CHINESE AND KOREAN ART BEFORE 1279
Read chapter 10 of CHINESE AND KOREAN ART BEFORE 1279
Examine the guang (fig. 10 5) and consider how its iconography may have related to a ritual-oriented culture in Bronze Age China.
Summarize the main tenets of Confucianism. Then select a work from the chapter that gives visual form to Confucian philosophy and explain how it does so.
Select one of the Song-era Chinese landscape paintings included in the chapter and explain how it may embody Daoist ideals.
Compare and contrast the Chinese seated Guanyin bodhisattva (FIG. 10 19) and the Korean bodhisattva seated in meditation (FIG. 10 27). Define the meaning of bodhisattva, and examine how the artists gave visual expression to the deity s attributes.
Based on examples illustrated in the chapter, identify parallel developments in painting and sculpture from the Han through the Song dynasty.
Sample Solution
The distinct guang, or gong, ritual bronze vessel shape became important by the late Shang period. The interest in representing fantastic animal forms in three dimensions on this handled, spouted vessel with a rectangular cross section, spurred flanges, cover, and a sloping foot reflects a late developmental stage of guang vessels in the early Western Zhou. The front of the lid has a bottle-horned monster head with ears and a wide mouth lined with jagged teeth. At the rear of the lid is a second monster head with projecting dragon-curl horns that seems to be biting the upturned beak of a bird-like creature in its jaws. The guang bronze ritual vessels of Early China were primarily used to house and serve wine during ancestor worship rituals in which the wine vapors were to be consumed by the deceased spirits and the actual physical contents to be enjoyed by the living.
