Page 36 - Studio International - October1973

likely to have been greater than archaeologists or the expensive bibelots of a notoriously old-world style, with echoes of the art of the
have believed (the historical tradition vaguely luxurious ruling class. The discovery of two nomads of the north-western steppes which had
claims the whole of China for the Shang tombs at Man-ch'eng in Hopei changed this. made itself felt in China in the fourth and third
dominion) and in this area not every atelier The prince Liu Sheng and his wife evidently centuries BC. Two 'Vast Mountain Censers' of
adhered to the style followed at Anyang. shared the fashionable preoccupation of the bronze, in the form of bowls on a stem covered
T'ao-t'ieh and stylized dragons were the chief upper set with Taoist magic and the alchemical with a design of a rugged mountain full of caves
part of the iconography everywhere, but the pursuit of an elixir of life. One notion was that and wild animals, put us in touch with the
manner of execution varied in provinces distant by plugging the nine orifices of the human body shamanistic concept of the heaven-sustaining
from the capital. The sharp-angled and crowded with jade it might be protected from corruption mountain which was gaining acceptance among
effect of Anyang designs is avoided. in the grave, though quite to what end it was to the sophisticated.
Nevertheless pieces in quite typical Anyang be preserved is not made clear in extant Here all is elegance and nothing is admitted
style have been found outside the capital, literature. that cannot be readily associated with the
whence they have presumably been exported. The prince had himself and his wife entirely interests of an imperial aristocrat, whose
In these variations we descry something of the encased in suits composed of jade tablets, using penchant for wine and women is recorded in the
artistic and political structure of Shang over two thousand for each suit. The result, a Han history. For the hint of the new in art and
civilization. tailoring rather than an artistic feat, is a morbid ideology we must look elsewhere. The few
It is however in the sphere of Han dynasty memorial to aristocrats uninvolved in the representations of persons found in the
art that the most spectacular discoveries have expanding military and political life of the Man-ch'eng tombs are merely ornamental - the
recently been made. Hitherto we have been times, but the bronzes which accompanied the bearer of a lamp, or a censer. But shortly after
chiefly acquainted with the art of the first and pair in their rock-cut chambers throw some Liu Shang's death, in an anonymous grave in
second centuries AD, in which something like a light on the progress of art. As might be Shensi, there were two pottery figurines of
middle-class revolution is to be discerned. Of expected of someone of the prince's social class horses and riders, conceived in a different
the earlier half of the Han dynasty, in the (Liu Sheng was an older brother of the emperor spirit. Realism is attempted in the portrayal of
second and first centuries BC, the products of Wu Ti) taste is conservative. Tall bronze vases the animals, and their riders have not the
government factories, in the form of bronze decorated with cloud scrolls in amalgam submissive air of earlier tomb figures of
mirrors decorated with astronomical motifs, gilding or with insets of coloured glass are in retainers. After 100 BC China was becoming
were familiar enough, but until 1968 we could the pre-Han vein of ornamental art; some increasingly acquainted with the tall and sinewy
hardly visualize the style of palace furnishing outstanding bronze animals still preserve an western horses which were obtained from

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