Painting and Ceramics
The Chinese term for landscape is shanshui, meaning (mountain and water) and it was the most popular design for paintings. Landscape painting was praised by many writers as it was mentioned in one of Zong Bing's (AD 375-443) essays but there are no Chinese landscape paintings dating back to his time. It seems that landscape painting reached it peak during the Tang and Song dynasties. One of the landscape painting styles is "the blue and the green," symbolizing nature or water and land. This type of landscape painting style was the most common during the Song Dynasty.
A man's relationship with the landscape was at its extreme during the Song Dynasty as the Song were not warring people. They stayed out of conflict as long as it was no danger to them and grew intellectually. During the Northern Song Dynasty, the landscape painting style was predominant. This means that any humans or animals in a painting with the landscape were very small. One of those examples is Xu Daoning's Fishing in a Mountain Stream where the fishers are almost irrelevant to the painting. The Southern Song Dynasty was very different. Men and the landscape were of equal importance and their style of painting stressed the balance and harmony of humans their surroundings like the painting Walking on a Mountain Path in Spring.
Lanscape Painting
A popular theme in Chinese art is called puns and rebuses. Puns and rebuses are the representations of a name or word by pictures suggesting its syllables. A very good example of this is The Orchid, a painting by Zheng Sixiao that stated his loyalty to the Song Dynasty even when he was under Mongol rule. The orchid is identified with the high principles of a gentleman but it is simply drawn on a piece of paper with black ink. It represents a single and modest bloom that is a very suitable symbol of the unassertive artist. Still, his drawing had no roots or ground and the orchid was free floating. Zheng explained that the roots and the ground where stolen by the barbarian invaders- the Mongols.
Otherwise, animals were also used in the puns and rebuses drawings. Bats, pronounced fu in Chinese, usually stands for happiness. In China, five bats signify the "five blessings" of longevity, riches, peace, virtue and a good end to life. Fish, pronounced yu, were also very common in puns and rebuses because fish symbolized abundance due to their many numbers in water.
Puns and Rebuses
Two familiar styles of painting in the West come from Qi Baishi (1863-1956), whose depictions of animals, insects and plants found favor among Europeans; and the Chan (or Zen) Buddhist painters of the Song Dynasty. Chan painters were commonly praised for their ability to capture spirits of their topic in a few lines while aiming more for essence than approval of others. This was ironically their claim to fame in the world of art. An anonymous painting called Patriarch and Tiger from a pair of scrolls is a fine example of the Chan's economic brushwork.
Western Perspectives
Classic Ceramics
Some of the most beautiful Chinese ceramics were made during the Song dynasty. Their style was very imperial-dedicated and they also favored a style of their aesthetic appeal by the elegance of their shape and the loveliness of their subtle monochrome glaze (a single colored glaze that creates an image from its shades).
The Ding wars of northern China had soft , ivory-colored glazes and the Longquan celadons of the Zhejiang Province south of the Ding had a jade-like appearance while the Guan wares had deliberate crackles in their blue-gray glaze in imitation of jade.
Ceramics were also very appreciated for Emperor Hui Zong published a 30-volume illustrated catalogue of his archaic bronzes and his jade collections. During the Southern Song Dynasty, these catalogues inspired ceramics craftsmen with an interest in historic ceramics to produce similar ceramics with reflecting glazes that imitated jade and shapes based on old bronze or jade models from the Emperor's collection.
The classic Song ceramic styles were used later as well and developed even more throughout the Mongol Dynasty all the way to the Qing Dynasty. Now, China has an unbroken 7000 year ceramic tradition that still continues today and is in production in many cities in China that also produced back in the olden days.
Patriarch and Tiger
The Orchid
Walking on a Mountain Path in Spring
Fishing in a Mountain Stream