| Four Arts Of The Chinese Scholar |
Article Index for Four |
Website Links For Four |
Information AboutFour Arts Of The Chinese Scholar |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT FOUR ARTS OF THE CHINESE SCHOLAR | |
| chinese culture | |
| chinese music | |
| chinese performing arts | |
| chinese games | |
| chinese art | |
|
ORIGIN OF THE CONCEPT Although the individual parts of the concept have very long histories indeed as activities befitting a learned person, the earliest written source putting the four together is Zhang Yanyuan 's ''Fashu Yaolu'' from the Tang Dynasty , and as "the four arts" the concept is first found in the ''Xianqing ouqi'' by Li Yu (1610 - 1680). OUTLINE In China to be a scholar is to be an artist. Chinese culture insists that an educated and 'proper' individual's classical training has components of what in Chinese are called ''qin'', ''qi'', ''shu'', and ''hua''. These are translated roughly into "Instrumentation, Chess, Calligraphy, and Painting. For one to be considered scholarly, or a man of the arts, then those are in fact the arts in which to immerse ones self. The chinese ideals of an educated man are a test and demonstration of the individuals strength in reason, creation, expression and dexterity, and thus rate highly in China both today and in ancient times. All of these arts combined made for a platform by which scholars could compete against each others creativity, expression, ideas, and thinking power. They created a means by which men would judge each other beyond the worth of their possessions. A Chinese pauper who excelled in the arts was as respected as the noble who equalled him. These four arts created a culture in which art flourished freely among the populous. QíN See Also: Guqin Qín 琴 refers to the musical instrument of the literati, the Gǔqín . Although it exclusively meant this instrument in ancient times, it has now come to mean all musical instruments, but essentially it refers to gǔqín only considering the context. The gǔqín is a seven-stringed zither that owes its invention to the Chinese society of some 3000 years ago. During the reign of the imperial China, a scholar was expected to play the guqin. Gǔqín was explored as an art-form as well as a science, and scholars strove to both play it well and to create texts on its manipulation. Gǔqín notation was invented some 1500 years ago, and to this day it has not been drastically changed. Some books contain musical pieces written and mastered more than 500 years ago. Gǔqín is so influential that it even made its way into space: the spacecraft voyager launched by the U.S. in 1977 contained a vinyl style record of a gǔqín piece named 'Flowing Water'. The fact that the gǔqín's name breaks down to 'gu' (old) and 'qin' (musical instrument) reveals the instrument's great antiquity. Qí See Also: Go (board game) Qí 棋 refers to a board game, which is now called WéiQí , literally meaning "surrounding game". Current definitions of ''qí'' cover a wide range of board games, and, given that in Classical Chinese qí could also refer to other games, some argue that the qí in the four arts could refer to Xiangqi which is, however, a much less popular game. The game of wéiqí is perhaps even more ancient in China than even the ancient buskers of the empire. wéiqí's early history is highly speculative, but some myths do exist about its origin. One of these assumes that wéiqí was an ancient fortune telling device used by Chinese cosmologists to simulate the universe's relationship to an individual. Another suggests that emperor Yao (approx. 2255 BCE) invented it to enlighten his son. Certainly wéiqí had begun to take hold around the 6th century, when Confucius mentioned wéiqí in his masterpiece 'Analects'. Wéiqí is a game in which a pair of players alternates placing black and white stones on a playing surface of 19x19. Certain rules govern the plane of the board and make for a game with a complexity that is unmatched to date. The rules are that surrounded stones will be removed from play and that the game must never repeat a position twice. The game is then scored by way of counting the empty playable points that each player has encircled, with captured pieces filling in territory of the same color. The nature of the game leads to a different place than western chess does, and lends itself to a game that is more about mutual survival than complete dominance. Importance is placed on remembering local board situations that result in a neutral position. Players opt to make moves called ''Joseki'' that result in equal gain for both sides instead of dominance for the player using it and destruction of the opponent's side. Advantages are gained subtly, by placing the opponents in situations that result in him or her having to concede some points in favor of avoiding complete destruction. Wéiqí texts of both modern and ancient kinds are prized among modern Chinese wéiqí professionals, as seen below in the translation of an ancient Chinese wéiqí strategy book: "The most celebrated (though not the oldest) go manual is the Chinese ''Xuanxuan Qijing''. It was published in 1349 by Yan Defu and Yan Tianzhang. The former was a strong go player and the latter (no relation) a collector of old go books. They made a perfect team. The title of the book is literally ''The Classic of the Mystery of the Mysterious'', but it is an allusion to Chapter 1 of Lao Zi's ''Dao De Jing'' where the reference goes on to say that the mystery of the mysterious is 'the gateway to all marvels'. I prefer that as a title, especially as it is made clear in the preface that this latter phrase is meant to be called to mind, and is meant to imply that the book offers the way to mastering marvels in the form of go tesujis." (Defu & Tianzhang & Fairbairn, 1) SHū See Also: Chinese calligraphy Shū 書 refers to Chinese calligraphy, and art of nearly unequaled beauty and an infamous requirement of finesse. Calligraphy dates precisely to the beginning of history, since history was in fact not history until there was the chinese script to write it with. Chinese calligraphy is an expression of one's poet nature, as well as a test of ones dexterity in the hand, wrist and fingers. Chinese calligraphy has evolved for thousands of years, and its state of flux stopped only when Chinese characters were unified across the empire. Chinese calligraphy differs from western calligraphic script in the sense that it was done with a brush instead of metal implements or quill. Calligraphy was the art in which a scholar could compose his thoughts to be immortalized. It was the scholar's means of creating expressive poetry and sharing his or her own learnedness. Calligraphic process is also structured in the same way as wéiqí. A minimalist set of rules conveys a system of incredible complexity and grander. Every character from the Chinese scripts is built into a uniform shape by means of assigning it a geometric area in which the character must occur. Only four basic forms are used in the creation of the character, those being square, triangle and circle. Each character has a set number of brushstrokes, none must be added or taken away from the character to enhance it visually, lest the meaning be lost. Finally, strict regularity is not required, meaning the strokes may be accentuated for dramatic effect of individual style. Calligraphy was the means by which scholars could mark their thoughts and teachings for immortality, and as such, represent some of the more precious treasures that can be found from ancient China. "The most valued of all art treasures in China have been examples of the writing of certain aristocrats from the fourth century CE, including casual notes exchanged between them. The process whereby this came about is a lengthy one. It had to do with religious developments in the third-seventh centuries. It was also connected intimately to the role of writing in upper class life, to notions of personality, and the visible expression of personality. The notion of writing as an art form however probably does not appear until the early centuries of the common era. It is linked to the emergence of the idea of the artist as an individual whose personal qualities allow command of the technical resources to produce work of a higher quality and greater value [... than that of the common run of writers." (Clunas, 135) HUà See Also: Chinese painting Huà 畫 refers to Chinese Painting . Brush painting is the final of the arts that a scholar is expected to learn, and is unarguably the greatest measure of individual creativity. Through painting a chinese noble would demonstrate his mastery over the art of line. Often times Chinese paintings would be done on a sheet of plain white rice-paper or silk using nothing but black ink and a single brush. These paintings were made to demonstrate the power of a single line, and in them was reflected a skill that valued intentional and calculated strokes over instinctual erratic creation. In a Chinese painting was reflected the artist's ability to evaluate his own imagination and record it clearly and concisely. Chinese painting can be traced back even farther than calligraphy. Some examples date back to the decorative paintings that were emblazoned on neolithic pottery. To add tonal quality to paintings the artists would often paint portions of the subject then wash the cloth before continuing. This made for beautiful landscapes and depictions of ritual.Painting was the art by which a scholar could separate him of herself from the others and take a name. "The growing complexity of society at the end of the sixteenth century was reflected in an enriched cultural life in which heterogeneous tastes supported a wide variety of artists and craftsmen: the presence of foreigners at court and increasing affluence, which made the merchants independent of the court and of the official class, were only two of the many factors which nurtured artistic diversity. Individuality also began to be considered an important quality in the painter; indeed, a small group of artists were even known as the 'individualists'." (Tregear,168) REFERENCES
EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|