Chinese Art

Scroll Art: painting

Pottery

Sculpture

Crafts

Scroll Painting

• Created on paper or silk. Sometimes it had a silk brocade border.

• The Han Dynasty: 206 B.C.E.-220 A.D.-modern Chinese Culture

• Buddhism-the new Chinese religion that is heavily influenced by meditation and multiple life cycles.

• For 2000 more years into the modern era, the Chinese people still consider themselves the Han people and their art is influenced by this art.

Scroll Art: analysis

• What do you see and notice?• Is the art simplified?• Where is the text if there is text?• Why do you think scroll art was created in the

first place?• Does it seem like it’s easy to store and re-use for

another occasion?• What types of media do you think the artists are

using to create these various scrolls?

Scroll Art

• Heavily influenced by painting and completed after numerous hours of meditation.

• Scroll Art is an attempt to capture feelings and moods, not an image.

• Shapes and figures are limited to the bare essentials.

• The artistic lines and shapes capture a mood or feeling.

Landscape Painting

• Images filled with images of people, illustrating the beliefs that people should live together peacefully with respect for their elders.

• The landscapes were influenced by the new religion-Buddhism.

Examples of Landscapes

Gazing at a Waterfall

• What do you see?• Can you find the covered deck or pavilion,

nestled within the hills?• Looking more closely, do you see the small

shape inside the pavilion?• This shape is meant to be seen as the head of a

person.• What type of a statement is the artist making

about the place of humans in nature?

Sculpture

• Similar to the Egyptian tombs, Chinese tombs were filled with objects that the person might use in the after life.

• Most of these objects were various types of sculptures.

• Almost all were animal sculptures.• There were horses and riders found in tombs.

During the T’ang Dynasty, 400 years after the Han dynasty fell, is when sculpture flourished.

Perceiving an Object

• To Perceive: what does this mean in a cultural context?

• The Chinese artists believed one must become aware of objects through the use of their senses.

• The artist think, reflect and study their subjects before creating art so that certain properties of the subject do not go unnoticed.

Perception Activity

• Observe this pine cone for five minutes, silently.• Then, jot down a list after the silent activity.• Notice the object’s lines, form and texture.• Do the lines curve around the form? Is the object

rough or smooth? Are there any shiny highlights?

• Now, draw the object as you perceived it from memory.

Crafts

• During the Sung (soong) dynasty porcelain and craft flourished.

• Porcelain is a fine grained, high quality, that is made of a very rare clay called kaolin.

• This form of pottery that is usually thrown on a potter’s wheel and high fired.

• This type of pottery reached its height during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).

• The blue pigment came from Persia and timing in the kiln had to be precise for the blue to stay blue or it would become brown or black.

Perception of Chinese Pottery

• What type of balance does this piece of porcelain pottery show?

• How can the glazing process go wrong?

• How is it made?

Checking for Understanding

• Name two inventions in art credited to the Chinese?

• What religion was introduced to China during the Han dynasty?

• What is mediation? How is it used in the artistic process?

• What are scrolls?• What art flourished during the T’ang and Sung

dynasties?• What type of art flourished during the Ming

dynasty?

Making a scroll

• You will learn to create a scroll that records an important event that occurred during a walk through nature during the winter in CA.

• Record your senses as you walk along on a piece of paper, using a pencil and paper.

• Make sure to leave large areas of negative space around the edges so that you can develop your scroll.

What you will do…

1. We will walk the school grounds and record our thoughts to develop and idea for each of our scrolls.

2. Look at each thing you see as if it is the first time you are seeing each thing in nature.

3. Stop when necessary to perceive a tree, a leaf or a flower etc.

4. Try to focus on the mood each scene communicates to you. It may come in small details like the texture of the wall or the line of the path.