Unscrolling the History of China's Art: Pre and Post Buddhism

THE GUARDIAN
By Kate Kellaway

Model army: Kate Kellaway in the Beijing studio of married
artists Xiang Jing and Qu Guangci. Photograph: Harry Cory Wright

CHINA---As we land in Beijing, the smog is so thick that all I can see, as we leave the airport, are the Chinese characters on the registration plates of departing coaches: scarlet shining through silver mist. It is a beautiful sight in its alarming, unhealthy way. China, I reflect, looks as though it is going to be slow to reveal itself. I am here with the V&A, in advance of the first major exhibition of Chinese painting in the UK since the Royal Academy's attempt at a historical overview in 1936. Most of us have some grasp of how European art evolved, but Chinese art can seem – if not quite as impenetrable as Beijing's smog – aloof.  [link]

Victoria & Albert Museum: "Masterpieces of Chinese Paintings: 700-1900" (October 23, 2013 to 19 January 2014); South Kensington Cromwell Road London SW7 2RL; +44 (0)20 7942 2000; vam.ac.uk.

Excerpts from Trip Essay:

• The exhibition starts in 700, ends in 1900. 
• 798 district, Beijing's modern art centre, once an electronics factory in the Bauhaus style.
• Contemporary Chinese art became big between 2006 and 2008. 
• Beijing's Forbidden City, where treasures await us at the Palace Museum. 
• The Cultural Revolution involved loss of memory. 
• Chinese painting turns out to be about brief encounters.
• The idea of rotation is ancient and refreshing (in every sense). 
• In the west, artists worked on wood and canvas; in the east, on silk and paper – after all, a Chinese invention. He also points out the importance of the written language. 
• The Chinese "never had a problem putting words into pictures conceptually – very different from the west".
• Chinese obsession with discipline and rank. 
• Traditional painting is divided into three types: birds and flowers; figures; landscapes. 
• Art was judged by three adjectives. The best work was "divine". Second best was "untrammelled" and the third "able".
• Dunhuang's Mogao caves, in northwest China, on the edge of the Gobi desert, an extraordinarily wonderful, if not untrammelled, place – home of Buddhist art on the largest scale in the world.
• Buddhism became a major influence in Chinese culture in the Tang dynasty.  
• Conservation in China is controversial: there is pride in making art look as good as new – or old. It is comprehensively thorough. Chinese art was made in the expectation of regular remountings. 
• China has many young artists now who are the modern equivalent of the traditional scholar-artists of the past. The scholar figure turned his back on mainstream politics to keep moral integrity, refusing to take part in the regime." 
• Retreat is key.