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Chinese Art
Early forms of art in China were made from pottery and jade in the Neolithic period, to which was added bronze in the Shang Dynasty. The Shang are most remembered for their bronze casting, noted for its clarity of detail. Early Chinese music and poetry was influenced by the Book of Songs, Confucius and the Chinese poet and statesman Qu Yuan. Early Chinese music was based on percussion instruments, which later gave away to string and reed instruments. Chinese furniture began its development around 1500 AD, generally made of softwood or bamboo.
In early imperial China, porcelain was introduced and was refined to the point that in English the word china has become synonymous with high-quality porcelain. Around the 1st century AD, Buddhism arrived in China, though it did not become popular until the 4th century. At this point, Chinese Buddhist art began to flourish, a process which continued through the 8th century. It was during the period of Imperial China that calligraphy and painting became highly appreciated arts in court circles, with a great deal of work done on silk until well after the invention of paper.
Buddhist architecture and sculpture thrived in the Sui and Tang dynasty. Of which, the Tang Dynasty was particularly open to foreign influence. Buddhist sculpture returned to a classical form, inspired by Indian art of the Gupta period. Toward the late Tang dynasty, all foreign religions were outlawed to support Taoism.
In the Song Dynasty, poetry was marked by a lyric poetry known as Ci (詞) which expressed feelings of desire, often in an adopted persona. Also in the Song dynasty, paintings of more subtle expression of landscapes appeared, with blurred outlines and mountain contours which conveyed distance through an impressionistic treatment of natural phenomena. It was during this period that in painting, emphasis was placed on spiritual rather than emotional elements, as in the previous period. Kunqu, the oldest extant form of Chinese opera developed during the Song Dynasty in Kunshan, near present-day Shanghai. In the Yuan dynasty, painting by the Chinese painter Zhao Mengfu (趙孟頫) greatly influenced later Chinese landscape painting, and the Yuan dynasty opera became a variant of Chinese opera which continues today as Cantonese opera.
Late imperial China was marked by two specific dynasties: Ming and Qing. Of Ming Dynasty poetry, Gao Qi was acknowledged as the greatest poet of the era. Artwork in the Ming dynasty perfected color painting and color printing, with a wider color range and busier compositions than Song paintings. In the Qing dynasty, Beijing opera was introduced; it is considered the one of the best-known forms of Chinese opera. Qing poetry was marked by a poet named Yuan Mei whose poetry has been described as having "unusually clear and elegant language" and who stressed the importance of personal feeling and technical perfection. Under efforts of masters from the Shanghai School during the late Qing Dynasty, traditional Chinese art reached another climax and continued to the present in forms of the "Chinese painting" (guohua, 國畫). The Shanghai School challenged and broke the literati tradition of Chinese art, while also paying technical homage to the ancient masters and improving on existing traditional techniques.
New forms of Chinese art was heavily influenced by the New Culture Movement, which adopted Western techniques, introduced oil painting and employed socialist realism. The Cultural Revolution would shape Chinese art in the 20th century like no other event in history with the Four Olds destruction campaign. Contemporary Chinese artists continue to produce a wide range of experimental works, multimedia installations, and performance "happenings" which have become very popular in the international art market.
• 771 B.C. The move of the capital east to Luoyang in Henan Province, after the invasion of the nomadic Quanrong, marks the beginning of the Eastern Zhou era, which is divided into two periods: the Spring and Autumn (770–ca. 475 B.C.) and the Warring States (ca. 475–221 B.C.). The latter, when China is divided into smaller, conflicting polities, is a period of technical and artistic brilliance noted for its bronze vessels with decoration inlaid in silver and gold.
• ca. 400–200 B.C. The Daodejing (Classic of the Way and Its Power) is composed. Based on the work of Laozi, this text is one of the foundations of the practice of Daoism (Taoism), a form of mysticism that stresses the union of man with the forces of nature.
• ca. 400–200 B.C. The earliest extant paintings on silk, one showing a woman with a dragon and a phoenix, the other a man with the same mythological creatures, are excavated from sites associated with the state of Chu, centered in the regions of Hebei and Hunan provinces. Noted for its lacquer goods, Chu is one of the more powerful polities in China during the Warring States period. The Chuci (Songs of the South), an anthology compiled during the Han dynasty, contains many poems thought to have originated in Chu and attributed to Qu Yuan (ca. 343–277 B.C.), one of the first individual poets.
• 221–206 B.C. The Qin dynasty—pronounced "chin," thereby providing the Western name China—is established by Ying Zheng (259–210 B.C.), the ruler of a minor polity in the northwest who conquered the six states remaining at the end of the Warring States period. Famous in legend for creating the "Great Wall of China" by uniting several preexisting structures, Ying Zheng, who titled himself Qin Shihuangdi (First Emperor of the Qin), also undertakes several massive construction projects, including his tomb, which is guarded by a lifesize terracotta army of over 7,000 figures. The use of smaller terracotta armies to guard the perimeters of imperial tombs continues for at least a century. One spectacular group of over 40,000 such figures about one-third lifesize is excavated in 1990 outside the joint tomb of Emperor Jingdi (r. 157–141 B.C.) and his wife, Empress Wang.
• 206 B.C.–9 A.D. The Western Han dynasty, named after the location of the capital at Chang'an (present-day Xi'an), is founded after the civil war that follows the death of Qin Shihuangdi. One of the largest cities in the ancient world, the roughly rectangular Chang'an has walls fifteen miles long and houses numerous palaces, administrative and residential buildings, and two bustling marketplaces.
• 141–86 B.C. Under the rule of Wudi ("martial emperor"), China temporarily expands its boundaries as far west as the Pamir Mountains and as far east as the northern part of Korea. Wudi's rule also sees a flowering of poetry, literature, and philosophy and the publication of the 116-chapter Shiji (Records of the Historian) by Sima Qian (ca. 145–80 B.C.), a work that sets the standard for government-sponsored histories until the early twentieth century.
• 100 B.C. Monumental stone sculptures, valued for their aura of permanence, appear above tombs and in other public locations. By the first century A.D., "spirit roads," avenues of stone monuments and figures lining the approach to an imperial tomb, have replaced the terracotta armies common earlier. This practice, which spreads to Korea and Vietnam, continues in China for centuries.
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