The Five Happinesses: Symbolism in Chinese Popular Art PDF Download

Author: Edouard Chavannes
Publisher: Weatherhill, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Author: Edouard Chavannes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Author: Wolfram Eberhard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134988656
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
This unique and authoritative guide describes more than 400 important Chinese symbols, explaining their esoteric meanings and connections. Their use and development in Chinese literature and in Chinese customs and attitudes to life are traced lucidly and precisely. `An ideal reference book to help one learn and explore further, while simultaneously giving greater insight into many other aspects of Chinese life ... the most authoritative guide to Chinese symbolism available to the general reader today ... a well-researched, informative and entertaining guide to the treasure trove of Chinese symbols.' - South China Morning Post

Author: Patricia Bjaaland Welch
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462906893
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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With over 630 striking color photos and illustrations, this Chinese art guide focuses on the rich tapestry of symbolism which makes up the basis of traditional Chinese art. Chinese Art: A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery includes detailed commentary and historical background information for the images that continuously reappear in the arts of China, including specific plants and animals, religious beings, mortals and inanimate objects. The book thoroughly illuminates the origins, common usages and diverse applications of popular Chinese symbols in a tone that is both engaging and authoritative. Chinese Art: A Guide to Motifs and Visual Imagery is an essential reference for collectors, museum-goers, guides, students and anyone else with a serious interest in the culture and history of China.

Author: Estelle Niklès van Osselt
Publisher: 5Continents
ISBN: 9788874395576
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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This gorgeously produced book reveals the hidden meaning behind motifs in Chinese decorative arts. When any Westerner looks at Chinese art, it is immediately apparent how much the depiction of animal and plant life differs from its American or European equivalent. This exceptional world teems with flowers, trees, birds, fish, shellfish, and insects, mixed with fantastic creatures or figures taken from legend and mythology. Various motifs can appear together in one scene, and if the viewer understands the language, the images are charged with symbolism. This absorbing study explores the rich symbolic language of exquisite works in ceramic, jade, lacquer, glass, and silk from the world-renowned Baur Collection.

Author: Ellen Johnston Laing
Publisher: U of M Center for Chinese Studies
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Traditional woodblock prints preserve a Chinese folk art that has now nearly vanished. This book explores and explains the artistic and aesthetic bases of popular prints revealed in eighty-four late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century prints belonging to the London-based Muban Foundation. Woodblock printing was the principal method of producing inexpensive and colorful single-sheet images for mass consumption in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China. Prints of this type are known today as "New Year pictures" because the demand for them peaked at New Year's time. However, the term "popular print" more accurately describes these works, whose subjects include deities and tutelary spirits, illustrations to stories and operas, and even contemporary political or revolutionary messages. The emphasis on the artistic aspects of these prints makes this publication uniquely appealing to Chinese art historians but also to those interested in Chinese anthropology, popular religion, Chinese and other folk art, and traditional crafts. Ellen J. Laing received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. She was Maude I. Kerns Distinguished Professor of Oriental Art, University of Oregon and is currently Research Associate at the Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan. She has published numerous scholarly articles, books, and reference works on Chinese art.

Author: Ann Barrott Wicks
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824861817
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Depictions of children have had a prominent place in Chinese art since the Song period (960-1279). Yet one would be hard pressed to find any significant discussion of children in art in the historical documents of imperial China or contemporary scholarship on Chinese art. Children in Chinese Art brings to the forefront themes and motifs that have crossed social boundaries for centuries but have been overlooked in scholarly treatises. In this volume, experts in the fields of art, religion, literature, and history introduce and elucidate many of the issues surrounding child imagery in China, including its use for didactic reinforcement of social values as well as the amuletic function of these works. The introduction provides a thought-provoking overview of the history of depictions of children, exploring both stylistic development and the emergence of specific themes. In an insightful essay, China specialists combine expertise in literature and painting to propose that the focus on children in both genres during the Song is an indication of a truly humane society. Skillful use of visual and textual sources from the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) period explains children's games and the meaning of depictions of boys at play. Gender issues are examined in an intriguing look at mothers and children in woodblock illustrations to Ming versions of the classical text Lie ni juan. Depictions of the childhood of saints and sages from murals and commemorative tablets in ancient temples are considered. The volume concludes with two highly original essays on child protectors and destroyers in Chinese folk religion and family portraits and their scarcity in China before the nineteenth century. Contributors: Ellen B. Avril, Catherine Barnhart, Richard Barnhart, Terese Tse Bartholomew, Julia K. Murray, Ann Waltner, Ann Barrott Wicks.

Author: Ronald G. Knapp
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824881117
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
China's Old Dwellings is the most comprehensive critical examination of China's folk architectural forms in any language. It and its companion volume, China's Living Houses: Folk Beliefs, Symbols, and Household Ornamentation (UH Press, 1999), together form a landmark study of the environmental, historical, and social factors that influence housing forms for nearly a quarter of the world's population. Both books draw on the author's thirty years of fieldwork and extensive travel in China as well as published and unpublished material in many languages. China's Old Dwellings begins by tracing the interest in Chinese vernacular buildings in the twentieth century. Early chapters detail common and distinctive spatial components, including the interior and exterior modular spaces that are axiomatic components of most Chinese dwellings as well as conventional structural components and building materials common in Chinese construction. Later chapters examine representative housing types in the three broad cultural realms--northern, southern, and western--into which China has been divided. Knapp completes his survey with an exploration of China's old dwellings in the context of the rapid economic and social changes that are destroying so many of them.

Author: Terese Tse Bartholomew
Publisher: Asian Art Museum
ISBN: 9780939117376
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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With clear, readable explanations, this Chinese art history book provides a visual insight into the very rich history of Chinese sybbolism. Can decorative objects increase one's wealth, happiness, or longevity? Traditionally, many Chinese have believed that they could—provided they include the appropriate auspicious symbols. In Hidden meanings in Chinese Art Asian Art Museum Curator Terese Tse Bartholomew, culminating decades of research, has provided a thorough guide to such symbols. Auspicious symbols in Chinese art are often in the form of rebuses—visual puns. Because many words in Chinese share the same pronunciation, there is a wealth of opportunities for such punning, and over the centuries many rebuses have developed established meanings. Should one give a clock as a gift? Certainly not! "To give a clock" songzhong is a pun for "a last farewell," in other words, for attending a person who is on the edge o death. Why is a pot of philodendrons an appropriate gift for someone opening a new store or restaurant? In America the philodendron serves as a substitute for a Chinese plant named wannianqing, or "ten thousand years green." Such a gift expresses the wish that the business will flourish for ten thousand years. Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art brings a systematic approach to the cataloguing of such hidden meanings. Richly illustrated with photos of art objects and with many original illustrations by the author, and enhanced with extensive bilingual indexes and other supporting materials, this book is an essential reference for anyone interested in exploring Chinese art and culture.

Author: Sarah Handler
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520214846
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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"Sarah Handler has written a true cultural history of Chinese furniture. Her book is a highly erudite blend of art history and social history, yet with a structure as transparent and elegant as that of a fine piece of Ming-style furniture."—Klaas Ruitenbeek, Louise Hawley Stone Chair of Far Eastern Art, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, and author of Carpentry and Building in Late Imperial China: A Study of the Fifteenth-Century Carpenter's Manual Lu Ban jing