Chinese Design

Chinese Design (2006, Daab)

//soon//

Creativity - When East Meets West

Creativity - When East Meets West by Sing Lau, Anna N N Hui and Grace Y C Ng (2004, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.)

This book gives great insights into Creativity between East and West. Everything's written so well and interesting that i'm tempted to copy whole chapters haha.

The following are sections of the book i find relevant in knowing in regards to my designing for China. There's still more to come too!

p58 3. Conceptualization of Creativity within the Chinese Cultural Context

Conceptualizations of creativity can be described as explicit or implicit. Explicit theories of creativity are consutrctions of psychologists or other social scientists that are based on theoretically derived hypotheses that can be empirically tested (Sternberg, 1985). In contrast, implicit theories are drawn from the individuals' belief systems that exist in the minds of these individuals (Runco & Bahleda, 1987) and need to be revealed rather than invented.

3.1 Explicit concepts of Chinese Creativity

.. Consequently researchers started to search for the historical and indigenous roots of the concept of creativity and to compare Chinese conceptions with those of North American and Western perspectivies. The results of such comparisons led Weiner (2000) to conclude that, "Creativity in the Western sense might be seen as absurb from common Hindu and Buddhist perspectives" (p.160). Bearing in mind that elements of invention and novely, a willingness to reject tradition, orientation on self-actualization, celebration of individual accomplishment, and concentration on the future, are almost inherent to Wester conception of creativity we can easily notice that these elements are foreign to the traditional Chinese ideals of respect for the past, and maintaining harmony with the forces of the nature.

Novelty and inventions understood as attributes of creativity in the Western concept are either non-existent or, at the best, differently conceptulaized in Chinese traditional teaching. Throughout the history of Chinese philosophy, creatibity was perceived as discovering the nature of following "the way" (the Tao), as there was nothing new to create. Thus, those people "who desire creating something new live in ego illusion" (Weiner, 2000, p. 160). The foremost goal of any human activity is to attain harmony with forces which are far greater than humans. Within the Taoist and Buddhist teaching, creatibity was viewed as an inspired imitation of the forces of nature. Creativity was needed for figuring out what respnose was consistent with "the Way", as well as for showing others that one was indeed following "the Way" (Weiner, 2000). Within common Chinese conceptions, the "new" creations such as bronzes, sculpture, ceramics, and paintings came into the being in order to honor "the eternal ways of heaven and nature, the ancestors, and the ancient texts" (Weiner, 2000, p. 178). Such a perception of the motivations and aims of creative effort is strikingly different from the willful quest for novelty inherent to Western creations since the Renaissance.

"Between the Chinese and foreigner of today there exists a distance, but far greater distance exists between the Chinese of today and the Chinese of antiquity, While the former distance will diminish with time the latter distance will lengthen"

- Wu Guanzhong, One of the greatest contemporary Chinese artists.

Learning from China - The Tao of the City

Learning from China - The Tao of the City by Carl Fingerhuth (2004, Birkhaüser)

//yup//

China Art Now

China Art Now by Michel Nuridsany (2004, Flammarion)

//soon//

Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films

Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films by Rey Chow (2007, Columbia University Press)

A snippet from the book i found randomly that interested me:

1 The Seductions of Homecoming

Tempress Moon and the Question of Origins

..Even though it has been an overwhelmingly successful phenomenon worldwide since the late 1980s, contemporary Chinese cinema is habitually greeted by Chinse-speaking audiences with cynicism if not hostility. It is as if the accomplishments of this cinema have an impossible task in returning home. The simple fact that it has traveled abroad and been gazed at with enthusiasm by foreigners is apparently enough to cause it to lose trustworthines as wholly and genuinely Chinese..

With this in mind I believe I shouldn't try too hard to make my product seem authentically Chinese. Could my designed product be a gift to China...? My own ode?

Splendours of Ancient China

Splendours of Ancient China by Maurizio Scarpari (2000, Thames & Hudson)

//notes coming soon//

Ten Thousand Things

Ten Thousand Things - Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art by Lothar Leddorose (2000, National Gallery of Art, Washington)

//come back soon for more details!//

Splendors of China's Forbidden City

Splendors of China's Forbidden City - The Glorious Reign of Emperor Qianlong by Chuimei Ho and Bennet Bronson (2004, Merrell Publishers Limited)

A Century in Crisis

A Century in Crisis - Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth Century China by Julia F. Andrews and Kuiyi Shen (1998, Guggenheim Museum Publications)

// will fill details in soon //

Sculpture

Art and Artists in the Twentieth Century - Michael Sullivan

After the Mao era. sculpture, printmarking, graphics and other art forms took off without the confines once set.

In traditional China, sculpture was never regarded as one of the fine arts, which were the monopoly of the educated class. The Chinese did not lack a feeling for plastic beauty, but that feeling was satisfied by contemplating archaic bronzes, ceramics, carved jade and the fancy rocks in the scholar's garden and sitting on his desk. The reason for sculpture's low place in Chinese cultural life was a social one. Not since the fifth century- and not often before then - had it been acceptable for a Chinese gentleman to soil his hands with manual labor, except perhaps to tend his chrysanthemums or to carve seals.

This changed some when buddhism was introduced along with the huge stone carvings.

No Chinese scholar ever wrote about sculpture, and no critical vocabulary was ever created to evaluate it.

Chinese painting, poetry, and chamber music depend for their effect upon subtlety and refinement of expression. For the cultivated man, a mere hint is enough. Sculpture can have no place in these rarefied regions; it is too solid. too completely realized, leaving too little to the imagination.

Art in the Era of Mao Zedong

Info gathered/taken from Art and Artists of the Twentieth Century by Michael Sullivan.

1949 -1976 Art in the Era of Mao Zedong

The years during which Mao Zedong exerted total control over cultural life in China were, for creative men and woman, at first a period of commitment and hope, then of uncertainty as the reins were alternately tightened and loosned, and finally of growing despair and frstration culminating in the nigtmare of the Cultural Revolution. Artists were required to "serve the people." The dialetical struggle between tradition and revolution, Chinese and Western art, continued , with Western modernism replaced by Soviet socialist realism.

Mao and the Party controlled what art and literature was allowed and they demanded it had Marxist themes.

Side info: the abstract art movement in the USA was actually a kind of revolt/knock at the art movement going on in Russia at that time from their artists. So important to the USA the C.I.A. was formed to protect the abstract expressionists. They represented America with their expressionistic style reflecting values of freedom, democracy etc.

With the death of Mao Zedong, a new era dawned for Chinese art. So complex had been the Party's control over the minds and hearts of creative people that several years passed before their powers could stir to life again. Not unitl 1979 were all the artists once branded as "Rightists" finally rehabilitated, and that year saw an astonishing outburst of creativity that come to be known as the Peking Spring. During the 1980s. in spite of sharp attacks and periodic persecutions carried out by an increasingly nervous Party apparatus, Chinese art became ever richer, more complex, adventurous, drawing inspiration from China's past, fromthe West, from Japan, and from the arists' own experience. The old debates- past versus present, Chinese vesus western were not resolved, but they were now carried on at a new level of depth and sophisication while the development of new forms and styles was stimulated by the work of Chinese modernists in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Yet the atmosphere of uncertainty, tension and insecurty never cleared away. During the late 1980s many younger artists sought greater freedom abroad, notably in America, where they faced a different challenge - the loss of their identity as Chinese artists.

Art and Artists of Twentieth Century China

Art and Artists of Twentieth Century China by Michael Sullivan (1996, University of California Press)

The theme of this book is the rebirth of Chinese art in the twentieth century under the influence of Western art and culture, a confrontation between two great traditions that has had momentous consequences for Chinese art.

..After 1900, and far more rapidly after the Revolution of 1911 overthrew the Manchus, Western art came to be seen by many as the expression of all that was useful, progressive, and outward-looking. Since that time, art in China has been one expression of a huge dialectical struggle - or rather two stuggles: between Chinese and Western culture, and between tradition and modernization.

Contrasts in the approaches to painting between traditional Chinese and Western styles: Chinese artists did not seek to accurately depict a scene as to prevserve the timeless truth of the work, such accuracy was positively harmful.

Western style of painting involved preliminary sketches into a deliberately thought-out composition>> Chinese artists did not practice this.

This reflects on the creative values and approaches of the two societies.

Chinese painters were not only skilled in that field, they were also required to excel at poetry and calligraphy, the aim was to unite these "three perfect things" in the work.

The new culture movement/ cultural renaissance.. during the early 1900s. Very much like what was going on in Europe with the denouncing of old painting traditions.. the same was happening with China's art heritage as well as culture! There was a call to the China's youth to take up the struggle and assume responsibility for creating a new culture. New ideas and new emotions could not be conveyed in the old literary language; they needed new forms of expression.

ziwo - "I myself"

...I am the spendour of the moon,

I am the splendour of the sun,

I am the splendour of the myriad stars,

I am the total energy of the Universe.

I run swiftly,

I cry wildly,

I burn fiercely.

I am I!

My ego is about to burst!

- Guo Moruo's "Heavenly Hound"

The time was also inspired by Japanese themes for the search of the so-called kindai-jiga(modern selfhood)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Romance of the Three Kingdoms - (A humorous interpretatin of the historical Chinese classic)

by Tsai Chih Chung, Translated by Leong Weng Kam (1994, Asiapac Books)

Fast, easy and entertaining read. Got through the book in a couple of hours. Gave me insight into the history of China, clever war tactics and Chinese humor.

The history was presented with a bit of magic in it when Kong Ming finally got his weather wish granted. As seen in alot of photos and paintings there's always a sense of magic, harmony and mysticism about it.

Alot of the humor was about taking things very literal. e.g. when one soldier says look they have more numbers than us, the next frame depicts the opposing army with soldiers holding banners with numbers on them. Humor was also based on word play between similar sounding words in the language, taking things literally, money and alot of cheekiness too.

Guhua Pinlu (Old Record of the Classifications of Painters)

-From the book

Chinese Art by Mary Tregear

A survey of ancient painting, Guhua Pinlu (Old Record of the Classifications of Painters) by Xie He, of the Sixth Century. In his introductory comments Xie He lists six points to consider in juding a painting:

1. Spirit Resonance, which means vitality ('Spirit' here seems to denote nervous energy which is to be transmitted from the artist through the brush into his work)

2. Bone Method, which means using the brush (this seems to be an allusion to an ancient tem dealing with anthroposcopy, the reading of character from the bone structure in the head and body)

3. Correspondence to the object, which means depicting the forms.

4. Suitability to type, which has to do with laying on of colour.

5. Division and planning, that is, placing and arranging.

6. Transmission by copying, that is, the copying of models.

Xie He says that the most important of these critical principles is the first, and that if this element is absent one need look no further. The very simplicity of this categorization has given rise to several interpretations among scholars. But it is generally aagreed that Xie He thought tha, having first confirmed the 'life' of the painting, one could then proceed to assess the quality of brushwork, composition, structure and likeness. The mention in Xie He's sixth principle of the importance of antiquity and ofthe need to imitate the ancients has led some students to consider these points as exhortations to painters, rather than as critical principles. However, the first five points seem designed as principles of art criticism or of connoisseurship for the collector.

Wu Daozi regarded as a magical painter, able to transmit actual life into his pictures, Wu produced wall paintings for temples and palaces, as well as hanging scrolls and handsrolls. He was believed to have executed paintings of horses which galloped away and of dragons which flew out ofthe picture over night, such was the feeling of life in his work. In this respect, he must have been the embodiment of a certain aspect of Xie He's first principle. His line was apparently calligraphic, thick and thin, nervous and energetic, expressing life within the line as does the hand of many a great draughtsman (and product designer hehe. )

Chinese Art

Chinese Art by Mary Tregear (Thames & Hudson, Revised Edition 1997)

Parts that interested me in my brief work-through of the book:

One of the most influential introductions was the acceptance of Buddhism in the second century BC, which brought a new religious and philosophical culture and its attendant art and iconography. New styles of figure painting and sculpture were required, as well as new patterns of temple layout, furnishing and decoration; their assimilation took many centuries.

Much of the Buddhist art was inspired by Central Asian traditions, which were in their turn derived from North Indian originals.

Large scale sculpture had previously not been a significant native art form.

Mastery of surface decoration evolved in China from an early stage… the motifs used survive to this day as painted decoration on ceramics.

Since the reign of the Han dynasty, painting and calligraphy have been the most highly esteemed branches of expressive art. Practiced by the literati, these arts have been woven into their philosophy of life. Calligraphy, long regards as a serious art form, is expressive of the strength of character of the writer and therefore capable of transmitting far more than words.

Any attempt to characterize the Chinese style must incorporate the complexity of a culture constructed without discarding anything over five thousand years. A peculiarly sophisticated handling of archaism seems to have kept a self-confident taste intact and created a many-faceted style.

Some of the pottery works made look incredibly contemporary in their planar styling cues.