DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68516#0147
YIN AND CHOU
It seems to me that this Yu (146) decides the question in favour of my
view. It is, you see, intermediate between our first and second examples.
The handle has taken on a broader diameter, which is aesthetic and
non-practical. The decorations are also intermediate, reduced to two
bands but still not quite geometric. The two ears are perfectly explicable
as vestiges, but inconceivable as originating thus and then growing into
great flanges representing birds. The t‘ao tfieh represents the other two
flanges.
Though, if I am right, this belongs to a less highly developed art than
Mr Eumorfopoulos’s Yu, it is the work of a very conscious artist. The
proportions are heavier, less elegant, but there is a marvellous con-
sistency in them in relation to the flatter less curved galb. The flat top
to the lid knob is in some ways a better termination to the plastic
sequences than the round knob of the Yu from the Eumorfopoulos
collection (144).
If one studies a number of these bronzes one is astonished to find how
the very slightest variations are sufficient to give rise to quite distinct
and definite ideas. I know hardly any that are merely repetitive, merely
school pieces; each one seems to be an original discovery by an artist
intensely conscious of his aesthetic predilections and seeking to achieve
complete realization of an idea. Sometimes the absence of a break and
reverse in the curve of the lid produces a quite new effect—that of a
continuous galb containing the whole design; and the decoration picks
up the idea of continuous flattened curvature, avoiding angles and
strong relief, which gives a peculiar unity to the whole volume.
Others are extraordinarily primitive in form and the crocheted
flanges suggest architectural supports like gothic buttresses. Indeed, one
can hardly doubt the intention to suggest a building of which the lid
becomes the roof. This gives an extraordinarily impressive and weighty
construction, eminently evocative of this early Chou culture, already
capable of refinement of aesthetic feeling but still of a terrifying ferocity.
And indeed history contains few such records of wholesale massacre and
torture as marked the internecine struggle of the Chou feudal lords-
< in >
It seems to me that this Yu (146) decides the question in favour of my
view. It is, you see, intermediate between our first and second examples.
The handle has taken on a broader diameter, which is aesthetic and
non-practical. The decorations are also intermediate, reduced to two
bands but still not quite geometric. The two ears are perfectly explicable
as vestiges, but inconceivable as originating thus and then growing into
great flanges representing birds. The t‘ao tfieh represents the other two
flanges.
Though, if I am right, this belongs to a less highly developed art than
Mr Eumorfopoulos’s Yu, it is the work of a very conscious artist. The
proportions are heavier, less elegant, but there is a marvellous con-
sistency in them in relation to the flatter less curved galb. The flat top
to the lid knob is in some ways a better termination to the plastic
sequences than the round knob of the Yu from the Eumorfopoulos
collection (144).
If one studies a number of these bronzes one is astonished to find how
the very slightest variations are sufficient to give rise to quite distinct
and definite ideas. I know hardly any that are merely repetitive, merely
school pieces; each one seems to be an original discovery by an artist
intensely conscious of his aesthetic predilections and seeking to achieve
complete realization of an idea. Sometimes the absence of a break and
reverse in the curve of the lid produces a quite new effect—that of a
continuous galb containing the whole design; and the decoration picks
up the idea of continuous flattened curvature, avoiding angles and
strong relief, which gives a peculiar unity to the whole volume.
Others are extraordinarily primitive in form and the crocheted
flanges suggest architectural supports like gothic buttresses. Indeed, one
can hardly doubt the intention to suggest a building of which the lid
becomes the roof. This gives an extraordinarily impressive and weighty
construction, eminently evocative of this early Chou culture, already
capable of refinement of aesthetic feeling but still of a terrifying ferocity.
And indeed history contains few such records of wholesale massacre and
torture as marked the internecine struggle of the Chou feudal lords-
< in >