Let Us Consider Dragons

 Let Us Consider Dragons 

#dragons #chineseart 

My next sequence of posts will be about Dragons - 龍

You may have seen Dragons painted with cobalt blue in a white background. Its a common motif !

The image above is of a vessel created in the XuanDe Dynasty - an actual antiques and not one of the many modern copies and variants thereof.

However images of dragons appear thousands of years earlier. 

These are Oracle Bone characters.

Note the shape and size of the head. Jaws and a Crest or a Long head are always emphasized.

As in this Han Dynasty image 

Join me next time for more dragon images. Not just Chinese! I've also found dragons from Japan Korea and Vietnam to share with you. 

 

Chinese Art and BUGS

The Chinese were probably the first printmakers to feature butterflies moths and other insects on woodblock prints even before the Japanese!

More images from this subgenre of "birds and flowers" to come !

Shen Zhou Dove Painting

#shenzhou #ming #dove #painting #chineseart

For our next YEAR of the BIRD  sequence our avain will be the DOVE starting with this Chinese Painting by Shen Zhou from the Ming Dynasty. He is usually cited in art history texts as a landscape painter but he worked with other themes too!

DEHUA GUANYIN

#dehua #guanyin #kuanyin #sculpture #ceramic #chinese

I know you can see dozens of variants on white robe kuanyin in the shops but there was a time these were technical innovations.

Here's an excellent example from the #AGNSW  Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney.

It works in the round the fine detail on the stool counterbalances the broader drapes and the buddhist symbols are a natural extension of the image.

simple elegant meaningful and good sculpture 

the sculptors who created the first white robe dehua kuanyins had a special genius that often goes unpraised due to the mass production of copies

Turtle Sculpture / Vessel

#Turtle #chinese ceramics #chinesesculpture

The site I found this on did not give an exact date though the use of what could be porcelain or a white stoneware clay and a clear or very light celadon glaze suggest TANG at the earliest to me ?

The combination of carved slabs and possibly two thrown bowls joined lead to an overall effect as much sculptural as ceramic and the simple clear lines remind me a lot of larger WEI dynasty sculptures.

I did state in an earlier post I'ld try to find images of unusual images that are not text book examples. Enjoy

DING GALLERY

As promised a Gallery in chronological order showing the #Ding Vessel Shape in Ceramics and Metal over the centuries
#chineseceramics #chinesebronze #ding #vessel #design #chineseart

NEOLITHIC

XIA DYNASTY

Yes these first two probably also developed to the gui and other shapes.

SHANG BRONZE

Spring and Autumn Period 

A traditional style ink painting.

Ming Dehua Ceramic Ding 

Finally DING as a word / character also referred to square vessels sometimes 

Or this 

Usually a Tripod of some kind though!

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Where are the women in Chinese landscapes?

Hands up and on to the Keyboard if like me as much as you like Chinese painting you wish someone would depict a female poet wandering the hills?

Okay so maybe there is a scroll in a private family collection or paintings were burnt during the Cultural Revolution but in the many years I've looked at Chinese art I think I've seen one qing dynasty work of a woman in a library and far too many works of pretty maids and boys serving scholars in gardens or during picnics.

Surely there must have been at least one painter who did a genre scene of women picnicking while visiting family tombs or a womens quarters tea party or daughters instead of sons and could one "contemporary" artist please subvert the One Hundred Children meme by making them ALL GIRLS?

I love Chinese painting but sometimes ...

Chinese Ritual Bronzes Series Two - JIA Images

Two Images of JIA type vessels

Shang Dynasty Bronze

 

View from above of a similar vessel

Qing Dynasty Copy in Jade  of a Shang Bronze 

Chinese Ritual Bronzes Series Two - JIA

Copyright Julie Vaux 2013

Ding Sequence Five

A love of the Archaic

The Chinese have their version of collectors mania the idea any old object is valuable. Realisticly antique bronzes are rusty containers but collectors insist that lovely green oxidation adds to the patina and aura of the antique.

We should remember looking at these that originally they were a far different color! Not GREEN!

One of the favorite subjects for the genre we call still life painting are the scholars treasures often a valued ceramic pot or an image of a table with ink and scrolls and brush rest. This 20th century Chinese painting shows two beloved antique bronzes the round and square forms of the ding.

 Here we have the irony of an semiantique depicting antiques?

Ding however are quite beautiful.

Soon I'll be discussing the jia zun jue and other chinese bronzes.

Ding Sequence One

Once upon a time Neolithic China had tripod ceramic  vessels

then bronze casting technology arrived in the Shang dynasty

Note the distinct shape two handles and three round legs much narrower than the cone legs of ceramic vessels. 

A note for those with no experience of working clay cones are easier to form by hand or wheel than narrow tubes .

Next the character used to write DING.