The History and Spirit of Chinese Art: From Pre-History to the Tang Dynasty

220 Pages·2016·3.409 MB·English

by  Fa Zhang

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A Journey Through the Arts e

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of Dynastic China is
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Art is always a product of cultural evolution. For the old civilization of China, a
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its unique art forms were born out of and constantly shaped by a cultural ethos d

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embedded in the political ebb and flow of a dynastic empire. In The History and
p
i
Spirit of Chinese Art, aesthetics expert Zhang Fa analyzes the the most defi nitive art r
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forms of each historical period, tracing a consistent, though not constant, Chinese o
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metaphysical worldview from time-specifi c works of visual art, architecture, dance
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and music, calligraphy, and literature. In two volumes, The History and Spirit of h
i
n
Chinese Art reveals how sovereigns had manipulated art to legitimize rule, men
e
s
of letters had coped with the vicissitudes of life through aesthetic outlets, and e

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commoners’ folk art had unwittingly infl uenced the artistic mainstream.
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Volume 1 starts with the philosophical origins of Chinese art in prehistoric times, V
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accounts for the imposing style of Qin and Han art works, including the Terracotta l
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Army and mausoleum art in the Tomb of General Huo Qubing, and ends with the m
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symbolic Tang dynasty, which was not only the pinnacle of Chinese poetry but also
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a cultural turning point in Chinese history. :
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m

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Zhang Fa is Professor of the School of Art and President of the Institute of to
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Aesthetic Research, Renmin University of China, and has been a Visiting Fellow y

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of Harvard University (1996–1997) as well as the University of Toronto (2002– o

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2003). He currently sits on the Board of the Chinese Association for Aesthetics h
e
and Chinese Comparative Literature Association. He has published influential
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research papers and books on aesthetics and Chinese art, including The Elements
n
g
of Aesthetics (1999), A History of Chinese Aesthetics (2000), and Art, Literature,

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and the Modernity of China (2002). y
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Chinese Art Studies Z
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The History and Spirit of Chinese Art

The History and
Spirit of Chinese Art
Volume 1
From Prehistory to the Tang Dynasty
ZHANG FA
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Chinese original edition © 2003 China Renmin University Press
By Zhang Fa
English edition © 2016 by Enrich Professional Publishing, Inc.
With the title The History and Spirit of Chinese Art Volume 1: From Prehistory to the Tang Dynasty
Translated by Charlie Ng and Phoebe Poon
Edited by Charlie Ng and Phoebe Poon
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means,
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ISBN (Hardback) 978-1-62320-125-8
ISBN (pdf) 978-1-62320-126-5
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services of a competent professional person should be sought.
Contents
Chapter 1 Permutations in the Ancient World ............................................... 1
Chapter 2 The Grand Ambition of the Qin and Han Dynasties .................. 73
Chapter 3 The Glorious Ambience of the Tang Dynasty .............................. 125
Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 197
Index ............................................................................................................. 207

1
Chapter
Permutations in the
Ancient World
THE HISTORY AND SPIRIT OF CHINESE ART VOLUME 1
As we wander into the realm of Chinese art, trying to trace its course from the
beginning of the Chinese civilization, we need to ask one question: how do we
make out its origins? While it might be easily dismissed as dumb, this question
poses more challenges to historians than one might possibly imagine, for the
history of Chinese art stretched, at the very least, as far back as 6,000 years ago, but
the embryo of Chinese characters, the oracle bone script of the Shang dynasty, only
appeared about 3,000 years ago. And the 60-century timeline here only went up to
黃帝 炎帝
the time of the Yellow Thearch (Huangdi ) and Flame Thearch (Yandi );
女媧 伏
it could be lengthened to 8,000 years if the mystic era of Nüwa and Fuxi
羲
were considered. To the pain of the pursuers, the difficulty of reconstructing the
prehistory of Chinese art is heightened by the rarity of oracle bones and worse still,
the ambiguity of the simplistic writing they bore, which makes the interpretation of
this script an ever-growing arena of debate. The more systematic pre-Qin literature
dating back 2,000 years, which is a rich source of ancient lore, might be of some
help, yet it is inevitably muddled with the passage of time. Modern archaeology
is intrinsically dependent on chance discoveries. Although archeologists like Su
Bingqi and Yan Wenming have contributed to a relatively systematic scholarship
of the vicissitudes of ancient China from 10,000 years ago to 2,000 years ago,
existing knowledge of ancient Chinese art, archaeology, and literature might
well compare with scattered pearls waiting to be threaded by a piece of precious
string. Connecting the sporadic “facts” sourced from archeological and historical
materials, this chapter attempts to present the logic of changes in ancient Chinese art
from around 8,000 years ago to the Axial Age of the Spring and Autumn and Warring
States periods, to illuminate how primitive China gradually evolved into a logical
civilization, and how “Chineseness” is defined in the ocean of world cultures.
Rites: The Kernel of Ancient Art
Archaeological evidence shows that the Upper Cave Men who practiced burial rites
and wore ornaments appeared in China as early as 18,000 years ago, and footprints
of inhabitants from around 8,000 years ago can be found in a vast array of rock
paintings, jades, and painted pottery unearthed. Archaeology offers a wealth of
knowledge regarding the lives of the Chinese ancestors, but it is contemporary
禮
anthropology that holds the key to the mesmerizing treasures of the past: li , or
rites, the kernel of primitive culture.
In human history, rites and rituals are as old as primitive culture, and the world’s
primitive cultures all boiled down to a common root: primitive religion, usually some
form of sorcery performed following a symbolic system of rituals through which
primitive society made sense of themselves and the cosmos. In the prehistoric world,
sorcery encompassed the essence of human society and the cosmos.
2
Permutations in the Ancient World
A semantic decoding of rites
The rites of ancient China can be understood semantically from the roots of the
禮
character li , which appeared in four forms:
(1) (2) (3) (4)

The first pictograph, , is the original form of the character, where the lower
豆
part “ ” (dou ) represents a vessel used in sacrificial rituals; that is, as Late
Qing scholar Wang Guowei explains, a vessel for holding food or drink.1 With
the initial ideograph for rites formed from the food and drink vessel, Chinese rites
were connected to food and drink from the very beginning, giving food and drink
禮記
a significant position in Chinese culture. It is written in the Liji (Book of Rites)
that “in the beginning, li started with food or drink,” and the function of rites was
to “worship the spirits.”2 The choice of materials most typical of the daily routine to
be sacred sacrifices reveals the practical root of Chinese culture back in prehistoric
times, and it is this close tie between food/drink and deities that clothed Chinese
painted pottery and bronzes with splendor.
The fact is food and drink occupies such a centric position in Chinese culture
that it pervades every aspect of life. In China, the popular saying “For the people,
民以食為天
food is heaven” (min yi shi wei tian ) defines the nature of its populace by
eating. Food is just as important at the opposite end of the hierarchical ladder, for
the governance of emperors and kings too is given a culinary metaphor in Laozi’s
Daodejing 道德經: “Governing a large state is like boiling a small fish.”3 In the Zhouli
周禮
(Rites of Zhou), the listings of officials begin with a chancellor who carries the
image of a big chef, while among those serving at the palace, 2,200 out of 4,000 —
which was as many as 60 per cent — were in charge of food.4 In fact, many of the
論語 孟子
ideas in the Lunyu (Analects of Confucius), the Mengzi (Mencius), and
the Mozi 墨子 are explained by food and drink metaphors.5 Moreover, in terms of
etymology, many Chinese terms and phrases allude to the notion of eating. To give
口
a few examples, the idea of population is expressed in connection with kou , the
1. Wang, “Shi li” 釋禮 [An Interpretation of Rites], in Guantang jilin, 291.
2. Dai, Liji, chap. 9; Lin, trans., The Wisdom of Confucius, vol. 2, 457.
3. Laozi, Daodejing, chap. 60; Lau, trans, Tao Te Ching, 87, line 138.
4. Zhouli, chap. 1.
5. See Chang, “Food and Food Vessels in Ancient China,” 496–97.
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