Traditional Feather Image Research

Feathered people are very common in Chinese traditional art. They often appeared in tomb mural,portrait stone,and bronze ware, revealed wings or bird faces and had an aura of freedom. Feathered people are familiar in antiques from Xia dynasty to Wei jin dynasty. This image has huge numbers and has variety of subject. Since the beginning of this century, there are many archaeologist and historian study on this image, try to analysis into every layer of its origin, function, ideology and so on. By the reason of strong curiosity, I intend to comprehend, and classify images by the timeline, analyze the evolution of the forms and carry out my thought of its implication.This article was divided in4chapters. First chapter was clarify concepts, and making a retrospect about academic researches. Chapter2to chapter4was according in order of dynasty chronicles, divided feathered people images to3phase: first, a retrospective the elements pattern of humans and birds, and classify the early form from Chunqiu to Qin period; Secondary, analyze its form and its regular pattern, consider Han dynasty as the most active mature period of the feathered people, explore the change of the ideology that behind on it. lastly, a thinking of the fading image and the disappear of the core subject.