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Action and Image in Early Chinese Art
Lothar von Falkenhausen
Three Modes of Figure Representation
In the art of pre- Imperial China, humans and animals are principally rendered in three distinct ways: hieratic, ornamentalized,1 or in action. In the hieratic mode of representation, they are depicted either frontally or in full profile; their posture is invariably rigid and inert; and when several are present, no attempt is made to convey any interaction among them (Fig. la).2 When reduced to "pure ornament," their forms are stretched and twisted according to geometric principles into repeat- able units of surface-covering design (Fig. lb).3 Only relatively rarely are humans
1. Aside from recognizable animal bodies forming patterns, Shang and Zhou bronze art also comprises a canon of abstract ornaments, some of which are derived from animal parts ; but such non-figural art is of no concern to the present article.
2. For examples, see the illustrations to Ladislav Kesner's article in this volume. Chinese and Korean ancestor portraits are a later instance of this mode of representation (see Ladislav Kesner, Jr., "Memory, Likeness and Identity in Chinese Ancestor Portraits," Bulletin of the National Gallery in Prague, 3-4 (1993-94), 3-15 ; Jan Stuart and Evelyn S. Rawski, Worshiping the Ancestors : Chinese Commemorative Portraits [Washington, D. C : Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2001]).
3. Joseph Leo Koerner, "The Fate of the Thing : Ornament and Vessel in Chou Bronze
Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 17 (2008) : 51-91
