| OBJECT UNDER SPOTLIGHT | |||||||||||||||
|
Each month we feature a Chinese Work of Art that exhibits singularly outstanding historical and aesthetic characteristics and qualities. This month we have selected a BRONZE FOOD VESSEL WITH HANDLES Pan - Easter Zhou (770-221 BCE) Height: 9 1/4 inches (23.5 cm.) Width: 15 1/4 inches (28.7 cm.) |
|
||||||||||||||
|
Choice Things Are Spread Before You (1) A Warring States Bronze Food Vessel In the Eastern Kitchen the meat is sliced and ready- Roast beef and boiled pork and mutton. The Master of the feast hands round the wine. The harp-players sound their clear chords. The Golden Palace (1st c. BCE) (2) And, surely, the Master of the Feast would have supervised the serving of these delicacies in this magnificent tureen-like bowl. The generous size of the vessel, more than fifteen inches across, suggests a formal setting, perhaps the Golden Palace of the poem, where its careful design and impeccable finish would be shown off to full advantage before important guests. One can imagine servants bringing the basin, suspended by its chain handles, to the table, and the server removing the lid with a dramatic flourish. Once the lid was inverted to rest on the three bird sculptures to serve as a charger, an enticing aroma of the steaming food would spark the exciting anticipation as generous portions of some special dish were scooped out to the delight of an eager appreciative audience. This vessel elicits more than just the dream of an epicurean adventure; bronze-ware of this splendid quality also complimented the political prestige of the host in a conspicuous display of wealth, prestige and power. The serene appeal of this vessel lies in the proportions of its shape and in its modestly understated decoration. The piece is 235mm tall and 387mm wide, a ratio of 1:1.46, that is known in the western world as the Golden Mean. (3) There is, of course, no question of foreign influence on Chinese design; Chinese Bronze Age masters fashioned vessels with these proportions at least a thousand years before this vessel was cast, and possibly long before the Greeks employed the formula in their art. (4) The lid of the vessel is half as tall as its body, providing a satisfying sense of balance. The overall height of the vessel, 235mm, is exactly ten inches in Chinese Bronze Age measure. (5) A design module measuring 23.5mm square determined the width of the decorative bands, the spacing between them and the size of the die-stamped pattern that serves as the principle motif of the décor. Every component of the composition is arranged as precisely as notes in a musical score. And, as in a piece of music, we may instinctively appreciate the harmonious relationships even if we are unaware of the means the artist took to achieve them. Although the vessel is made of bronze it is not much heavier than a modern piece of spun metal cookware, a truly virtuoso bit of bronze casting for it is much harder to cast bronze thin than thick. Nonetheless, the ancient foundry masters developed a unique piece-mould technique that enabled them to obtain the maximum effect of size with the minimum expenditure of material. The casting of the decorative bands is simply a marvel. The basic motif of the décor is comprised of a sea of minuscule comma-shaped swirls and squiggles that occasionally reveal the head of a dragon. Carved into hardened stamps that were one inch tall and of varying width, the die was repeatedly pressed into the model until the circle of decoration was complete. The extent of detail is truly remarkable, for the closer one looks, the more there is to see until eventually one gets lost in this astonishing miniature realm of ornament. Did anyone other than a bronze master ever examine a vessel this closely? Doubtful. It was, after all, a serving dish. Yet, the refined mastery of the medium and the sophistication of the times demanded this level of exquisite finish and attention to minute detail, extending even to the delicate patterns on the handle and chain rings, all so finely cast as to look engraved. Indeed, the chain itself is a virtuoso achievement rarely seen on earlier bronzes because of the technical difficulty of casting movable links. The sharp-beaked birds on the lid look like raptors, but the presence of a second bird head on the chest of each of them suggests these are not simple hawks but some kind of composite mythological animals. Whatever kind of creature is intended, their bodies are made up of comma-shaped hooks and swirls similar to those used in the decorative bands, thus providing a visual rhyme between the bands of ornament on the body of the vessel and the bodies of these small sculptural fixtures. There is no suggestion that these compound creatures are not meant to tell a specific story. Rather, they evoke a common conceit that turns a lid into a place, in this case a perch for birds. The imagery is elusive, momentary, and disappears as the lid is inverted to become a footed dish. The fleeting character of the animal imagery is symptomatic of a very special moment in the history of ancient Chinese art. Images of animals had dominated the art of the earlier Shang Dynasty encasing a vessel in a shell of zoomorphic ornament. In the latter part of the Zhou Dynasty, a few centuries after the casting of this bowl, bronze ware was embellished with inlays of gold and silver, gilded from top to bottom or even painted to disguise the true nature of the material. Whatever animals are present on vessels of that sort are so enmeshed in ornament as to be invisible. By contrast, the foundry master who cast this vessel celebrated the material by manipulating bronze in ways unimagined in earlier or later times. Some of the cast decoration on this serving bowl is so finely executed that it looks engraved or seems to demand the use of the lost wax technique (which was soon to be added to the repertoire of the foundry master’s craft). Vessels done in this style represent a triumphant moment in the thousand or more years of the bronze caster’s art when shape, décor and material came together in a modern looking way. More than technology was in flux when this vessel was made; the ceremonial function of the vessels, like the society they served, was being redefined. Vessels formerly cloistered in the sacred precincts of the ancestral shrine had made their way to the dining tables of the mighty. Art in the Warring States Period was more secular, intended to impress, more interested in public display than in private worship; in short, more political. This is an art that seeks an industrial expression of beauty based on the aesthetic of the well-made object, of craft taken to the highest degree of excellence and an art that is unconcerned with ghosts or ancestral spirits. Impressive in size, pleasing in its proportions, cleverly made, as finely finished as jeweler’s work with interesting details and clever fixtures; those were the qualities that epitomized taste in the Warring States Period. Today, we see this chain handled covered bowl standing alone. Centuries ago we would have encountered it in an opulent context alongside other vessels of similar form (like the two magnificent fang-hu featured in a previous exhibition at Weisbrod Chinese Art, but now in a private collection ) (6). Several hoards of vessels discovered in tombs help us to envision a full dining set used by Zhou Dynasty aristocracy. Regardless of their date or style, these caches of vessels always reflect their respective functions as utensils for cooking, storing or serving different kinds of food and drink. The mouth-watering recipes of those ancient feasts would fill a page or more. (7) We can only imagine those festive revelries and the lavish entertainments they occasioned. Yet, some twenty-five centuries later, we can still appreciate the special qualities of this extraordinary bronze vessel as a unique and vibrant work of art. Dr. Robert Poor Department of Art History University of Minnesota (1) The title is from the ancient poem "The Great Summons" ("Ta Chao") included in David Hawkes translation of Ch’u Tz’u, The Songs of the South, Oxford: Claredon Press (1959), p. 111. (2) Arthur Waley, Translations from the Chinese, New York, Alfred A. Knopf (1919). The quote is from the anonymous poem translated as "The Golden Palace", p. 26 (1941 edition). (3)The more exact ratio of the Golden Mean is given as (1.618. (4) On proportions see Robert Poor, Monumenta Serica, "The Circle and the Square: Measure and Ritual in Ancient China", 43 (1995), pp. 159-210. (5)Ibid. for the length of the inch as early as the Neolithic Era in China. The Chinese word for "inch", tsun , translates as "thumb"; 23.5mm is the length of an adult thumb bone. (6) Archetypes and Archaism, Spring 2001, An Exhibition. Weisbrod Chinese Art Ltd. (March 20-29), catalog no. 7, pp. 38-41. (7) The subject is fully explored in Chang K.C., ed., Food in Chinese Culture, Yale University press, New Haven and London (1977). If you would like more information on this piece, please click here. |
|||||||||||||||
View our Object Under Spotlight for September, 2001.
|
View our Object Under Spotlight for Aug, 2001.
Sold |
View our Object Under Spotlight for July, 2001.
|
View our Object Under Spotlight for May, 2001.
|
View our Object Under Spotlight for March, 2001.
|
View our Object Under Spotlight for February, 2001.
|
Object Under Spotlight for January, 2001.
Sold |
View our Object Under Spotlight for December, 2000.
|
| ||||||||
36 East 57th Street, Third Floor New York, New York 10022. (212) 319-1335