Early Chinese Characters
It is quite difficult to find good resources on early Chinese Characters. I am quite excited about going to grad school and using the library to find more books on this subject. Thing is, I don't read Chinese that well - so I have to stick to English. But these are photocopied out of an old book I found through inter-library loan. I lost the information on what book it is from. Cause I'm a real wizard that way. Anway, this info is not available anywhere else on the internet. If anyone can tell me where I can find more about this topic, I'd be extremely pleased.
Why should you care about these images? Hey! This isn't just the invention of Chinese characters - it's the invention of writing, period. The first image here that is clearly written out as a textual composition is 20,000 BC!!! And that's not the earliest. Watch as ritualistic religious symbols change into strings of pictograms that work almost as spells, and then change into texts that record people's names and instantly become concerned with money and property - how uplifting! But seriously - I think these are some of the most beautiful images from any art, anywhere. The influence on my work is profound - the composition, the symmetry, the combination of abstract and representative elements within the same image, the tension between communication and opacity... Consider that works like the Tao Te Ching and all of Confucius were recorded with the latest of these characters, and you can understand why the translations are so open to interpretation.
Click on the pictures to see the details.
4 comments:
I posted a million things today because my interview at Columbia is tomorrow and I'm trying to keep busy.
how'd the interview go?
i used to have a book about chinese painting, calligraphy and taoism... can't remember what it's called & can't find it anywhere online... but there was an amazing painting reproduced in it, a waterfall scene. i think it was a yuan dynasty literati painting, so there was a text written (possibly in the archaic seal script?) in the upper corner of the painting, probably saying something like "i made this painting for myself and my fellow poets, and it's not for sale. i'm a true poet, not a commercial painter." etc. which is what they usually wrote on their paintings. but the marks that comprised the waterfall itself were ALSO chinese characters, written in a very loose "cloud script", and you'd have to be pretty educated to even realize it was a text at all. i wish i could remember the name of this painting, the name of the artist who painted it or the name of the book i found it in, because i'd love for you to see it. but it was a very cool example of an artist combining several different codes in the same work. i.e., the marks that comprised the waterfall were (1) a naturalistic waterfall, which is already a representation of taoist principles, (2) a taoist poem, written in legible characters and (3) calligraphy in the "cloud script" style which itself signifies & embodies taoist principles. so the codes were all communicating the same (taoist) message, more or less, but together they produced something else, a powerful synesthetic experience (or "a talking waterfall"), that very few people would have been educated enough in the three simultaneous codes to fully "get."
anyway, i know there have been a lot of artists in the history of chinese painting who very consciously employed multiple linguistic codes in their work, and also explored the relationship between writing and depicting (sometimes, as in the waterfall, letting their marks communicate in both ways simultaneously). despite that this has been a central concern in chinese art, i don't think a lot of people have written books about it (at least not in english, or that i've been able to find). the book i mentioned was an unusually good one though (not very long, unfortunately) because it actually went into all the stuff about ritualistic uses of language that you mentioned here in your blog, but discussed it squarely in relation to art.
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OOH, I JUST FOUND IT!! WOO-HOO!! HERE'S THE BOOK!!
http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Magic-Language-Diagrams-Calligraphy/dp/0500270627/ref=sr_1_7/104-0139133-1829577?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174774762&sr=8-7
Wow Logan, What a great comment - I am inspired to check out this book and it makes me excited to learn more...
The bronze seal script that I think logan is talking about doesn't come until after several more pages of evolution. It is an amazing script because it is super symmetrical and stylized.
Are you updating your blog Logan? You should! I will always tell everyone to read it...
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