AH 0102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Chinese Garden, Handscroll, Plat
12 May 2018
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Notes for Day 10: February 27, 2018
Chinese Gardens
Announcements:
• Midterm on Tuesday March 6th
• Review slides and terms sheet that we need to know for the exam (there is a word bank
on the exam for reference)
• Focus on the midterm slides for the test
• There are four slides on the test; you must identify them and answer a question about
each image/slide
• Know the English names for each brush strokes for the calligraphy; but pick out
differences in the brush strokes in paintings (don’t know the actual names)
• Take the terms sheet and write definitions from your notes for studying
• There is an exhibition opening in the Quick Center from a South African Print Artist
tomorrow (can attend it for the extra exhibition assignment)
• Visual analysis due Friday
• Journal Prompt 6 for Friday: go to the Japanese tea garden on campus at Bellarmine Hall
and relate it to what we learned in class on Japanese gardens
Goals for today:
• Understand the design principles and elements used in Ming dynasty Chinese gardens
• Understand the social and economic functions of gardens
Close looking at garden in painting:
• Professional painting because of the amount of descriptive painting, it is colorful, and
focuses on many elements
• The men in the painting are scholar officials just based on the hats they are wearing; the
colors in the men’s wardrobe is accentuated in comparison to the rest of the individuals in
the painting; they are sitting (two on plat formed chairs; one on a shorter chair) while
everyone else is standing; they are the focus of the painting as seen by how the rocks are
shaped in a vertical position (like a vista); they have servants waiting on them; these men
appear larger than everyone else (scale is not taken into account in terms of these men
only)
• This is part of a larger handscroll so there are other parts of the painting
• This looks like a freeze frame (captures a real event—“Elegant gathering of the apricot
garden”; in order to keep record of this gathering)
• The men in this painting wrote colophons on this painting about what they were doing
• The bird could be an emblem of status (it is a crane: it symbolizes hope and long life)
• The furniture shows status (could be lacquered) that go along with literati homes
• The rocks also show status because they were sculpted by nature and by land to appear
perfect; some of them represent the relationship with yin and yang
• The table contains various components including a painting that matches the rest of the
landscape of the garden; it acts as a microsm of the everlasting beauty of nature
• The rest of the handscroll contains other parts of the painting: includes more literati men
in colorful clothing walking around and looking at other pieces of art on hand scrolls (it
appears to look like a movie if looked at in segments on the hand scroll)
• Each literati official got a copy of this painting
Purpose of gardens:
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
