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| Nicole Fielder ('19) |
Each year, the McConnell Center ships off their batch of rising seniors to enjoy the splendors of China. This year, it was our turn. One would think that having three years to prepare might cushion the blow of culture shock, but alas. We had our fair share of struggles. The language barrier proved a challenge not only for the obvious reasons, but also for generating resonance. I had to look to what I already knew about China to lend the sites meaning. What I discovered to be among the most exciting in China was what I used to dread. I took Asian Art History in my first semester and performed so poorly that I chose to retake it this past year. The material was difficult, in large part, due to those same language barriers. But the second time around, something clicked. Understanding the utility and significance of ancient Chinese art helped me get into that cultural mindset. It’s hard for an American to fathom a culture that has existed twenty times longer than our own, and seeing the art they crafted – that has lasted all this time – helped me understand and produced that sense of awe one chases while traveling. Walking into museums and seeing the Shang and Western Zhou bronzes made me giddy. I actually knew what they were and why they were and are important. They were probably the oldest objects I’ve seen with my own two eyes. And they were beautiful.
If you would like to learn more about what made me so giddy, please see below for a brief research paper I wrote on Chinese dynastic bronzes and jade. Think about its intricacy. Think about how advanced their people were. How dignified. How much tumult they have been through. How difficult it must be to balance embracing their past and looking toward the future. Taking Asian Art History and then getting to see some of the incredible vessels that I studied in-depth gave me that sense of awe but also a newfound respect for the Chinese people. I guess that’s what international travel is all about, isn’t it?
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Art in Ancient China often has a ritual or cosmological purpose, and nothing showcases this better than their bronzes. One can find many early dynastic bronzes that were used for ancestor worship, a dominant spiritual theme in Chinese culture spanning centuries. The Ancient Chinese people saw their community as a social contract between all generations, and they strived greatly to please their ancestors in hopes of present prosperity. In order to communicate with their ancestors -- and to send people on to join them -- they employed highly crafted bronze work to demonstrate the gravity of their ritual. These rituals could involve sacrifices of all kinds: wine, food, or even humans. All of this to keep those who had passed on happy in the afterlife. Cast bronze was an integral part of ancestor worship in Ancient China, and this paper will feature bronze pieces from the Shang through Han dynasties, a period starting in 1766 BC and running all the way to 220 AD.
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| Figure 1 |
The primary art piece of this paper is a bronze tripod wine vessel, known as a jia, (fig. 1 -Neave, p. 131) from the Shang Dynasty (dated more specifically to 1300-1200 BC) because so many of its features can be generalized to other bronzes from this time. It does not stand out from the rest, which makes it a great case study. The early dynastic bronzes come in various shapes and sizes, but most perform similar artistic and spiritual services. Ritual objects were known as “li qi.” This bronze has three tall legs and places for a handle and a lid, which implies that it was likely used for serving ancestors heated wine, as was the taste back then, so it has dual utilitarian and ritual purposes. This vessel is just under ten inches, even with its vertical protrusions, but every inch is covered in tiny, intricate, linear designs. It’s divided into registers, and the largest register holds a mask motif that this era is famous for called taotie. The motif is a symmetrical face of some kind of ambiguous animal with intimidating horns and fangs. This “monster mask” can be seen across all kinds of Shang bronzes, and the taotie design morphs along with the subsequent dynasties. It’s timelessness is due in part to its strong tie to ancestral worship because it is theorized that the “monster” could be a composite of sacrificial animals.
The complex taotie design spread across Shang and Zhou bronzes because of their advanced technique called piece-mold casting that saved them time and energy but maintained the high level of precision and artistry of hand-carving. The Sources of Western Zhou History describes the process as follows:
“The first step in the piece-mold casting of an inscribed bronze vessel was the production of a ‘model.’ … After the model had been completed, the next step was to form a ‘mold’ around it … The third step in the process was the production of the ‘core.’ The core, which was to be placed inside the mold to occupy the empty inner space of the vessel, was almost certainly produced by scraping from the model a layer of clay equivalent to the desired thickness of the finished vessel … The result of this multistage pottery process would have been four pieces of mold … [which] would have been assembled in an upside-down position, with the core inserted into the hollow space of the mold.”
Before they poured the molten bronze in, they would insert spacers symmetrically to maintain the distance between the core and the mold. After the product cooled, they would take the mold apart to reveal the bronze. A brand-new piece of art, just like that!
The Shang and Zhou dynasties were somewhat unique in their technique because most other Bronze Age cultures used lost-wax casting (Department of Asian Art) as their method of choice. Lost-wax casting involved “creating a wax model of the finished piece that served as the basis for a clay mold, firing mold and model together, and pouring molten bronze into the openings left by the melted wax.” (Neave, p. 136) Another wine vessel in the textbook -- this one a zun (fig. 2 - Neave, p. 135) -- exhibits the incredibly elaborate design features that lost-wax casting is capable of. Numerous, numerous vines curve all over and around the zun and are even hollowed out around each curl. The wine vessel even boasts dragons on its sides. These mythical beings often represented the heavens by their ability to fly, but also represented earth’s connection to heaven because they could so easily transition realms. The frequency of dragons on ancient Chinese bronzes reiterates the value they placed on spirituality and on things beyond.
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| Figure 2 |
Bronzes became only more intricate over the years. The hill-shaped incense burner, ca. 113 BC, (fig. 3 - Neave, p. 143) found in Prince Liu Sheng’s tomb from the Han dynasty must be among the most sophisticated bronze-work to exist because it is magnificent. Jagged features jut out from the dark bronze mountain but are tipped and swirled with gold. This rich contrast elicits an eerie yet sacred feeling, fit for a tomb. It’s functional too because there are hidden slats between the peaks that release incense to let mist rise off the mountain. If you look closely, there even seems to be human figures among the peaks. These are said to be immortals, as is consistent with the Daoist culture of the time, but also harken back to the historical theme of ancestor worship.
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| Figure 3 |
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| Figure 4 |
Chinese bronzes are inextricably linked to spirituality, but they’re also never alone. Jade almost always accompanies these bronzes in tombs and in rituals. “The few instances where jades have been found without bronze are all disturbed contexts where peasants had opened the find.” (Thorp, p. 46) Prince Liu Sheng’s tomb is perhaps the epitome of the artistic duo. The magnificent incense burner discussed above is almost outshined by the entirely jade suit that the prince was buried in. “Liu Sheng’s suit was made from no less than 2,690 pieces of jade… Each piece was precisely carved and delicately finished so that when sewn together the whole suit would be both close fitting and flexible.” (fig. 4 - Capon, p. 23) Jade is remarkable for the extreme amount of manual labor and precision that carving it requires. It’s value is derived from how challenging it is to produce even more than it is derived from its beauty. Placing jades in tombs seals in the wealth so only the deceased may carry it. The elites such as Liu Sheng were the primary patrons of the arts for this reason. They were the only ones who could afford it. But, at the same time, they interpreted their prosperity as concentrated favor from their ancestors, so they wanted fancy ritual pieces to show their appreciation to them. These extravagant pieces were a way to fulfill their “filial duty,” the responsibility a son has to their parents and ancestors.
Jade was usually found in tombs in the form of cong tubes and bi discs (fig. 5), paired together purposefully to illustrate yet again the connection between earth and heaven. Earth was represented in the squared cong tubes and heaven in the round bi discs -- a stark dichotomy but one never found without the other. Dragons would sometimes be carved on the outer rim of the bi discs to take the illustration of heaven a step further. Jades, like the bronzes, are an essential component to the ancient Chinese visual language for spirituality. Just like the images of heaven and earth, you can’t have a bronze without a jade piece to accompany it.
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| Figure 5 |
Early dynastic China didn’t have a religion that you could easily point to but was instead characterized by a deep respect for ancestors and their power in the present day. The living wanted to communicate with their ancestors to win favor, to thank them, and to celebrate their blessings. They made utilitarian objects like bronze vessels for ritualistic purposes and to incorporate the ancestors into their daily lives. Chinese bronze vessels, along with their corollary jades, served as a link between the earth and the heavenly ancestors. This deeply rooted artistic tradition pervades much of Chinese history and demonstrates the significance that ancestors hold in their cultural heritage.
Nicole Fielder, of Wilmore, Ky., is a member of the McConnell Scholar Class of 2019. She studies political science and economics at the University of Louisville.