Shanshan - Guildhall. Henan Carving Art Research

This paper is the case study on the carving art of the Shan-shan Guildhall of Sheqi County - the largest commercial building campus of Guildhall type of Qing Dynasty in Central China.This paper combed and analyzed the subjects and forms of the carving art of Shan-shan Guildhall on the basis of field investigation. By positioning the guildhall to the space where it lies and the time where it was established in a social transformation period of Qing Dynasty, the paper attempted to probe into the formation of the style of "being flowery and refined on commercial and literary subjects" of the carving art of the Guildhall. Also the paper discussed elementarily on the cultural integration of the carving art of the Guildhall. Sociological study method was used to facilitate the import of the conception "scholar-merchant penetration", aiming to make clear the evolution of the aesthetic idea of the whole society during the modernizing process of China based on the carving art - a kind of visual art - of the building of Guildhall. Two conception, "reality" and "spirit", threaded the paper in parallel. These two conceptions, in subjects are commercial utensils and moral integrity, in spaces are human world and "God" world, and in artistic style Elegant and Popular. The original cause of the duality model is the opposing aesthetic ideas of "scholars" and "merchants" had in the social transformation of modernizing come to penetration, not upset. The social trend of "scholar-merchant penetration" caused the change of aesthetic idea of Qing Dynasty. This change, together with the development of architecture art, had brought forth the extensive subjects and refined carving in the building of Guildhall. As a civil building campus with certain openness, Shan-shan Guildhall told the visitors the commercial spirit, Confucian thought, folk customs, local culture, and religious belief in visual forms, which was a kind of cultural integration and publicity.