DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.67683#0636
CHINA
442-
tion without crowding and has successfully balanced the mass
on the right with the space on the left.
These paintings are as imaginative and evocative of mood as
Chinese poems. For example:
On Lady’s Table Mountain-top spring snows melt;
By the roadside apricot-flowers bud on tender twigs.
My heart is ready; I long to go. Yet when shall the day be?
Sadly I watch the homeward coach roll over the field-bridge.
— By Yang E-Shih (c. Soo, written when detained in the city').u
From the thick bamboos the last rain-drops drip;
On the high hill-top lingers the evening light.
—By Hsia-Hou Shen (Sth century, znd half).u
This purpose on the part of the Chinese painters to emphasize
the inner significance of things rather than the external ap-
pearance is particularly true of the paintings of flowers and birds.
Probably no people have felt so deeply and so sympathetically
as the Buddhists the unity and harmony of all animate life. The
Zen Buddhists in particular arrived at an expression of this
significance that is amazing in its intimate knowledge of form,
its simplicity and subtlety. It is interesting to note that these
lovers of nature did not personify her forms. The mountain, the
bird, or the flower is an entity with its own attributes as personal,
as majestic, or as delicately graceful as human life, and as im-
portant a member of the universe as man. Hence it was not
necessary to visualize it in terms of man. Technically, these
paintings of the Zen Buddhists are astonishing. Color was
usually abandoned and ink only used, applied with a few quick
but amazingly accurate strokes. Rarely has the world seen such
a marvelous expression, so ephemeral and at the same time so
quivering with life, accomplished with such a minimum of
means.
SCULPTURE
Monumental sculpture was short-lived in China in comparison
with the other arts. When Buddhism began to stimulate life,
sculpture became one of its greatest expressions, reaching a
climax in the period extending from the Wei dynasties until
late T‘ang. Even then and in the Sung period some good work
was produced, but it foreshadowed a decadence.
The influence exerted by Buddhism upon sculpture was a good
deal the same as that upon painting — a fusing of the new ideas
with the traditional native art, creating a product that was
14 Waley, Introduction to the Study of Chinese Painting, pp. 193-94-
442-
tion without crowding and has successfully balanced the mass
on the right with the space on the left.
These paintings are as imaginative and evocative of mood as
Chinese poems. For example:
On Lady’s Table Mountain-top spring snows melt;
By the roadside apricot-flowers bud on tender twigs.
My heart is ready; I long to go. Yet when shall the day be?
Sadly I watch the homeward coach roll over the field-bridge.
— By Yang E-Shih (c. Soo, written when detained in the city').u
From the thick bamboos the last rain-drops drip;
On the high hill-top lingers the evening light.
—By Hsia-Hou Shen (Sth century, znd half).u
This purpose on the part of the Chinese painters to emphasize
the inner significance of things rather than the external ap-
pearance is particularly true of the paintings of flowers and birds.
Probably no people have felt so deeply and so sympathetically
as the Buddhists the unity and harmony of all animate life. The
Zen Buddhists in particular arrived at an expression of this
significance that is amazing in its intimate knowledge of form,
its simplicity and subtlety. It is interesting to note that these
lovers of nature did not personify her forms. The mountain, the
bird, or the flower is an entity with its own attributes as personal,
as majestic, or as delicately graceful as human life, and as im-
portant a member of the universe as man. Hence it was not
necessary to visualize it in terms of man. Technically, these
paintings of the Zen Buddhists are astonishing. Color was
usually abandoned and ink only used, applied with a few quick
but amazingly accurate strokes. Rarely has the world seen such
a marvelous expression, so ephemeral and at the same time so
quivering with life, accomplished with such a minimum of
means.
SCULPTURE
Monumental sculpture was short-lived in China in comparison
with the other arts. When Buddhism began to stimulate life,
sculpture became one of its greatest expressions, reaching a
climax in the period extending from the Wei dynasties until
late T‘ang. Even then and in the Sung period some good work
was produced, but it foreshadowed a decadence.
The influence exerted by Buddhism upon sculpture was a good
deal the same as that upon painting — a fusing of the new ideas
with the traditional native art, creating a product that was
14 Waley, Introduction to the Study of Chinese Painting, pp. 193-94-