Asian Art. Chinese art traditions are the oldest in the world,
stretching back 7,000 years. Potted wares and jade carvings were being
produced by the late Neolithic Period. During the Shang dynasty the art
of Chinese writing developed and techniques of bronze casting became
quite advanced. The earliest extant Chinese paintings date from the Chou
dynasty and the origins of the distinctive bracketing system that characterizes
Chinese architecture also appeared at this time.
The earliest art items discovered in Central Asia were found in
Siberia and western Turkistan, about the 13th millennium BC.
In the Asian art some figurines are elegant, slender women, others heavy,
corpulent ones. Of five found at Buret, one is unusual in that it is of
a clothed woman wearing a one-piece trouser suit with a hood.
East Asia art comprises China, Korea, and Japan. Some studies of
East Asia art also include the cultures of the Indochinese peninsula and
adjoining islands, as well as Mongolia to the north. The logic of this
inclusion is based on geographic definition as well as a recognition of
the acceptance of Buddhism by many of these cultures. China, Korea, and
Japan have been uniquely linked by a common written language.
The asian art tradition became identified with the artists and craftsmen
who worked for the court or sold their work for profit. The Asian art
of the literature became refined to the point that, from the Sung dynasty
(960-1279) onward, an assumed awkwardness in technique was admired as
a mark of the amateur and gentleman.
The Chinese painters use brush, ink, and silk or paper, as the calligraphers.
It is admirable the expressiveness of the brushstroke and the harmonious
rhythm of the whole composition. Painting in China, is essentially a linear
asian art. The painters were concerned less with striving for originality
or conveying a sense of reality and three-dimensional mass through such
aids as shading and perspective, concentrating instead on transmitting
to silk or paper, through the rhythmic movement of the brushstroke, an
awareness of the inner life of things.
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