The Art of the Yellow Springs: Understanding Chinese Tombs

by Hung Wu

No other civilization in the premodern world was more obsessed with constructing underground burial structures than China, where for at least five thousand years people devoted a great amount of wealth and labor to build tombs and furnish them with exquisite objects and images. The hope of providing the dead with an eternal home stimulated artistic creativity and technological innovation, making the tomb a persistent site of art production as well as a comprehensive ensemble of various art forms. For the most part, tombs have been mainly appreciated as "treasure troves," the contents of which has allowed art historians to rewrite histories of individual art forms such as bronze, jade, sculpture, and painting. But tombs have served this role at the expense of being fragmented in both preservation and The integrity of a tomb is obscured when it dissolves into medium-oriented classification and research. New trends in Chinese art history are now placing the entire burial (rather than its individual components) at the center of observation and interpretation. The present book takes this to the next level by focusing on interpretive methods. It argues that to achieve a genuine understanding of Chinese tombs we need to reconsider a host of art historical concepts (including visuality, viewership, space, formal analysis, function, and context) and derive an analytical framework from the three most essential aspects of any manufactured spatiality, materiality, and temporality. Chapters discuss the symbolic environments constructed inside a tomb and the "subject spaces" created for the disembodied soul; how and why certain materials, mediums, shapes, and colors were selected for tomb architecture and furniture; and lastly how spaces, objects, and images work together to evoke temporalities such as past, future, or eternity and generate a sense of movement inside a sealed space. The final coda brings all of these threads together in a portrayal of three important tombs from different periods.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2009

Reviews

[Dorothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Would’ve died researching funerary arts in my arthist course if not for this book. An absolute lifesaver.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much of Chinese history is culled from archaeology, the majority of which is in reality 'tombs', that one cannot have a truly good knowledge of Chinese history and culture unless one knows something of its tomb culture. Fortunately, China's recent rapid growth that has spurred the building of new roads, tunnels and railroad lines, has uncovered hundreds of wonderful new sites. Art of the Yellow Springs captures reams of new information that has now been literally unearthed.

This excellent, beautifully illustrated volume (gorgeous colour pictures and black and white diagrams), covers topics from the building of tombs to their architecture to the caskets and grave goods found within, as well as the paintings and the astrological/celestial diagrams that decorated many Chinese tomb ceilings. Textual references to burial practices and rituals and historical variations are additional highlights.

Superb references and a bibliography encourage additional reading and research, and the index includes enough entries to find information on specific time periods, sites, tombs, mausoleums, artefacts (such as those famous jade 'suits' or sancai figurines), etc. (The location index that lists major tombs is especially helpful for those of us who are 'archaeological tourists'. Travelling to Shaanxi? Nine important tombs are covered in the text, many of which can be visited.)

The chapter on "Materiality" will be of particular interest to museum docents and visitors as it explains the three main types of grave goods and their media and historical evolution.

A book on tomb culture doesn't sound very pleasant, but this is a wonderful book for anyone interested in Chinese history and culture not only for its content, but also for the author's style, which is definitely 'learned', but so forthright and friendly (example: "It is almost uncanny to find so many parallels...") that I felt as though I were sitting chatting with an exceptionally well-educated friend. Don't let the depth of expertise found in this book put you off even if you're a general reader just interested in Chinese history or art.

[Yuxin Zhang · Rating 4 out of 5]

在考古学尚未来临的时代，那些伟大的作品，从诞生之初便不是为了流传。
“慎终，追远，民德归厚矣。”