CHINESE ART.
The Chinese undoubtedly reached a high degree of culture earlier than
all the historical nations, and still they are in a state of civilised
infancy. They possess reliable historical records referring to periods
when branches of the Aryan group of humanity were still nomads. They
knew that our globe is flattened at the poles, at a time when we
thought it to be a square supported by pillars; they were acquainted
with the properties of the magnet-needle; worked metal; cultivated
the mulberry-tree, systematically fed the silk-worm with its leaves,
weaving its product into the very best silk. In pottery they have
attained the greatest perfection so far as the material is concerned.
In engineering they were not less clever. They have aqueducts, executed
with great daring; innumerable bridges span their rivers; they drained
and irrigated the land at a time when other people assumed a universal
deluge; and yet they remained babies in thoughts and customs, whilst
they grew older and older in age. They have all the manners of
precocious children with prematurely aged faces. This phenomenon can
be explained in figures. There are 400,000,000 of Chinese, nearly all
Turanians. Taking an equal number of Aryans, we shall find that they
are not less than 3,400,000,000 cubic inches short of brain, of which
each inch represents a certain amount of intellectual force. This
deficiency in ‘brain-force’ shows itself in their totally different
development, and the stationary character of their institutions. They
ingeniously _play_ in science, art, politics, and religion. 4,500 years
ago they reached a high degree of civilisation, and they remained
stationary in their civilised childhood, which they preserve with a
pious veneration. To look back, to believe that the past was better
than the present, has become the static law of China, and has checked
every progress. Their language is agglutinative, only one degree
higher than the savage monosyllabic, and forms a link between this
and the flexible languages. The 450 monosyllables are used to form
1,230 word-sounds, out of which they compose from 40,000 to 60,000
compounds. They cannot pronounce certain consonants, resembling in this
some badly-taught European children. They say: ‘Yoo-lo-pa’ instead of
Europe; ‘Ya-me-li-ka’ instead of America; ‘Ma-li-ya’ instead of Maria;
‘cu-lu-su’ instead of crux; ‘Ki-li-tu-su’ for Christus. Their mode of
writing has developed from pictorial signs. They preserved these; and,
although arbitrary characters have supplanted picture-writing, or
hieroglyphs, they still retain the clumsiness of this form, and have
for every word a special sign.
Notwithstanding these drawbacks they possess an encyclopædia in 5,000
volumes, and a collection of works of fiction amounting to 180,000
volumes. They can boast of a Socrates in Confucius, of a Plato in
Mem-tsu, and of a Xenophon in Tsem-tsu.
Five is with them a holy number: they had five emperors during their
Golden Age; there are five great principles on which they base the
possibility of a regulated social existence, viz. humanity, justice,
conformity, uprightness, and sincerity. They have five holy books: the
Shoo-King (political precepts); the Y-King (a philosophy of emanations
based on figures); the Shi-King (a collection of didactical odes and
songs about 3,000 years old); the Li-King (a record of ceremonial
customs and social manners); and the Yo-King (a book on music,
regulating harmony on the most discordant principles). They have five
domestic principles, five elements, five primitive colours, five
seasons of the year, five ruling spirits, five planets, five points
of the compass, five sorts of earth, five different precious stones,
five degrees of punishment, five different kinds of dresses; and their
whole principle of ornamentation is based on five points [Illustration:
(five points forming a rectangle with one point in the middle)]. By
uniting these five points they produce that ingenious system for the
conventional treatment of flowers and animals, which has been divided
by Owen Jones into--
_a._ The continuous stem system;
_b._ The united fragmentary system; and
_c._ The interspersed fragmentary system.
In these three systems they observe the natural laws of radiation and
tangential curvature.
But in all their works of art appears the spectre of childishness, with
wrinkles in its withered face. Their patterns in textile art are such
as some people delight in for the sake of their quaint originality.
They altogether neglect the laws of ornamentation; and we never know
whether in ornamenting a vase they did not intend to dress a Chinese
lady for a tea party, or whether in dressing a high-standing mandarin,
or a lady in stiff brocade, they did not intend to ornament one of
their peculiarly-shaped tea-pots. In fact their vases are ladies in
brocade dresses, whilst their gentlemen and ladies look like ambulatory
vases. We often see on a lady, ‘doves as big as bustards, cooing;
flowers and trees growing on plates and vases upside down, and inside
out.’ We see a mandarin strutting about, adorned with an embroidered
tree with fifty different foliages. One screen is decorated with fishes
with feathers, another with birds with fins, or monstrous dragons creep
on the ground or fly in the air. Everything in art is done as it ought
not to be done. It is as if some merry and mischievous hobgoblin had
instructed the Chinese to make up a kind of artistic patchwork out of
all the odds and ends of ornamental fancies, distorted figures, and
incomprehensible combinations.
Their towns look like large encampments of nomad hordes, ready at
a moment’s notice to take up their tents and run away. Though they
have constructed a huge wall, which is 25 feet thick at the base,
diminishing to 15 at the platform, provided at distances of 100 yards
with towers about 40 feet square at the base, diminishing to 30 at the
top, and about 37-48 feet in height; though they have carried this over
the ridges of lofty hills (one of them 5,000 feet above the level of
the sea), and led it through the deepest valleys, or upon arches over
rivers--their architecture is still in its very infancy. It is a kind
of toy-architecture. The walls of their houses may be pulled down, and
the houses still remain standing. For architecture with the Chinese
is in no way an organic total; it is not even a chemically-united
composition; but a mechanically-joined something, without any ruling
and connecting idea. Contrary to all rules of good architecture, they
express in their constructions the principle of the separation and
independence of the active elements of the building, instead of their
union and harmony. It is variety without unity. Their walls are mere
screens in bricks or wood, mere frameworks for tapestry. The wall
with them does not support; it appears movable and totally distinct
from the roof. The scaffolding which supports the horizontal, as also
the vertical enclosures, belongs more to textile than to tectonic art
The Turanian is still addicted to fascine work, like the pre-historic
lake-dweller, or our contemporary aboriginal New Zealander. The
divisions in the interior of the house are movable; either consisting
of real carpets, lattice-work, wooden-jointed leaves, or boards,
ornamented to imitate carpets or movable screens. Imitations of
flowered woven-stuffs, lacquered panels with impossible perspectives,
bamboo tress-work, with protruding knobs, carved and turned into
gaping and grinning fantastic monsters, are also among the principal
characteristics of Chinese architectural ornamentation. Chinese
trellis-work has a fairy-like appearance. The patterns are infinitely
varied, either closely fitting or perforated, dividing and enclosing
spaces, surrounding terraces as railings, running up the staircases, or
forming large borders between column and column.
The trellis-work of the Chinese may be divided into three classes:--
1. The bamboo _wicker_-work, a close imitation of textile fabrics; in
fact, woven wood-work.
2. The _lattice_-work, a kind of transition or metamorphic work between
trellis and cross-barred work. The patterns are of a grosser kind.
3. The _mixed_-work, a combination of the two classes.
The first is generally used in ornamenting the interior of the
basements of the houses. The natural bright yellow tint of the bamboo
is either left, or it is lacquered in variegated colours to heighten
the effect of the patterns.
The lattice-work is used for door and window-frames. In the latter case
the holes are filled up with transparent shells, coloured paper, or
painted glass, which has been in use since 3000 B.C.
The mixed-work runs along the walls, forming a frieze of gilt metal
or alabaster. The last-named material is employed in summer-houses
as a finish to the outer space, connecting bright red or light blue
columns. When thus used the effect is undoubtedly charming. The roofs
are tinted dark green, an unconscious reminiscence of by-gone times,
when they were made of the leafy branches of trees or the broad foliage
of plants. The dark azure of heaven shining through the perforated
trellis-work, contrasting with the white marble of the substructure and
the red columns, forms a combination both striking and agreeable. The
upper parts of a building appear to swim in the air.
The brick walls of the Chinese are bare of stucco; the void
predominating. They use the walls either as enclosures for court-yards,
as isolated protecting walls before the entrances of houses--reminding
us of the gates of India or the propylæa of Egypt--as substructures,
or as enclosures and partitions for dwelling-places. All these
walls are constructed of air-dried, fire-baked, or glazed tiles and
bricks. The latter are only used for temples or imperial buildings.
Whilst we possess a Board of Public Works that unfortunately has
no administrative power, and cannot prevent our thoroughfares
from being constructed according to the principles of a most
inveterate symmetrophobia (hatred of all order, shape, style, and
homo-geneousness), the law in China goes so far as to regulate even
the use of building material, not according to any esthetical rule,
but pandering merely to rank and class interest. White marble may only
be used for imperial substructures, the enclosure of imperial courts,
and in the construction of imperial bridges, and must never be used
as wall-decoration. Their cement for coating walls is like ours; the
stucco flat coloured, and the colours mixed with the plaster before
laying on. According to his station in the State, the owner of a house
may surround it with a wall of clay or lime, or with one of air-dried
or fire-baked bricks. Only the walls of princes may have stone plinths.
The encircling walls of imperial palaces have a roof of bright yellow,
and light-green glazed tiles. The Tshao-Pings, or protecting walls,
placed before the entrance doors of houses, like screens before our
fire-places, have large protruding plinths. They differ in colour
according to the rank of the owner. Generally they are white, with
painted ornamentation. Before the houses or palaces of princes the
colours are red with gold, and the covering green or yellow. Before
_Miaos_, temples of honour, they are nearly always of bright yellow.
The outer walls are mostly white, decorated with incrusted landscapes
or other conventional decorations. The inner walls are red and richly
ornamented with gold; they have a kind of frieze ornamented with
trellis-work, so as apparently to detach the support from the supported
roof. In the houses of the higher classes the walls are decorated with
damask, and in those of the commoners with paper-hangings, which latter
we have adopted. Drapery is also freely used, hanging down and serving
to divide the interior spaces of the houses. Doors and windows are
still formed of curtains, as in the primitive times of civilisation in
Assyria, India, and Babylon.
We are all acquainted with the excellence of Chinese silk-weaving,
interspersed with golden threads, as also with the brightness and
originality of some of their patterns, whenever they keep to an
imitation of nature in their floral forms. They are generally,
however, too realistic, the material not unfrequently appearing like a
botanist’s herbarium, or like a collection of butterflies or stuffed
birds. Their embroidery is not less old than their silk-weaving. As
early as 2205 B.C. in their statistical records (numbering about 4,768
volumes) gold, silver, copper, ivory, precious stones--_five sorts of
pigments_ of mineral extraction--silk, hemp, cotton, weavings of these
materials, and the feathers of all sorts of birds are mentioned. The
woven stuffs are of one colour. Silk is either red, black, white, or
yellowish, weaving in colours not being known. The frequent mention
made of birds’ feathers may serve as a proof that they were used for
embroidery, which in primitive times was more an ‘opus plumarium’ than
embroidery proper, which is the forerunner of the art of painting.
Feather crowns, kilts, and dresses are still in use amongst the savages
of our own times. The colours are given by nature, and suit the
grotesque taste of the undisciplined mind by their bright variegations
and incongruities.
The oldest Chinese embroidery in colours was perfectly plastic. The
plants, flowers, animals, and even figures, formed a polychromatic
relief on the flat surface of the stuff. This style is still
fashionable in China, though, instead of feathers, artificially
coloured threads are used, always so as to make the objects appear
raised from the surface. Even at present life-size figures in relief,
or whole scenes, are executed with the needle in brightly-coloured
silk threads. We are here involuntarily reminded of the reliefs of
Nineveh, and we may assume that they are nothing but a transformation
of embroidery into stone or alabaster.
The dresses, furniture, saddles, tea-pots, shoes and boots, jackets,
covers, weapons, doors, and windows of the Chinese are all
ornamented with patterns which have had their origin in this kind of
relief-embroidery, traces of which are found even in their lacquered
and keramic products.
The roofs of their houses are curved and drawn up like their features;
they are copies of lids of baskets, tea-caddies, urns, or of caps and
hats. The protruding parts are richly ornamented with dragons. The
dragon with the Chinese is the prototype out of which man developed;
the dragon is therefore the symbol of the imperial power.
Whilst the Chinese are altogether deficient in painting, because they
have no idea of perspective or shading, they certainly excel in the
technical treatment of keramic works of art, especially in the paste,
which they make of kaolin, a decomposed feldspathic granite. The forms
of their genuine pottery are most primitive in outline; dishes, cups,
plates, and bowls are cylindrically shaped, as are their bottles and
jars. Our South Kensington Museum abounds in specimens illustrating
this.
Sharp naturalism and an exact reproduction of the forms of nature,
without any skill in the conventional treatment of flowers, creepers,
leaves, stems, fruits, and animals, prevail in all Chinese and Japanese
works. The artist, if he intends to work in the Chinese style, must
divest himself of all considerations for the higher esthetical
principles of art; he must stoop to the tastes and delights of
children, must study thoroughly their every-day customs and manners,
enter into their mode of thinking, try to make the quaint quainter,
and the grotesque still more grotesque. A big sun with thick rays in a
corner to the right; some sharply-drawn trees in the middle; a bridge
up in the clouds with a dog running over it; some children with large
heads playing to the left; a bright stream marked with rough waves,
through which fishes are peeping; the whole excellently finished so
far as the lacquered work goes--and a Chinese tray is complete. The
coloured enamel on keramic works, and their lacquered or varnished
ware, notwithstanding their unimaginative naturalism and monstrously
fantastic delineation, surpass anything we are capable of producing in
the West of Europe. Their magnificent folding-screens, trays, tubs,
wash-hand basins, toilet-cases, work-tables, perfume-cases, frames for
looking-glasses; their jewel-tables--full of little drawers, secret
nooks and corners, puzzling openings, and hidden shuttings--are so
many additional proofs of their childish nature. They use the fret,
which they have in common with the Mexicans, Peruvians, and Greeks.
Whilst, however, the latter arrived at a continuous system of fret
ornamentation, the Chinese still use it mostly fragmentarily, either
one link after the other, or one above the other, without forming a
continuous ornament.
We see in the Chinese one of the most interesting phenomena in
the history of mankind, whether we look upon them from a social,
religious, or artistic point of view. They govern their State on
paternal principle, and on the grand rule, ‘Do to another what you
would he should do unto you, and do not unto another what you would
not should be done unto you. Thou only needest this law alone; it is
the foundation of all the rest’ (Confucius in the sixth century B.C.),
and yet they have made no progress in sciences and arts. The paternal
government and home-rule check every thought. A moral principle of
the very highest meaning has, as with many of us, worked badly. They
have done unto others what others have done unto them. They cheated
because they were cheated; they told falsehoods because they were
deceived by others; they were hypocritical because others were so too;
and they robbed and plundered others, because they were robbed and
plundered themselves. In this moral chaos they forgot to cultivate
the intellectual force of reasoning; they thus further disturbed
the already deranged equilibrium between morals and intellect. And
though they had gunpowder before the West of Europe, it remained in
the far East of Asia a mere toy to amuse young and old at festivals,
whilst in the possession of Western Europe it became, next to the
art of printing, the most powerful agent of civilisation. They had
paper before the West of Europe; they knew how to print at least
five centuries before Europe thought of re-inventing this Chinese
invention. They are as polite, if not politer, than the most civilised
Frenchman, and are witty and good-humoured. They have no fear of
death; trade with the same skill and perseverance as we; cultivate the
soil with even greater industry and ability than we; so that their
territory, about equal in extent to the whole of Europe, looks like
one great well-drained and irrigated garden, in which no spot which
can yield some return for assiduous labour is left uncultivated. There
is amongst the 400,000,000 of subjects of one single emperor not
one who cannot read and write. All places in the administration are
assigned after a severe competitive examination, and still they lack
the capacity of self-conscious, independent reasoning both in science
and art. They can paint a tiger-skin with such truthfulness that it
appears a real skin, framed under glass; but in the conception and
reproduction of the head of the ferocious brute, with its bloodthirsty
jaws and its merciless cruelty, they altogether fail. They have an
aversion to a proportionate division of space; they never attempt to
counterbalance their artistic ideas, and to arrange them according to
a law. They abhor spiritual, imaginary, and all higher intellectual
culture to such a degree, that they concentrate all their powers on
mere technicalities. Therefore they have remained stationary, whilst
others, who began their self-conscious national existence thousands
of years later, have left them far behind. The Chinese sacrifice
everything to preconceived ideas of custom--in morals, science, and
art. As our forefathers did, let us do also. The result of this
principle has been that curious, grotesque, and ingenious, but above
all childish art, which we must study as the link between savage and
Aryan art. Whilst the Negro scarcely went beyond geometrical figures,
we find the Turanian already capable of using plants and the lower
kinds of animals in ornamentation, in addition to geometrical figures.
As soon, however, as he approaches beings, in whom proportion, action,
and expression, as the higher elements of form, prevail, he loses his
power of reproduction altogether.
Matter-of-fact prose is the element of the Turanian; he is without
every higher artistic feeling, because his mode of writing, speaking,
and thinking, his religious, social, and political organisation, has
till lately checked all expansion of the imagination, and the use of
the intellectual faculties. Art with him has remained undeveloped, and
however interesting his products may be, they form only a subject for
our curiosity and perhaps momentary fashion, showing what humanity at
large did when in its _infancy_.