Shock versus tradition

In China, the tradition of copying reflects more than a simple reverence for the past; it is an appreciation that beauty has been captured in a fashion worth emulating. Unlike the West, where “the shock of the new” is admired, China values tradition, and its best-selling works often pay homage to, and look like, those made hundreds of years earlier. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/china-art-fraud/ (accessed 31.10.13)

Chinese art explained

For centuries, Chinese and western art led separate lives. Until the Jesuits arrived in China in the 17th century there was no cross-pollination, no western artistic influence on China – or vice versa. Europe imported Chinese silk and porcelain, but no painting or calligraphy. The west was ignorant of Chinese art. And when the Jesuits first brought vanishing-point perspectives to the east, the Chinese made fun of them. In the west, artists worked on wood and canvas; in the east, on silk and paper – after all, a Chinese invention. The Chinese never had a problem putting words into pictures conceptually – very different from the west. Also, western art related to science, from the renaissance onwards, while Chinese art was more influenced by the humanities and poetry. But the west has been slow to recognise the freedom in Chinese painting, its adventurous exploration of a whole gamut of possibilities that western art only tackled in the 20th century. It is a list that includes the ability to see paintings as a process of making abstract marks on a flat surface, as symbolic representations and as a series of gestures. This last came naturally to a culture which thought highly of calligraphy and used the same means – brush and ink – for both. More at http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/sep/29/history-of-china-art Masterpieces of Chinese Paintings: 700-1900; at the V&A from 26 October 2013 to 19 January 2014.

Poetry in architecture

The tradition of Chinese architecture, writes Professor Jiren Feng, originates in the confluence of two streams, the crafts and the literary, but with the craftsmen often partnering the literati as near equals. Moreover, architecture and building in pre-modern China had their own complex, ancient literature concerned with metaphors rather than technical work, using analogy between plant forms and construction, not of look-alike but structurally reasoned. Chinese architecture, then, reflects the rich Chinese poetic tradition, an essential contrast between the path taken by the Western world and that of Chinese civilization. Feng, Jiren (2012), Chinese Architecture and Metaphor, Hong Kong University Press.

Chinese art

"Chinese art has never had any clear orientation. - The Chinese art world does not exist. In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights, anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretence. It is impossible for a totalitarian society to create anything with passion and imagination. - Although Chinese art is heavily influenced by contemporary western culture, it rejects the essential human values that underpin it." Ai Weiwei http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/sep/10/ai-weiwei-china-art-world