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Home > Guides > Art > History of Chinese Art
A history of Chinese art
Part 1 - Neolithic cultures
Around 7000-8000 years ago the ancestors of the Chinese people, until then hunters and fishermen, began to settle down, moving in the valley of the Yellow River and South and North of the Yangzi river, where they began to practice agriculture, horticulture and pottery working. The basin of the Yellow River was the main area of development of Chinese neolithic cultures. Neolithic remains represent the very source of Chinese civilization. Looking at the pottery of the Yangshao culture (5th-4th millennium b.C) the elegance and the appealing lines of later bronzes are already visible. Until now, more than 6000 sites of neolithic cultures have been discovered all over the country, and more than a hundred have been excavated.
Peiligang culture
To the earliest period of the neolithic age belong the sites discovered in Peiligang, in Henan province. According to carbonium 14 dating test, the Peiligang culture goes back to the VII millennium b.C. In Peiligang have been found house floors, cemeteries and pottery with scratched designs, and the introduction on agriculture and stock-farming has been proved by findings of implements for farming and cereal growing, as well as clay images of pig heads. Pottery is mostly red or brown, with scarce decoration. The range of shapes is limited: spherical vases, tubular guans, dings with high feet (see figure on the right). |
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| Above: Hu bottle in earthenware with two handles (Peiligang Culture) |
Yangshao culture
The next stage in the evolution of Chinese civilization is so-called Yangshao culture, that lasted more than two millenniums and had a wide diffusion in Henan, Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia and Qinghai. The villages of Yangshao culture were made up of some tens of dwellings around a central higher building, the public building of the clan. The excavation of some typical sites revealed that Yangshao people had already been living for some time in stable settlements, where they bred animals and produced earthenware artifacts: some objects show traces of finishing by means of slow rotation, and weaving techniques were already known.
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Above: Bo bowl in red earthenware with stylized
"floral" decorations (Yangshao Culture)Left: Ding tripod vase in black pottery, in the shape
of an owl (Yangshao Culture) |
Dawenkou culture
Dawenkou culture is approximately contemporary to Yangshao culture, and is found throughout Jiangsu and Shandong. It produced grey and red earthenware, some of it incised and perforated, usually finished on wheel. Objects in bone and ivory (fish-hooks, combs, hairpins) have been chiselled with extreme elegance. |
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| Right: Gui tripod kettle in a white pottery (Dawenkou Culture) | |
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