Chinese Art Questions Essay Example

1) When Clunas refers to “different meanings” of the jade tablet, he refers to the various critical approaches that have been applied when examining and analyzing the jade tablet and its meaning. These critical approaches are colored, inevitably, by the lens the approach is being seen through – a modern way of thinking may not have been what the original creators were intending. One reading discusses the “Chinese love of antiquity,” in which the people wish to outline their past through the artwork of the present. This tends to be placed in other details such as its own presence in a museum of other Chinese art. The fact that it is made of jade also has associated the tablet (and jade itself) with power, due to jade being difficult to cut.
Temporal fluidity and the currency of the present indicate that contexts and meanings are always changing depending on who is looking at the object. With the benefit (or detriment) of time, space and distance, modern viewers of the jade tablet would take from it different meanings than the Chinese who created it or saw it in its contemporaneous period. To that end, Clunas correctly surmises that it is impossible to know the artist’s intent with this work – all we can do is attempt to understand how we read it now. The ascribing of the tablet as ‘Chinese’ is also reductive and uncertain, as it is merely a supposition based on other evidence and connections being made. To that end, there is a plurality of meanings that can be taken from this object, making it impossible to settle on a definitive meaning. Then again, there is cause to celebrate that, as it allows us to examine our own reactions to the work given what we know (or don’t know) about it.
2) There have been many different understandings of early Chinese political bodies. The Anyang dig in 1928 led Republican government-led archaeologists to presume that the Chinese government enjoyed a unified culture and geography. At the same time, this also suited the Republican’s need to find a stable government in the past to support the idea that China could be united, as their own government was fragile. It also offered a neat bridge between the desire to keep Chinese tradition and the need to make China more modern.
In Sanxingdui, however, the bronzes and animal bones created a very “un-Chinese” environment for scholars to find in 1986. This is much different than the Republican idea of early China as found in Anyang; however, the use of jade and bronze indicate they were at least wealthy. In Anyang, other objects like ivory and wood were also used (or thought to be used) in the construction of ancient Shang works of art, indicating a culture that valued wealth and power. However, the difference between Anyang and Sanxingdui is that the former indicated a unity of Chinese culture and politics, whereas Sanxingdui indicates no such unity. The presence of other materials than bronze and jade also makes the initial understanding of ancient Chinese materials more complicated and difficult, and Sanxingdui’s large trade of jade and bronze shows that their sovereign spirit was not part of the early Chinese polity indicated by the Anyang dig, but a central hub of trade and manufacturing. To that end, these opposing ideas of what ancient China used to be shows how our current political agendas can color our perception and reception of archaeological finds.
3) In order to create the famous terracotta army, “module systems” had to be created to make standardized parts and molds for each soldier – this allowed such large quantities of soldiers to be created. A huge drainage system was created out of clay under the Qin palace, using similar techniques to the terracotta soldiers, making these ceramic manufacturers the perfect candidates to create the army. Each individual soldier was created by mass producing the various parts of the soldier – these components would be assembled later, or elaborated upon by the workers customizing each soldier.
Creating molds for the vast majority of these parts made it easy for the claymakers to push the clay into the molds, let them set, and move on. The basic forms of the soldiers were created using this method, and the claymakers would then add their own details onto each soldier. Labor was divided, with certain workers doing certain tasks to achieve greater output in a shorter period of time; some workers would mold, some would fire, others would assemble. The workers would divide into teams that all worked on similar plans and blueprints, working on their own set of figures through each stage. This allows for the feeling of uniformity and efficiency of production, while also allowing enough variety to make the army seem populated by unique soldiers. By dividing the terracotta army team into modules, groups of soldiers could be created quickly while also allowing a great amount of detail and intricacy in the creation of the soldiers – this creates a balance between making them quickly and making them look the same.