Chinese Art

Chinese Art

The earliest form of art we know from China was pottery - clay pitchers and bowls. Most of the best early pottery comes from a place called Ban’po and it is named after that place. This Ban'po pottery was handmade (not on a potter's wheel). At first the polished red pots were plain.
Then they were painted with black swirling spirals and geometric shapes, and sometimes with human faces. Later on, the Chinese used a brush to paint their pottery, and the designs became more sophisticated.

Shang Dynasty Chinese Art
1766-1122 BC


By about 2000 BC, people in China had learned from the people of West Asia how to make bronze out of copper and tin. They began to make many jars and plaques (flat pieces) out of bronze that were used for worshipping their gods. Right from the beginning, these were of very high quality. Some people have thought that the Chinese must have been practicing a long time to make such good bronze pieces, but this is really normal with any new technology: people are very interested in it at first and do a very good job, and it is only later that they try to do it cheaper and faster and not as well.


Chou Dynasty Chinese Art - 1122-221 BC

The first part of the Chou Dynasty is called the Western Chou, and it runs from about 1122 to about 722 BC. During the Western Chou dynasty, art didn't change very much from the Shang Dynasty that came before it. People kept on making the bronze sacrificial jars and cups that they made under the Shang emperors. Often the shapes of the jars were more complicated than they had been before.

There were some new technical ideas about how to make the bronze jars during the Eastern Chou period as well: for instance, artists began to make the designs on the jars using stamps. And the shapes of the jars became simpler again. Most of the designs were abstract interlacing patterns, rathe than animals. Artists began using gold and silver inlays to decorate their patterns. Towards the end of the Eastern Chou period, about 300 BC, artists began to create the first Chinese pictures of whole scenes with several people and a landscape, often hunting scenes.
Archaeologists have excavated the tomb of one of the Chin Dynasty emperors, so we know that the stuff in that tomb comes from the Chin Dynasty. This tomb has a huge army of clay statues of soldiers, who were supposed to protect the dead emperor. You can see that the abstract designs and animals of the Chou Dynasty have changed, and now art is becoming much more about representing people.




Three Kingdoms Chinese Art 220-581 AD

It was in the time of the Three Kingdoms that the first artists appear whose names we still know today. One of the earliest Chinese artists whose name we know is Ku K'ai-chih, who lived in the 300's AD (when Constantine was first building Constantinople in West Asia). Ku K'ai-chih is said to have been a great portrait artist - he painted pictures of people. But nothing he painted has survived for us to look at today.


Sui Dynasty Chinese Art - 581-618 AD

In the Three Kingdoms period, Chinese artists had learned a lot about Indian and West Asian sculptural styles. Now in the Sui Dynasty, artists transformed what they had learned and mixed it with Chinese styles to create a new, unified, uniquely Chinese style in sculpture. And they used the same style all over China, as if to emphasize that all of China was again under one Emperor.

In painting, too, artists developed a more unified system of painting during the Sui Dynasty. They were especially interested in how to show that one thing was nearer than another, or farther away but larger.

This was also a time of developing pottery styles. In the Sui Dynasty, for the first time, we see recognizable beginnings of the great Chinese porcelain industry of the future (that's why we call it "china"!).


Tang Dynasty Chinese Art618-907 AD

Sculpture, which had really begun to develop during the Sui Dynasty, reached its height under the T'ang Dynasty. Sculptors emphasized graceful lines and sharp, clear forms, and good proportions (the head the right size for the body, the legs and arms the right length).

But Chinese painters kept right up with the sculptors. Instead of painting mainly pictures of the Buddha, now artists painted scenes from history (famous emperors and famous battles), and scenes of everyday life at the emperor's court. They tried to make people look real and solid.

Nature was a more and more important theme to these painters. In the 700's AD, the painter Han Kan was famous for his paintings of horses, for instance, and many other artists also chose to paint animals.


Sung Dynasty Chinese Art - 960-1279 AD

Starting about 1200 AD, artists became interested in drawing smaller objects: a flower, or a bird, or a leaf. Again, they tried to draw these things using the fewest possible lines, and to show the most important things about that flower or bird, rather than drawing every detail.
Landscape painting got even better under the Sung Dynasty than it had been under the T'ang Dynasty that came before. Artists emphasized the simple lines of the mountains, rivers, and trees, trying to create a feeling with the fewest possible lines. Most of the time they didn't even use colors. Artists also learned to show distance with blurry outlines and mountains half-hidden by fog.

Yuan Dynasty (Mongol Period) Chinese Art - 1279-1368 AD

You might think that the invasion of the Mongols in 1279 AD would have killed off a lot of artists and there wouldn't be much good art during this time, but that's not true. Or, you might think that Chinese artists would begin to paint in a more Mongol style, but that's not what happened either. Actually traditional painting continued at a very high level throughout this time. Artists went right on drawing landscapes, although people became more important in the landscapes than they had been under the Sung Dynasty. Artists also began to pay a lot of attention to different kinds of brushstrokes and the surface of paintings.

Still-life painting of objects like flowers also remained important, or even got more important.
At this time, a lot of rich men painted pictures, men who wanted to show how artistic and well-educated they were.

Ming Dynasty Chinese Art- 1368-1644 AD

After the Mongols were thrown out of China, and the Chinese emperors took over again in the Ming Dynasty, sculpture stopped changing in style - Ming dynasty sculptors just repeated what had been done in the past.

On the other hand, Ming Dynasty paintings of birds and flowers and people are among the best detail paintings.