Sui, Tang and Song Dynasties

"The emperors of the short-lived Sui dynasty (591 -618) succeeded in reuniting China and prepared the way for the brilliant Tang dynasty (618 - 906). Under the Tang emperors, China entered a period of unequalled magnificence.  Chinese armies marched across Asia, prompting an influx of foreign peoples, wealth, and ideas.  Arab traders, Nestorian Christians (members of a sect originating in western Asia), and other travelers journeyed to the Tang's cosmopolitan capital at Chang'an (modern X'ian), and the Chinese, in turn, ventured westward.  The Tang rulers embellished their empire with extravagant wooden structures but all have disappeared due to intentional and unintentional destruction by fire.  Judging from records, however, the Tang buildings were colorfully painted and of colossal size, possessing furnishings of great luxury and elaborate gold, silver, and bronze ornaments."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. I, p. 200

"The last century of Tang rule witnessed the empire's gradual disintegration.  When the dynasty finally fell in 906, China once more experienced the ravages of civil war.  Conflicting claims between rival states went unresolved until the Song dynasty consolidated the country once again, ruling China from their court at Bianjing (modern Kaifeng in Henan Province)."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. I, p. 205

 Carved Buddhas, Guilin, China - post-Han period

  Brightly painted, beautifully carved Buddhas became a common artistic expression as Buddhism increased in influence in the 6th and 7th centuries.  The Longmen and Dunhuang cave complexes in northern and western China, along the Silk Road, each contain hundreds of decorated caves with thousands of carvings. 

Multiple images of the Buddha emerged following the fall of the Han dynasty with the missionary expansion of Buddhism in China.  Among the most popular was that of Kuan-yin, the feminine goddess of compassion, which became another incarnation of the Buddha.  Androgynous elements characterize the transitional period of Buddhist imagery of this period.

 Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Xian, China

 "The pagoda, or tower, the building type most often associated with Buddhism in China and other parts of eastern Asia, is the most eye-catching feature of a temple complex.  It somewhat resembles the tall tower form of certain Indian temples and its distant ancestor is the Indian stupa.  Like stupas, many early pagodas housed relics and provided a focus for devotion to the Buddha as teacher, and to those transmitting the faith.  Later pagodas served other functions, such as housing sacred images."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. I, pp. 207 - 208

 The monk depicted in the statue in the foreground is the monk Tripitaka, one of the central figures in the 15th century Chinese novel, Journey to the West.  The Big Wild Goose Pagoda in the background is the repository pagoda for the Buddhist scriptures which this T'ang Dynasty monk brought back to China from India.  The sculpture is a modern homage to Tripitaka.

Guardian Tomb Figure - Tang Dynasty

Poem Written While on a Boat

 "The horizontal scroll, or handscroll, has a long history as a major format for painting in eastern Asia and was frequently used to present illustrated religious texts.  These scrolls, sometimes exceeding fifty feet in length, were unrolled to the left and re-rolled from the right, with only a small section exposed.  Priests and other teachers often placed large-scale instructional scrolls on special stands and presented them to a small audience.  Other scrolls were more intimate in scale and best viewed by only one or two people at a time.  In later periods, the horizontal scroll also developed as a format for painting continuous landscapes.  Art historians have compared the organization of these paintings to a symphony because of how motifs reappear and moods vary in different sections.  Due to the unrolling/re-rolling process, appreciation of the landscape scroll involves memory, as well as vision, and the format encourages leisurely contemplation."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. I, p. 198

 Summer Mountains - Song Dynasty

 "Landscape painting flourished even before the Tang dynasty.  Daoist nature cults and a new appreciation of landscape themes in poetry provided stimulus for the early development of landscape painting.  Indeed, throughout history, landscape painting played a much more important role in China than in the West because landscapes had significance far beyond being sites of human action in great narratives.  According to prevailing theory in China, landscapes should evoke both humanity's ideal harmonious relationship with the order of the cosmos and nature's potential to transform the human spirit.  The ideal practiced in life meant wandering among streams and mountains, and a shifting, rather than fixed, perspective in painting suggested such a viewing process."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. I, p. 205

 "A landscape can take over the composition entirely in Chinese painting, diminishing or even eliminating figures altogether ...  Artists adopted a more-or-less conventional system for arranging the landscape elements.  A typical Southern Song landscape is basically asymmetrical and composed on a diagonal.  It consists of three parts - the foreground weighted in one corner, the middle distance, and the far distance.  A field of mist often separates these parts from one another.  The painter generally marked the foreground by a rock, which, by its position, emphasizes the distance of the other parts.  The middle distance may include a flat cliff or may be given over entirely to mist or water.  In the far distance, mountain peaks, usually tinted in pale blue, suggest the infinity of space.  The whole composition illustrates how the Song artists used great voids to hold solid masses in equilibrium.  The technique is one of China's unique contributions to the art of painting. ... Such paintings suggest ideals of peace and unity with nature and the Confucian, Daoist, or Buddhist cosmos."

- Gardner's Art Through The Ages, 11th edition, Vol. I, p. 209