Chinese Traditional Painting

Chinese traditional painting dates back to the Neolithic Period about six thousand years ago. The coloured pottery with painted animals, fish deer, and frogs excavated in the 1920's indicates that during the Neolithic Period the Chinese had already started to use brushes to paint.
Chinese traditional painting is highly regarded throughout the world for its theory, expression, and techniques. Different from Western paintings, a Chinese painting is not restricted by the focal point in its perspective. The artist may paint on a long and narrow piece of paper or silk all the scenes along the Yangtse River. It can be said that the adoption of shifting perspective is one of the characteristics of Chinese painting. Why do the Chinese artists emphasize the shifting perspective? They want to break away from the restriction of time and space and include in their pictures both things which are far and things which are near. Also, the artists find that in life people view their surroundings from a mobile focal point. The shifting perspective enables the artists to express freely what he wants.
According to the means of expression, Chinese paintings can be divided into two categories: the xieyi school and the gongbi school. The xieyi school is marked by exaggerated forms and freehand brush work. The gongbi school is characterized by close attention to detail and fine brush work.. Xieyi , however, is the fundamental approach to Chinese painting. It constitutes an aesthetic theory which, above all, emphasize the sentiments. Even in ancient times, Chinese artists were unwilling to be restrained by reality. A famous artist of the Jin Dynasty, Gu Kaizhi was the first to put forward the theory of"making the form show the spirit."In his opinion, a painting should serve as a means to convey not only the appearance of an object, but express how the artist looks at it. Gu's views were followed by theories such as "likeness in spirit resides in unlikeness" and "a painting should be something between likeness and unlikeness." Guided by these theories, Chinese artists disregard the limitations of proportion, perspective, and light.
Chinese calligraphy and Chinese painting are closely related because lines are used in both. The Chinese people have turned simple lines into a highly-developed form of art. Lines are not only to draw contours but to express the artist's concepts and feelings. For different subjects and different purposes a variety of lines are used. They may be straight at curved, hard or soft, thick of thin, pale or dark, and the ink may be dry or running. The use of lines and strokes is one of the elements that give Chinese painting its unique qualities.

Calligraphy

Calligraphy is regarded in China as the art of writing, beautiful handwriting with the brush, or the study of the rules and techniques of this art. As a traditional art, calligraphy occupies the same position as painting in the history of Chinese art and constitutes an indispensable part of the heritage of national culture. In China many people can write a good hand, but only a few of them could become calligraphers. It takes painstaking effort and years of assiduous practice to qualify oneself as an artist in this field. Like script, Chinese calligraphy began with the hieroglyphs and, over the long ages of evolution, has developed various styles and schools. Chinese scripts are classified into five catogories: the seal character (zhuan), the official or clerical script (li), the regular script (kai), the running hand (xing) and the cursive hand (cao). The zhuan script was the earliest form of writing after the oracle inscription. However, it lacked uniformity and many characters were written in variant forms, so it must have caused great inconvenience. The first effort for the unification of writing, it is said, was made during the reign of King Xuan (827-782B.C.) of the Western Zhou Dynasty. The taishi (grand historian) Shi Zhou compiled a lexicon of 15 characters to standardize Chinese writing under script called Zhuan. This script, often used in seals, is translated into English as the seal character, or as the "curly script" after the shape of its strokes. When Emperor Qin Shi Huang unified the whole of china under one central Government in 221 B.C., he ordered his Prime Minister Li Si to collect and sort out all the different systems of writing used in different parts of the country in an effort to unify the written language under one system. What Li did, in effect, was to simplify the ancient zhuan (small seal) script. Today the most valuable relic of this ancient writing in the creator Li Si's own hand was engraved on a stele standing in the Temple to the God of Taishan Mountain in Shandong Province. The lishu (official script) also came into existence in the Qin Dynasty (221-207B.C.), in the wake of the xiaozhuan. Although the xiaozhuan was a simplified form of script, it was still too complicated for the scribers in the various government offices, because they had to copy an increasing amount of documents. Further simplification of the xiaozhuan was made by changing the curly strokes into straight and angular ones. A further step away from the pictographs, it was named lishu because li in classical Chinese meant "clerk" or "scriber". The lishu was very close to, and led to the appearance of, kaishu-regular script. The oldest existing example of this dates back to the Wei Dynasty (220-265). The standard writing today is square in form, non-cursive and architectural in style. The characters consist of a number of strokes based on a total of eight kinds-the dot, the horizontal, the vertical, the hook, the rising, the falling, the right-falling, and the bending strokes. Any aspirant for the status of a calligrapher must start by learning to write a good hand in kaishu. On the basis of lishu evolved canshu (grass writing or cursive hand), which is rapid and used for making quick but rough copies. This style is subdivided into two schools: zhangcao and jincao. It is the essence of the caoshu, especially jincao, that the characters are executed swiftly with the strokes running together. The characters are often joined up, with the last strokes of the first merging into the initial stroke of the next. They also vary in size in the same piece of writing, all seemingly dictated by whims of the writer. The xingshu or running hand is something between the regular and the cursive scripts. When carefully written with distinguishable strokes, the xingshu characters will be very close to the regular style; when swiftly executed, they will approximate to caoshu. Chinese masters have always compared with vivid aptness the three styles of writing-kaishu, xingshu, and caoshu - to people standing, walking and running.

Zhuan Shu Cao Shu Li Shu Kai Shu WeiShu xing shu

Seal-cutting

Seal-cutting is a unique part of the Chinese culture heritage. It is traditionally listed along with painting, calligraphy and poetry as one of the "four arts" which an accomplished scholar is supposed to master. The art dates back about 3,700 years to the Yin Dynasty and originated from the cutting of oracle inscriptions on tortoise shells. It flourished in the Qin Dynasty, when people engraved their names on utensils and documents (of bamboo and wood) to show ownership or authorship. Out of this grew the cutting of personal names on small blocks of horn, jade, or wood, namely, the seals as we know today.
As in other countries, seals may be used by official departments as well as private individuals. From as early as the Warring States Period (45-221 B.C.), an official seal would be conferred as token of authorization by the head of state on a subject whom he appointed to a high office. The seal, in other words, stood for the office and the corresponding power. Private seals are likewise used to stamp personal names on various papers for purposes of authentication of as tokens of good faith.
Characters on seals may be cut in relief or in intaglio. The materials for seals could be wood, stone, horn, red-stained Changhua stone, jade, agate, crystal, ivory, or even gold.
Seals cut as works of art should be remarkable in three aspects-calligraphy, composition and the engraver's handwork. The artist should be good at writing various styles of the Chinese script. He should know how to arrange within a small space a number of characters-some with many strokes and others with very few-to achieve a graceful effect. He should also be familiar with the various materials -stone, brass or ivory-so that he may apply the cutting knife with the right exertion, technique, and even rhythm.