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Lesson Plans
Art History ©1999
by Marilyn Stokstad
Focus Lesson 20
Chapter 10: "Chinese Art Before 1280"
Chapter 21: "Chinese Art After 1280"
AP* Course Description
- Non-European Artistic Traditions
Key Components
- Instructor's Resource Manual with Tests, Vol. I: pp. 31–33, 68–69, 141–147, 218–220
- Study Guide, Vol. I: pp. 90–96
- Instructor's Resource Manual with Tests, Vol. II: pp. 25–27, 73–74, 122–126, 186–187
- Study Guide, Vol. II: pp. 58–61
Key Web Sites
Given the changing nature of the Internet, you may wish to preview this site. Check the Online Companion Web site for updated information and links to other sites.
Key Words and Terms
- low relief
- cong
- taotie
- piece-mold casting
- lost-wax
- oracle
- calligraph
- pictographs
- fang ding
- mausoleum
- inlay
- iconography
- bracketing
- handscrolls
- calligraphy
- bodhisattva
- naturalism
- glaze
- bay
- pagoda
- stupa
- perspective
- literati painting
- hanging scroll
- album
- album leaf
- colophons
- genre
- porcelain
- kilns
- underglaze
- mortise-and-tenon joint
Suggested Pacing
Allow a week or less for this chapter. However, it would be useful to check the College Board Web site early in the school year to determine what the topics will be that year for the 30-minute essay question that requires the inclusion of non-European examples in the response.
Test Strategy
The AP* exam may ask students to identify artwork from China based on stylistic clues. They should become familiar with comparing the art of China with that of Japan to distinguish clearly the stylistic differences. China did not produce the vivid woodblock prints seen in Japan, but Chinese calligraphy and landscape painting are of unusually high quality and easy to identify once students learn the clues.
Key Concepts
- Neolithic Culture
Evidence suggests that before 5000 BCE, agriculture in China arose independently, but essentially parallel to the rise of agriculture in the Near East. The earliest Chinese art dates from approximately 5000 BCE. - Calligraphy
Calligraphy is as important an art form in China as painting is in Europe. The arts of poetry, painting, and calligraphy are intertwined in Chinese culture, and were influenced by religion, both Daoism and Buddhism. - Perspective
Chinese landscape painters intentionally avoid the kind of scientific linear perspective that developed in Europe during the Renaissance. The long, painted scrolls with panoramic views that the Chinese developed defy the use of single-point perspective, encouraging the viewer instead to wander and become lost in the natural setting. Scrolls were unrolled bit by bit, allowing the viewer to "travel" through the scene as it was gradually revealed, similar to the way in which we experience a landscape as we drive by it in a car.
Summing Up Student Understanding
Ask students to respond to the following essay question:
In what ways does Chinese landscape painting differ from that of the European tradition? What similarities exist? Use paintings from at least three periods of Chinese art and three periods of European art for your analysis.
Students might draw upon landscapes from Baroque Holland, nineteenth-century England, and the French Impressionists as examples of European art and a work from the Song Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty to illustrate Chinese art. Depending upon how students choose to structure their comparisons, they may find many similarities or many differences.
Although most European landscape painting strives to achieve something similar to a photographic view, some painters created works closer to the Chinese model. Monet's waterlilies, for example, often had no center focus or perspective. The painting of Hieronymous Bosch has as many different areas of attention as a massive Chinese hanging scroll, forcing the viewer's eye to wander over the entire surface.
On the other hand, a landscape by a Dutch master such as Jacob Ruisdael has little similarity to Chinese works. Likely to feature a strong horizon line, and in most cases free of mountains, this aesthetic is quite the opposite of the Chinese. Students might discuss how the environment itself shaped the styles that the indigenous artists developed to describe it. The rocky, mountainous vistas of China would be quite foreign to Ruisdael, but a Chinese painter would be equally uncomfortable in Cezanne's Aix-en-Provence.