art of china

The Art of China

Reseached by Cynthia

Have you ever seen paper decorating ladies hair? Well, China has an art form called papercuts that does just that. Chinese civilization began more than 4000 years ago. The earliest art forms would use rock and stone for art because they didn’t know to use metal yet. Later there was the Bronze Age, Stone Age, Neolithic or New Stone Age. There were many different dynasties like the T’ang Dynasty, Zhou Dynasty, and the Qin Dynasty were a few dynasties.

Influence

Chinese arts are influenced by three major religions: Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Another major influence was nature. The three major kinds of subject they liked to paint were birds, flowers, and landscapes from the countryside. All the religions stress love for nature. All landscape painters tried to get a feeling of the human spirit and the strength of the wind, water, mist and mountains. Painting became an art form more than 2000 years ago then influenced the later painters.

Art Forms

Chinese arts come in many different forms such as: painting, folk arts, silk, calligraphy, pottery, sculpture, metal arts and papercuts. Chinese papercuts were created around the first century in A.D. The Chinese invented paper, which was very important for papercuts. It first started in the Tang Dynasty. People then would hang them up to decorate windows, houses, clothes and even ladies hair. In these thin and fragile papercuts, they would create animals, aerobics, Buddha, opera faces and other subjects.

Sculptures were made of many different materials: stone, jade, lacquer, wood, metal, clay, etc. They weren’t only for admiring but they were used as everyday items like a wine bucket, mirrors, pottery, and pendants. A famous example is the sculptures of the Terra cotta warriors. They were buried with the body of an emperor to protect the emperor in his afterlife.

Paintings became an art form more than 2000 years ago. The Chinese painted emperors, landscape and zodiac animals, flowers, ladies, and birds. Chinese have three thousand years of history of painting starting from 600 A.D T’ang dynasty to the 20th century

Process and Material

The Chinese used many materials such as medal, bronze, lacquer, jade, clay, silk, and cloth. They made the most flexible of material…paper. Chinese people used jade to make mirrors and clay and stone to make pottery and statues. At a ceremony they would use bronze to make wine vessels in animal shapes. The process of a statue in a human figure is molded separately. The front and back has to be made split. Then the two sides would be put together.

Subject and Style

Chinese arts cover a very broad range of subjects. In papercuts they like to cut Buddhas, opera faces, animals, flowers, children, and aerobics. Sometimes in their painting they would use black and white, having one object with each color. One of their favorite subjects was nature. They believed that the spirit of nature gives life to everything, so if painting nature the painter must capture the feeling of nature. Zodiac animals, landscapes, opera faces, figure painting, mountains, and cranes, which were a symbol for long life, were popular subjects for their paintings. Emperors and their court was an another important subject for painting.



Chinese art began more than 4000 years ago. We still appreciate the hard work artists did back then. We visit the museum to look at the magnificent artwork done long ago. The Chinese culture hasn’t changed much, but their art is prized in museums around the world.



Sources

Shirley, Glubok. Art of China. New York, Macmillan Company, 1973
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