The Cosmology Of Changing: The Re-interpretation Of Chinese Artistic Spirit

Chinese culture regards the universe as a process of change. And it's quitedifferent from the entitative cosmology in the Western culture. Understanding universein perspective of change and entity do not only refer to the difference of cosmology.Furthermore this difference is related to a series of questions, such as people how tounderstand things, how to deal with the world, how to obtain the meaning of life, andso on. And the cosmology of change is also closely related to the extraordinarycharacter of the ancient Chinese art in some aspects of motif, form and expression, etc.In my opinion, it is unable to really understand the unique constitutional mechanism ofancient Chinese art if our research starts not from a perspective of change but fromsome subordinate concepts.The phenomenon of making things objectification and formalization in thewestern culture doesn't appear in the development process of Chinese culture becauseof the attention for the change process. Although things are unlikely to be placed as animmediate atemporal object to grasp in a changing world, the art as a visual form hasto scan the world by the way of image. And it is not very difficult for western art in theconcept and technology. Because it just needs abstract ideal form from the proteanworld, at this point, the geometry has provided a standard paradigm. However, it isfaced with a paradox of vision (space) form how to deal with the motif of change (time)in the ancient Chinese art. Of course, the change is not just a motif of time, butinvolves a set of views of the world for the ancient Chinese cosmology. And this set ofviews is made up of many correlative aspects, including: First, all things is an organicwhole, thus transformation is possible between one thing and another; Second, the twopoles can transform one another or even generate new thing through interactions; Third,all things can obtain communication and rejuvenescence through amorphous thing,such as wind, clouds, water, gas, and so on; The fourth, form is not more importantthan something hard to grasp, such as"process","relationship","Qiji"and"Yunwei".The fifth, the ever changing things can be explained and grasped by a type offunctional numeric model, for example, the Five Elements and the Eight Trigrams.It is just these correlative different aspects that constitute the complexity andrichness of the"change cosmology"in the ancient Chinese art. So we can discuss theancient Chinese art through viewing five different aspects. Meanwhile, we can obtain amore holistic view about the constitutional mechanism of the ancient Chinese art.The first chapter of the thesis aims at discussing the aspects and the characteristicsof the change cosmology through researching the language study and cosmology. Atthe same time,Ⅰpoint out that there are the same views and differences about thechange cosmology of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism.ChapterⅡaims at discussing the theme of"transmogrification"with the imagesof animals on the ritual implement from the Neolithic period to Shang and ZhouDynasty in China. The faith of the animal transmogrification is not only related to theconcept of regarding human and animal even plant as an integral whole, but alsoconnected with the worship of the animal God in the early Chinese culture.ChapterⅢaims at exploring the theme of duality and transformation. Why is theconcept of duality so important? One of reasons is what the duality achieved is not adynamic equilibrium or stability. In contrast, characteristics of the duality just lie in thepossibility of change as a result of the interactions of two different factors. Dual modehas significance in exploring the myth and politics of the Shang and Zhou Dynasty, atthe same time, it constitutes a reigning rule about the art of ritual implement in theShang and Zhou Dynasty. In addition, I have studied the possible correlation of theimage of Fu xi and Nu wa among the human face and fish veins, the ornamentation ofnine vessel, the map of the Classic of Mountains and Rivers, silk painting and figurebrick of the Han Dynasty through exploring the motif of double snakes (or dragon).The motif of double snake (or dragon) is related to not only the faith of transformation between life and death, yin and yang, but also the concept of hermaphroditism, coitionand palingenesis.ChapterⅣaims at discussing why the Chinese culture focus on those powersunable to be formalized, for example, something amorphous like wind, cloud, waterand air(Qi). These motifs like water, clouds and air(Qi) are represented in ancientChinese art widely, for instance, the veins of cloud and air(Qi) exist abroad in thewhole art of Han Dynasty. After Tang Dynasty, water, cloud and gas constitute themost important expressive content in the landscape. At the same time, the spaceconcept of the ancient Chinese is set up in these things. Furthermore, based on thesethings, the unique"Xu"concept in the Chinese art had come into being.ChapterⅤfocuses on elucidating what Chinese cosmology emphasize is not tograsp the certain"form"of things but the relationship of interaction between one thingand another, or the interjacent constitution of things from one status to another andfrom visible to cryptic. Associated with these concepts, the subsequent Chinese artemphasize improvisation and pay attention to the image's performance"betweensimilar and not similar", meanwhile, the concept of"the lively spirit of air and music"expresses a profound sense of time.ChapterⅥanalyzes the type of figure model elucidating the ever-changing nature;correspondingly with the type of figure model, the ancient Chinese art establish a set ofmechanism of creating all things by the simple"law". At the same time, through theexploration of the lineage of art history from Tung Ch'i-ch'ang to Wang Y(u|¨)an-ch'i andShih-t'ao, I discuss the artistic tradition based on the two different models ofcosmology——following"law"and emphasizing"nature"——is how to generatespecific historical function by the way of opposition and complement.In addition to the first chapter of this thesis as the background, the subsequent fivechapters analyze the specific art phenomena by relating the different five aspects of the"changing cosmology"respectively. The five dimensions are not only five differentproblems, but also the different aspects of a problem. And I tried to show a kind ofmore holistic understanding about the phenomenon of ancient Chinese art which basedon the perspective of"changing cosmology".