DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68516#0164
CHINESE ART
We have seen a tendency to this nightmarish fancy in the Luristan
bronzes and still more in some of the Chou ornamentation, where an
elephant’s trunk becomes a bird’s head and the feet of a monster
become a dragon serpent, showing how free was the circulation of
artistic material all across Central Asia. It has even been suggested that
Chou art or rather Yin art was the real point of origin of the animal
style, and there may perhaps have been several starting-points, the
nomads of the Steppes acting as a clearing house between them.
The bronze torque from Siberia (182) is free from the fantastic
extravagances of the last example, and shows the Scythian artist’s
extraordinary power of deriving a richly decorative design from animal
forms and that not by enlarging upon the details of mane and claws as
the Greek artists did, but by the decisive divisions of the planes, by
emphasis on the fundamentals of the plastic form. But of course the life
of the animal is more or less sacrificed here to the decorative purpose.
But in the bear (183) we see how completely realistic these artists could
be, and yet retain the quality of great style. The realism is not de-
scriptive, it is fundamental and proceeds as it were from within, so that
the plastic harmony, the satisfaction which we get from following the
relations of the planes to each other, seems to come inevitably out of the
inner nature of the beasts. This bear probably comes from the Ordos
region and is perhaps no distant relation to the Ch‘in bear (165).
These two ornaments (28, 29) are also probably from the Ordos and
actually came from China. The one on the left (28), a buckle, shows
how the idea of animal life had so penetrated the imagination of these
artists that they could endow the simplest abstractions with life. The
forms here are restricted to a few vaguely circular forms, and yet the
idea of the two confronted beasts looking out at one is irresistible. And
in the other example (29) (a thin bronze plaque meant to be sewn on to
a garment) there is hardly anything left except just the curious in-
different and unresponsive life of this feeble little newborn creature.
In the two ornaments 184 and 185 I have brought together closely
similar examples of nomad art. The lower one is typical of Western art,
< 128 >
We have seen a tendency to this nightmarish fancy in the Luristan
bronzes and still more in some of the Chou ornamentation, where an
elephant’s trunk becomes a bird’s head and the feet of a monster
become a dragon serpent, showing how free was the circulation of
artistic material all across Central Asia. It has even been suggested that
Chou art or rather Yin art was the real point of origin of the animal
style, and there may perhaps have been several starting-points, the
nomads of the Steppes acting as a clearing house between them.
The bronze torque from Siberia (182) is free from the fantastic
extravagances of the last example, and shows the Scythian artist’s
extraordinary power of deriving a richly decorative design from animal
forms and that not by enlarging upon the details of mane and claws as
the Greek artists did, but by the decisive divisions of the planes, by
emphasis on the fundamentals of the plastic form. But of course the life
of the animal is more or less sacrificed here to the decorative purpose.
But in the bear (183) we see how completely realistic these artists could
be, and yet retain the quality of great style. The realism is not de-
scriptive, it is fundamental and proceeds as it were from within, so that
the plastic harmony, the satisfaction which we get from following the
relations of the planes to each other, seems to come inevitably out of the
inner nature of the beasts. This bear probably comes from the Ordos
region and is perhaps no distant relation to the Ch‘in bear (165).
These two ornaments (28, 29) are also probably from the Ordos and
actually came from China. The one on the left (28), a buckle, shows
how the idea of animal life had so penetrated the imagination of these
artists that they could endow the simplest abstractions with life. The
forms here are restricted to a few vaguely circular forms, and yet the
idea of the two confronted beasts looking out at one is irresistible. And
in the other example (29) (a thin bronze plaque meant to be sewn on to
a garment) there is hardly anything left except just the curious in-
different and unresponsive life of this feeble little newborn creature.
In the two ornaments 184 and 185 I have brought together closely
similar examples of nomad art. The lower one is typical of Western art,
< 128 >