Curriculum Materials: Amazing Animals in
Art
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Chinese (T'ang dynasty), About 725 Essays: Questions: |
Background
The very name T'ang dynasty conjures up a vision of wealth, sophistication, and splendor of a kind that no other Chinese dynastic name can evoke. There springs to the mind's eye a picture of richly caparisoned horses, gay clothes, dancers, musicians, merchants of all nations, vast teeming cities into which the wealth of Asia seems to pour in a steady stream. There comes to mind a sense of a robust forward-looking people of education, endowed with a keen appreciation of the arts.1
One of the most vigorous cultural periods in Chinese history, the T'ang dynasty, from 618 to 906 A.D., was an era of expansion, ferment, and prosperity. The major power between the Yellow Sea and Persia, China held widespread influence and traded extensively with countries far beyond its own frontiers. As the largest and strongest power on earth, her trade goods--particularly silks, ceramics, and metalwork--were highly regarded by the rest of the world. During the T'ang, the famous trans-Asian "Silk Road" was at its peak, remaining for centuries the world's greatest trade corridor. Covering over 7,000 miles, the silk routes stretched from India to China--skirting the scorching deserts of Central Asia and ending in the cosmopolitan cities of Chang-an (present-day Xian), the capital, and Lo-yang. Diverse people traveled along these routes, including merchants in caravans bearing exotic luxury items, as well as diplomatic emissaries, monks, pilgrims, and entertainers.
During this period, the influx of foreigners had an invigorating effect on the Chinese intellect and creative spirit. A number of influences entered into T'ang aristocratic life, for example, Indian religions and astronomy, Persian textile patterns and metalcraft, Turkish costume, and horses from Central Asia. The impact of these influences on Chinese art was significant and pottery was one of the art forms clearly affected. T'ang ceramics display the robust vitality, cosmopolitanism, and technical advances that characterize the period.2
Though it was an era of exotic taste, the Chinese continued their long-established practice of placing wood and clay figurines of humans and animals in the burial chambers of the deceased. These articles, which are referred to as ming-ch'i (ming-chee), meaning "spirit articles," were produced to accompany and protect the dead in the afterlife. Hundreds of figures, including soldiers, servants, musicians, tomb guardians, horses, camels, and models of articles used in everyday life, were placed in tombs.
These figures were produced in abundance during the T'ang period, when funeral processions and burials became quite extravagant. In fact, a special imperial government office was created for the production and supervision of ming-ch'i, regulating the number and type of grave objects. The office also regulated the arrangements of funeral processions not only of the aristocracy but of the common classes as well. T'ang funeral processions were relatively festive occasions, as well as somewhat ostentatious gestures of filial piety. Mourners would often carry the grave furnishings, including ceramics, to the tomb while crowds of people stood by to observe the procession. An ancient account relates that some families, in an effort to compete with their neighbors, incurred financial disaster.3 Eventually, an imperial decree issued in 742 set limits on the size and number of tomb pieces allowed, based on the rank of the deceased.
1 Margaret Medley, T'ang Pottery and Porcelain (London: Faber and Faber, 1981), 11.
2 Much of this article is adapted from Robert Jacobsen, "Ceramic Tomb Sets of Early T'ang," Minneapolis Institute of Arts Bulletin, vol. 64 (1981).
3 M. Prodan, The Art of the T'ang Potter (London: Thames & Hudson, 1960), 64.
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