Chinese art history

bronze fangding featuring liewen design made at the end of the shang period

Fang: Square wine vessel , Warring States Period

Ding

a bronze ritual cauldron, often either globular (tripod) or squared, called a fangding, on four legs.

oracle bone

an animal bone, typically made from turtle in ancient China, used for divination.

Liewen

literally meaning “thunder pattern.”

piece-mold casting

A casting technique by which bronze is made by pouring metal into clay molds that are first formed around a clay model, cut away in equal sections, and then rearranged around the reduced clay model.

taotie

relates to a spirit, an ancestor, derived from the mask.

Jade burial suit bound with gold wire (Western Han Dynasty)

bi

a flat disk with hollowed at center, sometimes with a blank surface or with incised patterns and designs

Cong

pronounced “tsong:” A hollowed jade tube with a squared exterior

dao

means “the path,” the principal concept in Daoism as developed by Zhuangzi (350 – 275 BCE)

Fu Hao

wife of King Wuding in the late Shang whose burial artifacts exemplify the height of Shang period craftsmanship and objecthood

Jade flower

term in Daoist alchemy relating to longevity and eternal life, chief principles of jade as articulated in late Warring States & Han dynasty texts.

Hun and po

The souls that ascends and the soul that descends

Nephrite

a hard, fibrous silicate of varied colors

Kneeling Archer, terracotta (modular) Qin Dynasty

Acrobats, No. 5 (strong man) and No. 2 (upraised arm), terracotta, Pit K9901, Emperor of Qin’s Mausoleum, 3rd century BCE.

Terracotta

means “baked earth” and designates unglazed clay works fired between 900 -1050 C.

Lacquer

toxic sap that becomes reduced to shiny coating that is highly resistant to water, insects, and acid, protecting the works from rot and damage

Stele

stone tablet with inscription, often recording or commemorating a historical event, eulogizing a figure, etc.

A Woman, A Phoenix, and a Dragon, ink on silk, portrtait and mingjing (warring states)

Funerary Banner with the portrait of Lady Dai (Han dynasty)

Auspiciousness

good fortune; foretelling of a successful outcome or situation; positive presence

Correlation

(vs. narration): instead of a mono-directional story, the imagery is present according to conceptual relationships

Microcosm

A vast and multi-faceted space on a smaller scale and in a condensed version

mingjing

“name banner,” is made to indicate the Jiu (body in its permanent home) of the deceased, hung up beside the deceased’s coffin.

Mt. Kunlun

the realm of immortals in ancient Chinese cosmology

Polycentrism

No single center; instead, multiple systems co-existing in one space

Portrait

literally, reproducing a known person’s lifelikeness; conceptually, serving as a representation

Tu

means chart or diagram

Stone sarcophagus of Yuan Mi (d. 523), Luoyang area, Henan province,

Funerary sarcophagus featuring scenes of filial piety, Northern Wei period, ca. 525 CE,

Confucianism

Philosophical system attributed to a historical figured by the name of Master Kong serving as social code

Filial piety

behaving with the utmost respect according to familial rules and codes

Paragons

exemplars

Tuoba Wei

a powerful clan that ruled northern China from 386 – 584 CE, unifying the north in 439.

The Admonitions scroll, Tang dynasty, 3rd century Zhang Hua

Bangti

an identifying inscription or label, next to the images

Handscroll

a painting format that develops in China during the Six Dynasties period in which a horizontal painting unfolds in sections from right to left.

Six Laws

Xie He’s theories on painting, of which the first on spirit resonance (energy transmitted from the artist into the work) was perhaps the most enduring as a focal point.

Thousand-eyed, Thousand-armed Guanyin Bodhisattva, Tang Dynasty, Library Cave, Dunhuang

Bodhisattva

an enlightened being who decides to stay back in the worldly realm in order to help sentient beings reach enlightenment

Buddha

an enlightened being, also the historical Sakyamuni Buddha who lived in India in the 5th century BCE

Dharma

the Buddhist teachings

Guanyin

Literally means “perceiving sound” in Chinese, one of the most popular and important bodhisattvas, and is the bodhisattva of compassion

Mudra

hand gestures that signal various moments of the Buddha’s life, and effectuate certain processes in ritual

Sutra

a Buddhist doctrinal text

Mogao Cave 72, south wall, 9th – 10th century, Dunhuang, China

Chan

Buddhist meditation, which sometimes involves visualization (guan) practices

Ruixiang

a divine image that possesses magical power and can act on its own

Transformation tableau

two-dimensional compositions that encapsulate a sutra’s teachings.

Printed images of the Buddha, Tang dynasty

zhou

means spell or incantation (not unique to Buddhism), and is a catchall word including both mantras (esoteric Buddhism) and dharanis (exoteric Buddhism) utterances.

Frontispiece

illustration at the front of a manuscript