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QuoteReplyTopic: Chinese Art, 2000 BC - 1800 AD Posted: 22-Oct-2006 at 07:31
Charles Lang Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum, Washington D.C., and other assorted pics with neolithic, ancient, medieval, and early modern age Chinese below...
SIMPLE DIRECTIONS: Don't bother clicking on the thumbnails themselves, just click on the web links below the written description of each thumbnail pic, and it will bring you to a pop-up window where the large-size image of that pic is! Enjoy!
This painting entitled Guan-Yin and the Fish Basket, 15th century AD, Ming Dynasty painting, anonymous painter.
Bronze Mirror, gold and silver inlay design of horse-riding chariots, Buddhist figures, and flying animals, dated from 220 - 589 AD, during the divisionary period
Massive Leshan Buddha Stone Sculpture, 71 meters tall (233 feet), completed in 803 AD, Tang Dynasty; it is the largest stone-carved Buddha in the world
HOLY CRAP! The greatest of all these paintings below, click on the link below the description to scan across the entire length of this old 11-meter-long painted handscroll:
Spring Festival (Qing Ming) on the River, this is an 18th century remake of an 11th century classic by Zhang Zerui
Eastern Jin Dynasty Landscape Painting, (circa 317-420 AD); this is another long handscroll, so when you click the link directly below, make sure to scan through the whole picture using the scroll bar, it's worth the look!
The Anji (or Zhaozhou) Bridge, brick and stone segmental arch bridge, engineered by Li Chun, construction began in 595 AD, and was completed in 605 AD under the Sui Dynasty of China
The Forbidden City of Beijing, 720,000 square meters of area, 800 buildings with over 8,600 rooms, construction completed by 1420 AD, under the reign of the Ming Dynasty Emperor Yongle.
The Terracotta Army of Qin, created and assembled by the year 210 BC by the First Qin Emperor (Qin Shihuangdi), located near modern-day Xian. A total of 8,099 terracotta figures were found in the outlying tombs to his main pyramid mausoleum, the figures including horses, soldiers, generals, and complete with bronze chariots and actual wielded weapons.
Massive Leshan Buddha Stone Sculpture, 71 meters tall (233 feet), completed in 803 AD, Tang Dynasty; it is the largest stone-carved Buddha in the world.
Wow. Looks like it's all carved. Who are the figures bottom left & right?:
My guess, from observation, would be the Buddhist Deva Kings (deities of the four cardinal directions) that were so popularly-portrayed in silver or gilt-bronze figurines, and stone statues during the Tang Dynasty.
Eric, thank you very much for these wonderful photos. It must have taken you a lot of work to upload them.
As you know, I am not an expert in Chinese art (and architecture) at all. But when I look at the pieces from the Tang Dynasty, I see quite a bit of Central Asian influence that I do not see in pieces from other periods (pre- and post-Tang), except in some Yuan pieces. Are those pieces quite representative of Tang art in general?
(I know Tang music was very much influenced by Central Asian music.)
Tang Dynasty Silver Cup, intricate silver-smithed designs of animals and flower motif, early 8th century AD
Tang Dynasty, gilded-bronze incense burner, dated 7th-8th century AD
I also love lacquers. I used to have two beautiful Japanese lacquer bowls that I occasionally used for eating sticky rice or misu soup. But a friend of mine stupidly put one of them in the microwave (!) which totally destroyed it.
I'm also aware the influence of Central Asia on Tang era music and musical instruments, but in terms of the silver-smithing animal and flower designs forged in the cups above, Chinese art beforehand and during the Tang era featured plenty of picturesque scenes with animals and nature (arguably as far back as the animals featured in various tomb murals of the Han Dynasty, but best exemplified in its maturity early on by such great artists as Gu Kaizhi, the famous landscape artist in the 4th century Eastern Jin period). As for the gilt-bronze incense burner, the lion/dragon-heads holding the interlocked rings weren't anything exceptionally new, the Chinese of the Eastern Zhou featured this in the artwork crowning their bronze-ware ritual vessels.
I'm sorry to hear about the lacquer in the microwave! Lol. It's just like putting a plastic army man in the microwave too.
I've seen that lacquer box from the Qianlong era as well, it's the best one I think I've ever seen out of the whole bunch, and that's saying a lot, considering how awesome the lacquer-ware items were that I posted above.
@ Kids
Thank you, kids, and yes, I too love the Guanyin statue from the late Northern Song Period. It's absolutely astonishing.
Ladies Playing Double-Sixes, original by Zhou Fang (lived c. 730-800 AD), late 10th - early 11th century remake, Song Dynasty
One can see from this painting that beauty is not a universal concept, but rather a style that changes with the times. I knew that mid-Tang people liked chubby-fat women, but I didn't know this applied for the Song. By the Ming era you can see pictures of skinnier women whose amt of fat are pretty in line with our modern concept of the perfect hourglass figure.
Good points, Omnipotence. As seen through Pre-Tang-era scroll paintings, murals, and figurines/statues, women with slender bodies were actually preferred. As you noted here, Tang era women were most often plump, as it was seen as attractive then. Women during the Song period, however, once again became favored to be slender, as this Song Dynasty remake of Zhou Fang's painting is just that, a remake of a Tang-era painting. It is plausible, however, that since this particular painting is dated as early as the late 900s AD, that the leftover Tang era popularity of plump women was still somewhat of a social norm, since the Tang Dynasty had just fallen less than a century before, in 907 AD.
Food for thought, thanks for pointing that out Omnipotence,
The towering Liao Dynasty Guanyin Painted-Clay Statue of Dule Temple, 984 AD.
and
Bronze Mirror, gold and silver inlay design of horse-riding chariots, Buddhist figures, and flying animals, dated from 220 - 589 AD, during the divisionary period.
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