DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68516#0152
CHINESE ART
slow ponderous dull-witted aggressiveness of the bovines. This attains a
very high level of plastic imagination, with its large clear formulation of
the essential structure and the rhythmic unity of the movement. But
the peculiar interpretative power of the Chou artists is most clearly seen
in the grasshoppers (158). I know no other people who could carry
forms to such a pitch of stylistic generalization and abstraction and yet
keep their animals alive. For the most part conventionalized natural
forms become dead decorative formulae, but these insects are intensely
alive. The secret no doubt lies in an intuitive sense of what characters
must be retained and amplified and what can be left out. It lies too in
the refusal to give mechanical precision even to the most Euclidian
abstractions. Look at these antennae, which almost seem to vibrate:
though they are conceived as rectangular abstractions the actual line
and surface is everywhere tremulously sensitive. It is this peculiar
tension between controlling intelligence which establishes unified
structural design, and of the free vital rhythms which belong to our
unconscious gestures which gives to Chou art its almost mysterious
evocative power.
CHTN AND HAN
WITH A DIGRESSION ON SCYTHIAN ART
During the fourth century b.c. the Ch‘in dukedom, which had remained
somewhat separate from the central Chinese federation, developed to a
high degree its military power, and round about 300 it began to
supplant the Chou lords as the predominant power. It was at about this
time that the Chou style, which had been becoming progressively more
and more sophisticated and refined, underwent a sufficiently marked
change to entitle us to speak of a new style. This we call Chfin1, because
it begins with the Ch‘in political power, but it began before the founda-
tion of the Ch‘in empire by the great leader and administrator Shih
Huang Ti in the third century and probably continued into the period
1 It is now generally called Third Phase, or Han Valley style.
< 116 >
slow ponderous dull-witted aggressiveness of the bovines. This attains a
very high level of plastic imagination, with its large clear formulation of
the essential structure and the rhythmic unity of the movement. But
the peculiar interpretative power of the Chou artists is most clearly seen
in the grasshoppers (158). I know no other people who could carry
forms to such a pitch of stylistic generalization and abstraction and yet
keep their animals alive. For the most part conventionalized natural
forms become dead decorative formulae, but these insects are intensely
alive. The secret no doubt lies in an intuitive sense of what characters
must be retained and amplified and what can be left out. It lies too in
the refusal to give mechanical precision even to the most Euclidian
abstractions. Look at these antennae, which almost seem to vibrate:
though they are conceived as rectangular abstractions the actual line
and surface is everywhere tremulously sensitive. It is this peculiar
tension between controlling intelligence which establishes unified
structural design, and of the free vital rhythms which belong to our
unconscious gestures which gives to Chou art its almost mysterious
evocative power.
CHTN AND HAN
WITH A DIGRESSION ON SCYTHIAN ART
During the fourth century b.c. the Ch‘in dukedom, which had remained
somewhat separate from the central Chinese federation, developed to a
high degree its military power, and round about 300 it began to
supplant the Chou lords as the predominant power. It was at about this
time that the Chou style, which had been becoming progressively more
and more sophisticated and refined, underwent a sufficiently marked
change to entitle us to speak of a new style. This we call Chfin1, because
it begins with the Ch‘in political power, but it began before the founda-
tion of the Ch‘in empire by the great leader and administrator Shih
Huang Ti in the third century and probably continued into the period
1 It is now generally called Third Phase, or Han Valley style.
< 116 >