China has the world’s oldest living civilization. It’s written historygoes back almost 3,500 years, and the history told by it’s artifacts andartwork goes back much farther. The oldest known works of Chinese artinclude pottery and jade carvings from the time of 5000 BC.
Jade is a general term used to describe either jadeite or nephrite, knownas true jade. It’s composed of several minerals. It’s smooth and rich intexture, but it’s also extremely tough. It can be off-white, or darkgreen, and sometimes has a reddish tint. Authentic jade is cool and nevertranslucent. The philosopher Confucius described jade perfectly when hesaid:
“It is soft, smooth and shining- like intelligence. It’s edges seem sharpbut do not cut- like justice. It hangs down to the ground- like humility.When struckm, it gives clear, ringing sounds- like music. The strains init are not hidden and add to it’s beauty- like truthfulness. It hasbrightness- like heaven. It’s firm substance is born of the mountains andthe waters- like the earth.”
The material has been used since the Shang dynasty, which lasted from1766-1022 B.C. They see it as a sign of wealth and authority and also asan object of beauty. The chinese word for jade is yu. During the Mingdynasty, the Chinese people thought that only green or white stones weretrue jade, and the other colors were called fu yu, or false jade. It wasclassified into nine different colors during the Tsin dynasty, and has morerecently been classified into many different categories.Jade is one of the touchest stones in the world, near the diamond becauseof overlapping fibers within the stone. Tons of pressure are needed tocrush some of the larger pieces of jade. A single cut through a one foot
cube of jade would take several weeks.The ancient chinese people thought that jade had special powers, and theyused it in rituals and ceremonies. It was also beleived to have medicaluses, but the most common use is for decoration. Jade is not mined inChina, but China is still considered the “home” of jade because the artistsfrom China have learned to carve the stone better than the artists from anyother country. The ancient artists would stare at rough pieces of jade,and then decide what they wanted to carve it into.Chinese pottery is also an ancient form of art in China. It was firstcreated in the pre-dynastic neolithic era. Some fragments of pottery arefrom 3,000 B.C. 4,000 years after that, the porcelain from the Sung andMing dynasty, the most famous and beautiful porcelain in the world, wascreated. Although other countries also created China, the potteryoriginated in Asia. French porcelain was inspired by the delicate whitework from the Ting dynasty, and Clue and white Dutch Delft porcelain wasmodeled after pottery from the Ming dynasty.Pottery started out as functional, but became more ornamental as thecentires continued. the themes of the painted and carved porcelain weremostly nature scenes, but they were also from folklore. Artrists originalymolded the clay with their hands and set it in the sun to try. Eventualythey began to use a potter’s wheel, and they used a glaze at the same timeas the romans.During the Tang dynasty, Chinese pottery began to develop it’s own distictstyle. They used the first colored glazes, and underglaze painting. Thebest pottery came from the time between the Sung dynasty and the Mingtimes, when the King hired officials to work in his court strictly aspotters. When these artists made mistakes in their work (cracks or drips),they used the mistakes to create a picture, such as turning a crack into atree, or a drip into a teardrop.Although painting was not China’s first form of art, it is probably themost important and dominating form today. Chinese paintings have alwaystried to capture philosophy as well as details. 1,400 years ago, Hsieh Ho,made six basic laws for painting, which artists in China still followtoday. They are:1. Paiting has to have rythem and movement, it has an existence of its own2. The brush should be used to establish structure in painting in the samemanner as in calligraphy3. Observe conformity with nature and natural proportions4. Use color appropriately5. Live up to tradition by copying the mastersChinese artists try to create perfect artwork because they beleivestrongly in the philosophy of painting, and many paintings are missingobjects that the artist did not think necessary, such as the water around afish.Even if a chinese artist draws something that does not exist, such as adragon, what he creates is always done in the style of realism, so that thefinished product looks like it could actualy be alive.Artists try to paint from memory rather than from pictures, and they usebrushes, solidified ink, a stone slab to grind the ink, color pigments, andpaper or silk. A Chinese painter will always hold his brush as perfectlyperpendicular to the paper as possible, and he will never use an easel.The human figure did not appear in Chinese art until the Han dynasty, whereit was used to express religious ideas.The people of china write their language in the form of calligraphy, andit has become as much of an art form as painting or sculpting. It is not
considered just handwriting, but it has to show personality andstyle.General Yueh Fei was an accomplished caligrapher. The emperor beganto suspect his loyalty, and so he turned to calligraphy because he was hurtso deeply. The result was his copy of the Report to the Emperor Before anExpedition, which has become a calligraphic masterpiece.The brush used for calligraphy in China was invented before the fifthcentury B.C. and quick-absorbing paper was invented to go along with it.The system of calligraphy is beautiful, but works of calligraphy have to bedone perfectly, because wrong figures cannot be corrected.When an artist writes something with calligraphy, what he writes is notalways as important as how the figures look on paper. Sometimes they willeven be unrecognizable, but it’s not considered wrong if the artist thoughtit would improve the project.For ten to fifteen years, an artist must be an apprentice to a classicChinese calligrapher, and then work on developing a style of his own.There are three basic categories in calligraphy, regular, running, andgrass tyles. Regular is elaborate, running is rapid, and grass is ashorthand form of writing.Over a thousand years before crafters in Rome began molding bronze,artists in China’s Shang dynasty were begining to experiment. The workswere burried and forgotten, but in 1934, dozens of inscribed bronze workswere excavated at Anyang in Honan province. The pieces of art that werediscovered were nearly perfect, and historians could not beleive what theysaw. Most of the art had been burried in the soft banks of the Yellowriver, and were perfectly preserved. The National Palace Museum in Taipeihas more than 4,000 bronze items.