I am looking for examples of the defining standards of Han Art. What makes a Han painting and so forth. I am engaged in learning about Chinese art and the teacher isn't quite that good at being clear on what we as students should be looking at. So, I am branching out trying to find the examples that will help me to identify the basic guide line of what is concerned Han art. So, far she has not made a distinction between early and late Han. I am sure the is a difference that should be noted. It would be great if someone could show me this as well.
Thank you everyone for taking the time to read this.
Thaibebop
Full Version: Han Art
When you talk of painting it should be remembered that paper didnt exist, and was invented during the Han dynasty. At least up untill Jingdi's time there was no paper. I have the details at home about which reign it was invented in, and who got the credit from the Emperor and will need to check that.
Before this bamboo slips were used for writing and silk was used for painting. Some painted silks have survived from the East Zhou period even. These are very rare, but one tomb, belonging to the Lady Xin in West Han, has the best known example of a silk painted banner.
This picture is a little unclear. This is from Wendi's time when gold and jade was forbiden to be buried in tombs (draining too much wealth) and so a fortune of silk was buried, and in one tomb survived by luck.
About Han art, that is a huge subject. There are difference in Han period art over time, in the types of ceramics & new glazes appear in the Han period, changes in religious iconography,(mountian censors and dieties depicted) lacquerware vessels flourish , the types of objects buried in tombs vary (minaturised scenes increasingly replace literal items) yet about Han paintings there would be little to say. The only peices if paper I have seen surviving from the Han dynasty are coarse, brown & fragmented like pulp & fibre. Much of the written records that survive from the Han are still deduced from surviving bamboo slips. Paper was used once it appeared but Song style paintings do not survive from the Han.
A study of paintings would be based on the rare finds of painted silks. There are also Han dynasty maps that are mentioned in texts but I would assume these surviving examples are on silk too. If I remember later I will check if what these maps were drawn on is noted. To make a decisions about painting changes from east Han to West Han is difficult for anyone when so little survives to learn from. There may not be a huge percievable change after all at this point because the change from East to West is just a historians concept rather than meaning a change in fashions and taste from such an exact time. Real dramatic change does not occur in such tidy sections unless a character like Qin ShiHuang or an outside culture would compell it.
Before this bamboo slips were used for writing and silk was used for painting. Some painted silks have survived from the East Zhou period even. These are very rare, but one tomb, belonging to the Lady Xin in West Han, has the best known example of a silk painted banner.
This picture is a little unclear. This is from Wendi's time when gold and jade was forbiden to be buried in tombs (draining too much wealth) and so a fortune of silk was buried, and in one tomb survived by luck.
About Han art, that is a huge subject. There are difference in Han period art over time, in the types of ceramics & new glazes appear in the Han period, changes in religious iconography,(mountian censors and dieties depicted) lacquerware vessels flourish , the types of objects buried in tombs vary (minaturised scenes increasingly replace literal items) yet about Han paintings there would be little to say. The only peices if paper I have seen surviving from the Han dynasty are coarse, brown & fragmented like pulp & fibre. Much of the written records that survive from the Han are still deduced from surviving bamboo slips. Paper was used once it appeared but Song style paintings do not survive from the Han.
A study of paintings would be based on the rare finds of painted silks. There are also Han dynasty maps that are mentioned in texts but I would assume these surviving examples are on silk too. If I remember later I will check if what these maps were drawn on is noted. To make a decisions about painting changes from east Han to West Han is difficult for anyone when so little survives to learn from. There may not be a huge percievable change after all at this point because the change from East to West is just a historians concept rather than meaning a change in fashions and taste from such an exact time. Real dramatic change does not occur in such tidy sections unless a character like Qin ShiHuang or an outside culture would compell it.
Add to the silk paintings, Kenneth, the Han Dynasty painted tomb murals on stone, brick, and rock that have survived the enormous passing of time. Here's a post I wrote in SMQ Forum discussing a brief development of Chinese art:
The earliest surviving examples of Chinese paintings we have are from the Warring States Period (481-221 BC) and Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD) painted on silk or tomb murals painted on rock, brick, and stone. However, the earliest of these paintings during the late Zhou period were rudimentary, 2 dimensional scenes of mythical creatures and people drawn in the same continual, stylized format, nothing like the people and creatures depicted in the same time period on the intricate 3 dimensional art of ancient Shang and Zhou Dynasty bronze-wares, jade carvings, and the enormous Terracotta Army assembled in life-like men and horses for the tomb of the First Qin Emperor (died in 210 BC). In the ancient Shang, Zhou, Qin, and Han Dynasties, the functions of art were often reserved for purposes of geomancy, funerary rights, representation of the mythological deities and ancestor spirits, in other words, mythological and religious in intent and practice. The First Qin Emperor truly believed that the 8,099 Terracotta men and horses he had thousands working to craft and labor on would serve to guard him in the afterlife.
Warring States painting on silk of a man riding a dragon, Chu State tomb, 5th-3rd century BC:
Western Han Dynasty (202 BC - 8 AD) Silk Banner found in the tomb at Mawangdui
An example of Han Dynasty murals:
Tomb murals of horse-riders on a hunt and outing, Wei Dynasty (220-265 AD)
Even after the papermaking process was innovated by Cai Lun of the Eastern Han Dynasty (2nd century), paper wasn't necessarily the material of choice for exquisite paintings (although printed materials from the 9th century onwards on paper would feature inked artwork), as silk scrolls remained the prevalent method for those to express themselves through art. During the Wei and Western Jin Dynasties, mural paintings and painted decorations on silk became gradually more complex, but the real revolution in Chinese art (along with the introduction of professional landscape art) came during the Northern and Southern Dynasties Period (317-581 AD). It was during the early 4th century that the once centrally unifying Western Jin state was threatened and then defeated by oncoming northern steppe nomads known as the Xiongnu, who sacked the capital at Luoyang and forced the Jin court to flee south to establish their control over the southern half of China, establishing the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420 AD) at Jiankang (modern-day Nanjing). While culture in the north became a hybrid Chinese/northern nomadic fusion (the military ranks even drawn up opon the standards of nomadic cavalry units), the southern dynasties saw their own cultural flourishing apart from the northerners. It was here at Jiankang (Nanjing) where the social norms and accepted practices/pasttimes of a proper Confucian literati were developed and implemented. The most important sophisticated pasttimes of an upright Confucian scholar or bureaucrat became established as:
1. Writing and reciting poetry
2. Playing the musical instrument of the guqin (ancient Chinese stringed-zither)
4. Writing through fancy calligraphy
3. Painting, whether it be landscape, portrait, etc.
Poetry became so emphasized in Chinese society during the Tang Dynasty, that it was actually made one of the required fields of study to master if one wanted to pass the rigid Civil Service and Imperial Exams in order to become a government official. However, for the purposes of this thread, I'll stick to painting. With a greater emphasis on painting came greater social expectations for one to achieve greater and more sophisticated artistic heights than their contemporaries, and especially their Han predecessors who were avid tomb mural and silken dress/banners/scroll painters. Arguably the greatest artistic painter during this time was the court official for the Eastern Jin known as Gu Kaizhi, who painted his first painting in Nanjing in 364 AD, at the age of 20. Gu Kaizhi was not only popular in his own time, but was revered by later artists who used him and his art as the prime example of matured Chinese art. Gu Kaizhi once wrote, "In figure paintings the clothes and the appearances were not very important. The eyes were the spirit and the decisive factor."
Landscape Artwork, Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies, and a political satire painting about Empress Jia (written by Zhang Hua) attributed to and originally painted by the Eastern Jin Dynasty master of art, Gu Kaizhi (lived 344-406 AD)
Eric
The earliest surviving examples of Chinese paintings we have are from the Warring States Period (481-221 BC) and Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD) painted on silk or tomb murals painted on rock, brick, and stone. However, the earliest of these paintings during the late Zhou period were rudimentary, 2 dimensional scenes of mythical creatures and people drawn in the same continual, stylized format, nothing like the people and creatures depicted in the same time period on the intricate 3 dimensional art of ancient Shang and Zhou Dynasty bronze-wares, jade carvings, and the enormous Terracotta Army assembled in life-like men and horses for the tomb of the First Qin Emperor (died in 210 BC). In the ancient Shang, Zhou, Qin, and Han Dynasties, the functions of art were often reserved for purposes of geomancy, funerary rights, representation of the mythological deities and ancestor spirits, in other words, mythological and religious in intent and practice. The First Qin Emperor truly believed that the 8,099 Terracotta men and horses he had thousands working to craft and labor on would serve to guard him in the afterlife.
Warring States painting on silk of a man riding a dragon, Chu State tomb, 5th-3rd century BC:
Western Han Dynasty (202 BC - 8 AD) Silk Banner found in the tomb at Mawangdui
An example of Han Dynasty murals:
Tomb murals of horse-riders on a hunt and outing, Wei Dynasty (220-265 AD)
Even after the papermaking process was innovated by Cai Lun of the Eastern Han Dynasty (2nd century), paper wasn't necessarily the material of choice for exquisite paintings (although printed materials from the 9th century onwards on paper would feature inked artwork), as silk scrolls remained the prevalent method for those to express themselves through art. During the Wei and Western Jin Dynasties, mural paintings and painted decorations on silk became gradually more complex, but the real revolution in Chinese art (along with the introduction of professional landscape art) came during the Northern and Southern Dynasties Period (317-581 AD). It was during the early 4th century that the once centrally unifying Western Jin state was threatened and then defeated by oncoming northern steppe nomads known as the Xiongnu, who sacked the capital at Luoyang and forced the Jin court to flee south to establish their control over the southern half of China, establishing the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420 AD) at Jiankang (modern-day Nanjing). While culture in the north became a hybrid Chinese/northern nomadic fusion (the military ranks even drawn up opon the standards of nomadic cavalry units), the southern dynasties saw their own cultural flourishing apart from the northerners. It was here at Jiankang (Nanjing) where the social norms and accepted practices/pasttimes of a proper Confucian literati were developed and implemented. The most important sophisticated pasttimes of an upright Confucian scholar or bureaucrat became established as:
1. Writing and reciting poetry
2. Playing the musical instrument of the guqin (ancient Chinese stringed-zither)
4. Writing through fancy calligraphy
3. Painting, whether it be landscape, portrait, etc.
Poetry became so emphasized in Chinese society during the Tang Dynasty, that it was actually made one of the required fields of study to master if one wanted to pass the rigid Civil Service and Imperial Exams in order to become a government official. However, for the purposes of this thread, I'll stick to painting. With a greater emphasis on painting came greater social expectations for one to achieve greater and more sophisticated artistic heights than their contemporaries, and especially their Han predecessors who were avid tomb mural and silken dress/banners/scroll painters. Arguably the greatest artistic painter during this time was the court official for the Eastern Jin known as Gu Kaizhi, who painted his first painting in Nanjing in 364 AD, at the age of 20. Gu Kaizhi was not only popular in his own time, but was revered by later artists who used him and his art as the prime example of matured Chinese art. Gu Kaizhi once wrote, "In figure paintings the clothes and the appearances were not very important. The eyes were the spirit and the decisive factor."
Landscape Artwork, Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies, and a political satire painting about Empress Jia (written by Zhang Hua) attributed to and originally painted by the Eastern Jin Dynasty master of art, Gu Kaizhi (lived 344-406 AD)
Eric
Wow, thanks guys. I have learned more from you here than my professor, sad to say. Let me ask about sculpture in the Han Era. What do you see as the definitive examples and once again is there a difference between East and West? Thanks once again guys.
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