT), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), multispectral imaging, and Raman spectroscopy, we non-destructively unveil the exquisite images obscured by soil and reveal the unparalleled shallow relief technique employed in their creation.

Classification, Canon, and Genre

by Richard Vinograd 9/10/15 WILEY Online Library

Systems of artistic genres, evaluative rankings of artists, and identifications of canonical monuments are all versions of classification and categorization. The identification of canonical objects and forms operated through evolving systems of preservation, collecting, transmission, and dissemination, involving physical monuments, institutions, texts, and publications, from early versions down to modern era museums and art-historical surveys.

Influence of Taoism on the invention of the purple pigment used on the Qin terracotta warriors

by Z. Liu 11/07 ScienceDirect

Until the 19th century, most pigments were based on naturally occurring colored minerals and dyes, with three significant exceptions: Egyptian Blue, Chinese Blue/Purple and Maya Blue. The former two are alkaline-earth copper silicates, and because of this similarity it has been proposed that the Chinese pigments were derived from Egyptian Blue. Herein, we analyzed clumps of pigment from the Qin warriors and discovered that in spite of the structural similarity to Egyptian Blue, the micro-structural morphology of Chinese Purple is very different.

Visualizing the Divine in Medieval China

by Katherine R. Tsiang 9/10/15 WILEY Online Library

In Chinese civilization, as in many other cultures, the worship and visual representation of the divine or spiritual in art began in ancient times and has taken many forms throughout history. The early medieval period, third through sixth centuries CE, saw particularly active growth of religious imagery. This chapter discusses art categorized by religious affiliations with Buddhism, Daoism, and ancestor worship.

Urban daemons of early Shang: Urbanism in ancient China

by Elizabeth Childs-Johnson 6/18 ScienceDirect

Two early Shang (ca.1600–1200 BCE) works of art are critical in demonstrating the thesis that Shang ritual imagery was meaningful as a royal symbol of metamorphosis, in the context of urbanization from its earliest manifestation during the Early Shang era and throughout the heyday of Shang culture. Due to the abundance of newly excavated artifacts and art and of paleographic data in the form of oracle bone inscriptions, it is possible to begin to explain Shang (ca.1600–1046 BCE) religion and its artistic symbolism.