In the present stage of our understanding tribal art roughly emerged around 40,000 years ago while Chinese Xieyi painting, Chinese Buddhism and Christianity only started around 500 AD.
Calligraphy originates sometimes before 200 BC. It was revered as a fine art in line with poetry and music while painting was merely viewed as a craft applied in the field of decoration, remembrance of ancestors, or illustration of daily life. Xieyi appeared later as an extension of calligraphy and this is when painting finally acceded to the status of a fine art in China.
What is striking, in the juxtaposition of images here under, is how visually similar Chinese Xieyi painting is to tribal art. Chinese Buddhism still has some common traits with tribal art but with Christianity we enter into a whole new world.
Why is Xieyi so similar to tribal art?
Why is Christian art depicting such a totally different world than tribal and Xieyi art?
2018-10-12
2018-10-05
Humanity’s future and the role of the artist
This
series of posts about “the disconnection between the West and China”
centers around societal evolution, and more particularly, the present
shifting of the center of gravity of the economy-world from the US to
the territorial expanse of the Chinese civilization in North-East Asia.
In the preceding posts we have seen how this shift is due to the
interactions between the following factors:
2018-09-26
Tentative Visual Encyclopedia of art
How to understand art?
Through reason with words?
Or through images of the thing itself?
2018-09-21
The communist party ‘owns’ China
In the Peoples Republic of China the
communist party literally owns the institutions of state and no
interference in the decision making of these institutions is accepted by
any group of interest. This is quite different from the West where
lobbies write the laws relating to their interests. What this means is
that the communist party has an absolute control over the way society
functions. Now this does not mean, as most Westerners believe, that
China is a dictatorship. Individuals and economic actors are
participating in the decision making process by giving their ideas and
opinions about what should be done. During this consultation phase civil
society debates with the representatives of the party and the state
about solutions and the media also relays these debates. Once the
consultation phase concludes civil society retreats and lets the party
and state institutions formalize the decisions and their implementation.
And once the rules of the game have been formalized everybody is
expected to participate in their implementation.
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