Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ART
Chinese painting has an ancient history. The earliest brush found in China, made out
of animal hairs glued to a hollow bamboo tube, dates from about 400 BC. The Chinese
used silk for painting on as early as the third century BC, with paper being used as
early as 106 AD. Nowadays, Beijing's modern art scene is up there with the most vi-
brant in the world, revolving around the superb
798 Art District
just to the northeast
ofthecitycentre.ThesceneisparticularlylivelyduringtheBeijingBiennale(
bjbien-
nale.com.cn
)
, held in late September in even-numbered years.
Traditional art
The earliest Chinese art dates back to the Neolithic period -
pottery
vessels painted with
geometric designs. From the same period come decorated clay heads, and pendants and or-
naments of polished stone or jade - a simplified sitting bird in polished jade is a very early
example of the Chinese tradition of animal sculpture. The subsequent era, from around 1500
BC, is dominated by
Shang and Zhou bronze vessels
used for preparing and serving food
and wine; their design often featured geometric and animal motifs, as well as grinning masks
of humans and fabulous beasts. Later, under the
Zhou
, the style of the bronzes became more
varied and rich: some animal vessels are fantastically shaped and extravagantly decorated,
others seem to be depicting not so much a fierce tiger, for example, as utter ferocity itself.
Although the Shang produced a few small sculpted human figures and animals in marble,
sculptures
and works in stone begin to be found in great quantities in
Han-dynasty
tombs.
Indian-style art marked the advent of
Buddhism
; not until the
Tang
do you get the full
flowering of a native Chinese style, where the figures are rounder, with movement, and the
positions, expressions and clothes are more natural and realistic. The
Song
continued to carve
religious figures, but less statuary was produced until the
Ming
with their taste for massive
tomb sculptures, as still seen in Beijing.
Painting
Traditional Chinese paintings
are light and airy, with empty spaces playing an important
element in the design, and rich in symbolism; they're decorated with a few lines of poetry
and several names in the form of seals - the marks of past owners. The great flowering of
landscape painting came with the
Song dynasty
; an academy was set up under imperial pat-
ronage, and different schools of painting emerged which analyzed the natural world with
great concentration and intensity. Their style has set a mark on Chinese landscape painting
ever since. The
Mingdynasty
saw a willingness by painters to be influenced by tradition: as
well as the famous landscapes, look for examples of bamboo and plum blossom, and bird and
flower paintings being brought to a high decorative pitch.
