Enter Han painting

Author: Zhao Chengkai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: Han images narrate history through art, encompassing various aspects of politics, economy, events, culture, as well as the daily lives, leisure, and entertainment of ordinary people. The original, bold, humorous, and unique compositions, concise yet vivid figures, and flat yet highly three-dimensional techniques all convey a sense of effortless precision. Today, Zhao Chengkai and his successor, Shi Jin, explain in depth the images frequently appearing in Han reliefs, such as the Flying Phoenix, celestial constellations, ancestral trees, Fu Xi and Nüwa, Confucius meeting Laozi, meetings, ascension, tomb owners, hunting, music and dance, spears, reed chariots, soul ascent, love trees, dragons and tigers, cattle and sheep, birds and phoenixes, deer and humans, horses and archery, twin fish, pavilions watching fish, gates, front doors, persimmon-leaf patterns, six-throwing and fish sacrifice, the five virtues and four directions, acrobatics, singing and drinking, etc. This gradually guides Han art enthusiasts into this mysterious world.
If the accumulation of themes and subjects is an ancient and long-standing process, the records in Han official histories are not the original creation of themes but rather the reorganization and transformation of existing traditional subjects by the authorities. Since the themes and subjects of Han art were not necessarily created by Han people, Han people were also viewers, inheriting ancient themes and continuing to use them. Then, even if we have Han historical records and Han-compiled ancient literature, we cannot directly use them to substantiate the images. What we are concerned about is that although ancient paintings had inscriptions, the relatively rare preservation of pre-Han paintings and other visual materials shows that those with inscriptions (such as the twelve zodiac deities or symbolic images around Chu silk fragments) are few, while those without inscriptions are abundant. Although complete sets of ancient paintings may have fixed themes and subjects, Han people might have faced the same situation as us today—they had to identify and interpret the themes and subjects, which were merely speculations, not certainties, and often led to errors. As for non-fixed, detailed descriptions of objects, it was even more so.