The Research On Painted Pottery Decoration From The Angle Of Art Anthropology

From rising to prosperity and decline, Chinese painted pottery culture has experienced a long history of five thousand years, forming a complete history of painted pottery culture. Due to the differences in tribes and clans among China’s ancient ancestors as well as distinctions of time and geographical conditions, various and colorful types of painted pottery culture were formed. By inheriting and developing on the basis of previous achievements or interacting with each other, these types gradually formed a unified and diverse artistic styles and became a starting point to a great traditional culture. Over the years, the studies on painted pottery directly appealed to our aesthetic perception, and the researchers imposed their own inclinations of aesthetic factors on prehistoric pottery works, just treating them as art instead of contemplating their origins. But from the perspective of anthropologists, to fully understand the culture in a certain historical period, the researches can be separated from neither the producers’ unique knowledge, nor the knowledge hierarchy of the social groups in the course of artistic transformation. The task for art anthropology research is to integrate what is gained in art research and that in anthropology studies. Walking out of the abstract aesthetic perception in study on painted pottery decoration, art anthropology pays more attention to the study on human being, and restores to specific life scenes to make a systematic analysis, exploring the various bonds based on people’s living conditions and cultural forms, and deepening our insights of art of ancient painted pottery decoration.This article is divided into seven chapters, the basic framework is as follows. The first chapter is the introduction part. The second chapter is an overview of art anthropology research, analyzing the basic situation of the current academic researches of art anthropology. The third chapter outlines the distribution of Chinese painted pottery culture, and makes a deep investigation on the link between the rise of painted pottery decoration art and witchcraft, reproduction worship, technological progress as well as the aesthetic demand. Through the analysis of decorative patterns of painted pottery, the fourth chapter reveals that the patterns in painted pottery decoration arose from the interaction between two elements:natural order as the external cause and human’s cognitive and psychological demand for sense of order as the internal cause. Chapter 5 illustrates the concepts of collective identity and totem worship reflected by the painted pottery decoration patterns with specific examples. Chapter 6 discusses the cultural implications in painted pottery decoration patterns and explores its relationship with the origin of painting and calligraphy art. Chapter 7 is the conclusion part, summarizing the impact of art anthropology research of painted pottery decoration on the contemporary art.