Chinese artists copied Buddhist art from India in its Indian forms. Then the images were merged with indigenous Daoist motifs. In northern China in the 4th century, the rulers promoted the painting of Buddhist art in cave-temples. Chinese artists painted murals on walls and caves as the Indians did, but the Chinese murals were more sensitive and expressive. A Sinicized style of the Buddha emerged with a slender waist and a plump face with delicate features. The inspiration and expressiveness of these murals raised the appreciation and status of painting in China.
The scriptures of Mahayana Buddhism were translated into Chinese, and that Sinicized Mahayana was then passed on to Korea, Vietnam, and finally to Japan in 538 CE. The East Asian Buddhism was furthermore divided into a variety of strands. One form that became strong in both China and Japan is the meditative school known as Chan (Chinese) or Zen (Japanese) Buddhism.
The Indian patriarch Bodhidharma founded Chan in the 6th century CE by combining the Buddhist practice of meditation with Daoist concepts, such as the importance of intuition, the insufficiency of words to convey deep truths, and a love of the absurd and unexpected.
The Chan teaching uses but does not depend on sacred texts. It provides the potential for direct spiritual breakthroughs to Truth through the Buddha nature possessed by each sentient being. Through meditative riddles or puzzles or just sitting and meditating, a person can detach the mind from conceptual modes of thinking and perceive reality directly. Enlightenment can occur instantly when a person loosens the grip of the ego and cuts through the dense veil of mental and emotional obscurations. Appealing to intellectuals, the Chan form of Buddhism had a great influence on Chinese calligraphers and painters after the 6th century.
The Beginnings of Landscape Painting
Literary fragments from the 5th century speak of the feelings and aspirations of landscape painters. They provide evidence that landscape painting had already emerged as a type of painting on its own worthy of discussion. Tsung Ping (375–443) and Wang Wei (415–443) both wrote about how the artist seeks through landscape painting to convey nature’s spirituality so that the beholder can re-experience nature’s grandeur. The artist is not just depicting the visible reality but is expressing the spirit indwelling his subject matter. The painters reflect the Daoist view of nature and the role of the artist, like a sage, leading viewers to a connection with the spirit in the natural universe.
At the end of the 5th century, Xie He (Hsieh Ho) distilled the traditional ideas about painting into Six Principles as a basis for evaluating and classifying painters. The first and most important principle involves Qi, the life-breath of everything, animate and inanimate. It can be interpreted as spirit, vitality, or the result of the activity of the spirit. The vitalizing spirit should resound harmoniously through a painting to impart spiritual significance. A painting may convey the outer likeness of its subject, but it fails if it does not manifest the resonance of the spirit of the subject. If the painter seeks the spirit-resonance, the outer likeness can be obtained at the same time. To comprehend the subject, the artist must identify with it, harmonize his consciousness with it, and see the subject from its own viewpoint. This is the Daoist idea of the identity of the subjective and the objective.
Sui and Tang Dynasties
The Sui reunited China in an effective but short-lived dynasty (589–618). They were able to expand their power into south China, where colonization had brought economic and cultural prosperity. They built the first Grand Canal that enabled them to bring rice from the fertile southern plains to the north to supply the armies and the government. These connections between north and south aided the unification of the country.
The Sui were overtaken by the Li, a family of aristocrats from the northwest who had connections with the barbarians. The early Tang dynasty was marked by military conquests in Central Asia. This was the age of men of action in the cavalry, lovers of horses, and polo playing, as evidenced by the depictions of horses in sculpture and painting. They appreciated other cultures, and other cultures were being influenced by the Chinese also. The Japanese sent monks and scholars to China from 607 to 838 to discover and adopt what they liked in Chinese calligraphy, painting, art, religious thought, and government practices. The Koreans owed even more to the Chinese, with influences starting in the 3rd century BCE through the Han and Tang dynasties. This is how the Japanese adopted Chan/Zen Buddhism, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese pottery, and Chinese brush painting, which is known as Sumi-e in Japan.
The Imperial Examination System
The Tang dynasty improved the Imperial Examination System introduced in the Sui dynasty. Although examinations had been used in the Han dynasty, employment as an official also required recommendation and patronage, which were only available to the sons of high dignitaries and the wealthy landed gentry. Under the Sui dynasty, the lower classes had a greater chance to obtain employment. The Sui set up government schools to train the candidates. The Tang continued and expanded the system and added schools in the prefectures. This was part of a strategy to reduce the power of the military aristocracy of the northwest. The system awarded positions according to provincial and prefectural quotas so that officials were recruited from the whole country. This helped to ensure the integration of the Chinese state and reduce the tendencies towards regional autonomy.
The examination system also provided a cultural unity and common set of values based on Confucian teachings. The elites and those attempting the examination all studied the same content. Only about five percent of those taking the examinations received positions. Those who failed to pass became teachers, patrons of the arts, managers of local projects, and social leaders in local villages or cities. The system ensured that the best and brightest had the chance at a position and encouraged and enabled the pursuit of education regardless of wealth or class.
The literati taking the public examinations formed a new gentry class based on their education. The breadth of the examinations contributed to the building of their moral character as well as knowledge. Before the Sui dynasty, the examinations covered archery and horsemanship, music, arithmetic, writing, and knowledge of the Confucian rituals and ceremonies in public and private life. In the Sui dynasty, the curriculum was expanded to include military strategy, civil law, revenue and taxation, agriculture and geography, and the Confucian classics. As well-rounded individuals, the scholar-gentry participated in cultural pursuits outside of their official duties.
Advances in Painting
Emperor Xuanzong’s Kaiyuan era (713–741) was a period of political stability, prosperity, and peace in society, which allowed advances in education, literature, music, painting, sculpture, and religion. The emperor himself was a poet, musician, and actor, and a talented painter and calligrapher. The creation of poetry and painting reached new heights. New styles and types of brushwork sprang up. Two main schools of landscape painting emerged, the Northern School and the Southern School. These terms were coined at a later date by the scholar-artist Dong Qichang (1555–1636), who borrowed the concept from Chan Buddhism, which has Northern and Southern Schools. The schools differed in their use of brush and ink, not by their geographical positions.
Li Si Xuan (Li Ssu-hsün), known as General Li, founded the Northern School. He and his followers preferred strong, severe forms and definite designs that left little to the imagination. They used clear-cut, articulated, and rugged strokes. General Li and his son Li Chaodao (Li Chao-tao) were also noted for using blue, green, and gold in their landscapes. They outlined on silk and filled in with colors. Their precise technique produced beautiful and detailed decorative pieces.
The Southern School of landscape used mainly ink and water with only touches of light coloring. Their strokes were softer, more graceful, and suggestive. The school was founded by Wang Wei, who was a famous poet as well
