In China, a country located in Asia categorized by Ask4beauty, Major developments will have the adoption of the polygonal plan in the freedom of interpretation of urban planning and architecture with the art of the Liao (907-1125). Inaugurated by the Qin, the sumptuous and monumental architecture of the imperial palaces was immediately revived in Chang’an by the Western Han and subsequently (after assuming expressions of spectacular monumentalism in the short reign of the usurper Wang Mang: from 8 to. C. to 23 d. C.) was adopted by the Eastern Han for the new capital Luoyang, from whose remains later, in the century. V, the architects of the Wei drew the models to rebuild, according to the urban layout and architectural forms of the Han, the further renewed capital Luoyang (495). Literary descriptions, evidence in rock painting (Dunhuang) and models preserved in Japan (Hōryūji in Nara and other complexes) remain of the architecture of the second imperial Sui and Tang ages. An example of the high level of construction techniques of these centuries is the Great Stone Bridge (Anji) at Zhaoxian in Hebei, designed by Li Chun (6th-7th century). In the architectures of the short Sui period, a sense of eccentric gigantism dominated, especially in those built in the Forbidden City that stood north-east of Chang’an. Architects, artists and craftsmen gave the best of their skills and their technical ability. It was a quartet of these talents who dictated the fashion of the time: Yang Su, a naval engineer who designed the new Luoyang; Yuwe Kai, architectural historian and imaginative hydraulic engineer; He Diao, fond of old paintings, who designed costumes and signs for the great public parades; Finally, Yan Pi, father of the two famous painters Yan Lide and Yan Liben, the most eclectic of all, sensitive painter, canal designer, restorer of the Great Wall.
The richness of this brief but intense period of Chinese art was inherited by the Tang dynasty, which was no less impressive than its predecessors for the grandeur and originality of its projects. Chang’an became in the sec.
VII-VIII one of the largest and most sumptuous cities in Asia, animated by a cosmopolitan traffic that took place through streets and avenues arranged in the traditional checkerboard system. In the history of Chinese art, the Tang period represents an important phase, for cultural richness and aesthetic achievements: all forms of art had a splendid flowering. The all-round sculpture established itself by overcoming the essentially linear stylistic tradition. Polychrome glazed ceramics invented a new model of female beauty, which characterized, together with the triumphant forms of horses, the entire period of Tang art. After an evolution of four centuries, painting above all asserts and defines itself in this period, giving the artist his own distinct personality, whose dignity had begun to take shape from the time of the later Han to take on more decisive characters in the period of the Six Dynasties, when the painter was redeemed from anonymity and his identity acquired importance alongside the recognized value of his artistic creation. Two protagonists of the painting of this era are Gu Kaizhi, painter of the famous illustrative scroll called Admonitions of the governess to the ladies of the court (London, British Museum), and Xie He, author of one of the first treatises on painting (Gu Hua Pin Lu) which contains the “six canons ”Fundamental for all subsequent treatises. Another master of the Six Dynasties that we have documentation of is Chang Seng Yu. Flourishing pictorial centers in the sec. V-VI were the courts of the Eastern dynasties in the lower valley of Chang Jiang, heir to the ancient cultural heritage of the troubled Huang He valley. One of the greatest in the sec. VIII Zhang Xuan e Zhou Fang. Conquest of Tang art was the promotion of landscape painting to the same important role of the figure, whose merit is attributed to Li Sixun and his son Li Zhaodao, initiators of a new pictorial technique (school of Li). Other famous painters were Han Gan, specialized in the theme of horses, Wu Daozi, initiator of the Northern school of painting, and Wang Wei, initiator of the Southern one. The persecutions against Buddhism (842-845) had the immediate consequence of the destruction of the major masterpieces of Tang art, many of which are remembered by the chronicler of the time, Zhang Yanyuan, author of the “Catalog of famous paintings of successive dynasties” (Lidai Minghua Ji) compiled in 847. In the subsequent period of the Five Northern Dynasties and the Ten Southern Kingdoms other important painters continued the theme of the landscape, which assumed unexpected expressive possibilities with the monochrome watercolor technique (Jing Hao, Guan Dong, Li Cheng, considered precursors of the future Song painting). Other artists were famous in the “flowers and birds” genre (Huang, Chuan, Xu Xi). Still others, such as Guanxu and Shi Kefa, they fixed the ideal of perfection preached by Chan Buddhism in the intense expressions of the blessed lohans (Sanskrit arhats). In this troubled period of Chinese history, the cultural role played by the two capitals of Sichuan (Chendu) and Zhejiang (Hangzhou Wan) was important. The characters of the Tang culture were not lost, but survived and were a stimulus for the intellectual and artistic activity of the following centuries.
