Society and Culture of The Han Dynasty - Arts and Crafts

Arts and Crafts

Further information: Chinese art, History of Chinese art, Chinese painting, and Chinese ceramics

Artists were classified as artisans since they were nonagricultural laborers who manufactured and decorated objects. The philosopher Wang Fu argued that urban society exploited the contributions of food-producing farmers while able-bodied men in the cities wasted their time (among other listed pursuits) crafting miniature plaster carts, earthenware statues of dogs, horses, and human figures of singers and actors, and children's toys. However, during Eastern Han some scholar-officials began engaging in crafts originally reserved for artisans, such as mechanical engineering. Emperor Ling commissioned the official Cai Yong (132–192 CE) to paint portraits and produce eulogies for five generations of the prominent Yang clan of officials and military officers. This is the first recorded instance in China where a scholar-official was commissioned to write eulogies and paint portraits in conjunction, instead of relying on skilled artisans to do the painting.

Han luxury items furnished the homes of wealthy merchants, officials, nobles, and royalty. Such goods were often highly decorated by skilled artisans. These include red-and-black lacquerwares in various shapes and sizes, bronze items such as raised-relief decorated mirrors, oil lamps in the shape of human figures, and gilded bronzewares, glazed ceramic wares with various incised designs, and ornaments and jewelry made of jade, opal, amber, quartz, gold, and silver.

Besides domestic decoration, Han artwork also served an important funerary function. Han artists and craftsmen decorated the wall bricks lining underground tombs of the deceased with mural paintings and carved reliefs; the purpose of this artwork was to aid the deceased in traveling through their afterlife journey. Stamping artistic designs into tile and brick was also common. Human figurine sculptures found in Han tombs were placed there to perform various functions for the deceased in the afterlife, such as dancing and playing music for entertainment, as well as serving food. A common type of ceramic figurine found in Han tombs is a female entertainer sporting long, flowing silk sleeves that are flung about while dancing. Some ceramic human figures—both male and female—have been found naked, all with clearly distinguished genitalia and missing arms. This is because they once had wooden or cloth arms which were attached to holes in the shoulders by pegs, as well as miniature clothes made of perishable materials such as silk.

During the Western Han, grave goods were usually wares and pieces of art that were used by the tomb occupant when he or she was alive. By the Eastern Han, new stylistic goods, wares, and artwork found in tombs were usually made exclusively for burial and were not produced for previous use by the deceased when they were alive. These include miniature ceramic towers—usually watchtowers and urban residential towers—which provide historians clues about lost wooden architecture. In addition to towers, there are also miniature models of querns, water wells, pigsties, pestling shops, and farm fields with pottery pigs, dogs, sheep, chickens, ducks. Although many items placed in tombs were commonly used wares and utensils, it was considered taboo to bring objects specified for burial into living quarters or the imperial palace. They could only be brought into living quarters once they were properly announced at funerary ceremonies, and were known as mingqi (明器/冥器) ("fearsome artifacts," "objects for the dead," or "brilliant artifacts") according to Cary Y. Liu (Ph.D. from Princeton University, licensed architect and museum curator).

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Famous quotes containing the word arts:

    If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay—in solid cash—the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy.
    Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)