On The Bamboo Carving Patterns In Ming And Qing Dynasties Under The Influence Of Chinese Paintings

The art of bamboo carving had been developed into a professional type of Chinese industrial arts during the middle and late Ming Dynasty. Despite a few recordings provided by literature works, describing the features and achievements of the art before the Ming Dynasty, it is rare to find the objects from the antiques inherited or unearthed, because of the difficulty in the concervation. From the middle Ming Dynasty, the bamboo carving began to prevail among the middle and upper classes of art, with various carving techniques. To the late Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, the art matured graduately, and formed different typical genres. It is worth noting that the works of bamboo carving of these genres are influenced by Chinese Paintings to a large extent in many aspects, such as the techniques, the subjects and the sculpting methods. Those different genres finally reached to the same result of "carving with painting technics" from different ways. Thus, the bamboo carving arts in Ming and Qing Dynasties adopted the art of Chinese Paintings in aspects of shaping categories, decorating designs and color implementations, and in the aspects of crafting techniques and the inheriting of historical culture. Under the influence of Chinese Paintings, the bamboo carving arts became the rarities among Chinese traditional cultures.The existing articles and books related to the study of bamboo carving of Ming and Qing Dynasties were mostly focused on the history of its development, crafting techniques, characters of different branches and the analysis of decorations of carvings. However, little work has been conducted systematicly on the relationship between bamboo carving patterns and Chinese Paintings, including their similarities, differences and origins.Starting with the research of the relationship between carving patterns in Ming and Qing Dynasties and Chinese Paintings, the thesis studies the reference and re-creation from the distillation of Chinese Paintings of the carving patterns, and finds out the relationships and differences. It discusses the main branches of the bamboo-carving decorations at different locations in Ming and Qing Dynasties from appearances to meanings by using the method of comparative study. The thesis focus on the works and decorations of main bamboo carving genres of middle and late Ming Dynasty and early and middle Qing Dynasty, and compares them with Chinese Paintings mainly the painting of the landscapes, flowers and birds and figures of the mature period, as well as some examples of the prints and the murals in the broad sense of Chinese Paintings.The first chapter serves as a general introduction to the whole thesis, with surveys on the deucestic and overseas studies on bamboo carving, and the significance, method and purpose of the research.The second chapter summarizes the history of the origination and development of the art of bamboo carving including the main categories of ware shapes, carving techniques, the regional distribution of the art of bamboo carving, and the genres with different charactors. It is also briefly introduces factors of circumstances according to the time of Ming and Qing dynasties when the art of bamboo carving generated.Based on the analysis of the characters of the art of Chinese Paintings, the third chapter conduct an in-depth study on the influence of Chinese Paintings to the pattern of bamboo carving on the levels of subjects, formal beauties in the composition of the pictures, techniques and cultural connotations. The features advanced in this study include the relationship of different subjects of bamboo carving learnt from Chinese Paintings, the similarities and differences between the composition of pictures in 2-dimensional planes and those in 3-dimensional spaces, and the presenting techniques of various types of arts.Furthermore, the fourth chapter discusses in the aspect of culture inheriting and transmission, the functions of bamboo carving on the joining and transmission of super culture and folk culture and on the inheriting and development of Chinese traditional culture.