Arts 2

• Indian art was not for the sake of individual achievement and recognition. It had a predominantly public function that was mainly spiritual: to make gods and the cosmos manifest to the senses.
• The purpose of Indian sculpture, painting, and architecture was to provide gods with recognizable outer forms, which weak devotees needed to move themselves along spiritually, but the emphasis was always on what is meant rather than on what is seen”.
• Ajanta Caves, containing 29 rock-cut temples, is a manifestation of an integral and extremely valuable addition to beautiful paintings for it houses the oldest known Indian cave paintings dating back from 2nd century B.C
• The artworks in the Ellora Caves were said to have marked the end of the ancient period in the Indian Art and the beginning of medieval art. These cave paintings were mainly made in fresco and tempera techniques; “but no less important was preparation of surface and laying the plaster”
• Indian sculptural styles and forms are governed by tradition. There were no innovations since these were avoided.
• For images of men and women narrow conventions of physical type were followed after the Gupta period. Men have a wide chest and shoulders, a thin waist, smooth, round limbs, a little roll of stomach flesh over a belt or sash, but no anatomical definition of musculature of the sort.
• Sculptures of Women in Indian art usually have broad hips, large, firm, spherical breasts, alluding to sexual energy (shakti), a sinuous “three bend” posture, achieved with tilts at the neck, shoulders, and hips, with a slight protrusion in the lower abdomen, and lots of jewelry.
• Indian sculpture is mostly used in adorning temples and shrines so much so that cult images were needed for sanctuaries and sculptural forms were placed at entrances to acknowledge a resident god or to afford protection from evil forces.
• In indian sculpture, wood was used as a building material for female deities and stones and bricks were widely used for male gods.
• The general features of Indian architectural forms can be summarized from Ashoka’s times to the 13th century C.E:

  • Forms were limited to reliquary stupas, rock-cut temples (chaitya, or worship halls)
  • Both in cliff sides and in the open with monk’s cells (viharas)
  • Freestanding temples in two basic styles—northern and southern.
• At first Indian temples were built from wood, which was replaced almost everywhere by stone from the end of the Gupta period (600 C.E.). Rock-cut sanctuaries, which betray their debt to wood construction, came mostly to an end and were displaced by freestanding structures.
• There were religious meanings, traditional expectations, and a mythological background in every phase, task, design issue and choice of materials in Indian temple building.
• In Indian architecture there has to be purification of an appropriate site, development of a floor plan or sacred diagram, which is also called mandala and attention to relative proportions of temple parts are requirements in construction. In addition, “Hindu temples are complex structures with much stylistic variation” and post and lintel were the basic structural system.
• Chinese calligraphy and painting may overlap as one art. As a matter of fact, “writing with brush and ink defined the scholar and was a necessary component of painting”. However, calligraphy was more pervasive than painting.
• Brush, ink, inkstone, and silk or paper are said to be the Four Treasures of calligraphy and painting. Stungkel (2011) further added: “The ubiquity and power of calligraphy to elicit pleasure and a sense of mystery was shared by all traditional Chinese whether literate or not. It was one of the forces that held millions of Chinese together for centuries in a vast land.”
• Landscape painting has been the dominant form of visual art in China. It had strong Confucian overtones of reverence for tradition and reflected Taoist ideas of cosmic energy and spontaneous activity believed to flow from a brushstroke. Landscape painting included hills, valleys, cliffs, lakes, ponds, rivers, waterfalls, and mountain ranges. It also included plants and animal life with human inhabitants in the background that are almost lost.
• Landscape painting


  • Practiced and considered as an art form because of three reasons
• Three reasons landscape painting is considered an art form


  • The literati class was consolidated in the Tang and Sung periods, which meant a shared view of the world acquired through the study of classical literature and skills in calligraphy as part of the scholar's training
  • Scholars had long experience with Buddhism in mountains and forests, so mountain landscapes were a spiritual home where humans and nature shared affinity with Tao, especially for the Taoist-Buddhist and the landscape painter
  • Neo-Confucian philosophy inspired a new way of seeing nature, the idea that reality could be understood as the li (principle) of things grasped by "the investigation of things"
• Sculpture in Chinese art,

  “The human form was never a motif of paramount importance to them. Their creations were projections from their own minds intended to express or evoke ideas of a more general or spiritual scope”.
• A number of Chinese sculptures are generally representative of religious motifs that are Buddhist in origin and not infrequently in human form. Buddha and Bodhisattva ideas are expressed with many variations intended to convey different aspects of a spiritual consciousness which pervades the whole universe. They are portrayals of consciousness or symbolic indications of the successive stages by which the human nature approaches the divine.
• Walled compounds, raised pavilions, wooden columns and panelling, yellow glazed roof tiles, landscaped gardens, and a careful application of town planning and use of space are all notable features of the architecture of ancient China.
• Chinese architects were influenced by ideas from India and the Buddhism which originated there, but the buildings of ancient China remained remarkably constant in fundamental appearance over the centuries. Chinese architecture has remained constant all throughout its history. Larger structures like temples, halls, and gate towers were built on a raised platform compacted earth and faced with brick or stone. But small private homes of the ancient Chinese were built from dried mud, rouch stones and wood, and the plan was mostly square, rectangular, or oval.
• The most common building type in Chinese architecture had regularly spaced timber posts which were strengthened by horizontal cross-beam. The small main hall of the Nanchan Temple, on Mount Wutai in Shanxi province is the oldest datable timber building. Ancient Buddhist temples, as a matter of fact, have used dougong, a bracket joining the top of the post and horizontal roof beam, to support the wooden posts.
• The five types of ancient Chinese architecture include

  Imperial palaces (The Forbidden City)

  Defensive walls (The Great Wall)

  Pagodas (Big Wild Goose Pagoda)

  Altars and temples (Temple of Heaven)

  Mausoleums (Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang).
• The earliest surviving murals or wall paintings in the Indian subcontinent are those of Ajanta and Ellora. The themes of these wall paintings range from events in the life of the Buddha and the Jataka stories
• Mural paintings in Ellora are found in five caves, yet preserved only in the Kailasa Temple. Some of the earlier paintings depict Vishnu and Lakshmi borne through the clouds by the celestial bird Garuda
• A painted mural scene from the 'Mahajanaka Jataka' in Ajanta's cave 1, showing King Janaka and his wife Sivali.
• The Flying Vidyadharas (found in Ellora Caves) become a distinguishing feature of the Western Indian paintings from Gujarat of the fourteenth-fifteenth century
• Contrapposto in the posture of standing figures are evident —one leg bent, the other straight, indicating the distribution of weight and forces in a free-standing figure.
• Types of art


  • Sculpture
  • Painting
  • Architecture
• Paintings from 3rd century BCE to 13th century CE


  • Very little number survived
  • Mainly religious expression and intent
• Purpose of Indian artworks

  To provide gods with recognizable outer forms, which weak devotees needed to move themselves along spiritually
• Indian paintings


  • Cave paintings
  • Fresco and tempera techniques
• Ajanta Caves

  • Carved out of volcanic rock around 4th century AD
  • Themes range from events in the life of the Buddha and the Jataka stories
  • Painted with vegetable and mineral dyes
• Mural paintings in Ellora


  • Found in five caves, preserved only in the Kailasa Temple
  • Depict Vishnu and Lakshmi borne through the clouds by the celestial bird Garuda
  • Painted mural scene from the Mahajanaka Jataka in Ajanta's cave 1
• Sculptural styles and forms in India

  • Governed by tradition
  • Placed at entrances to acknowledge a resident god or to afford protection from evil forces
  • Contrapposto in the posture of standing figures evident
• Mithuna Figures, Khajuraho


  • Meant to educate young boys about earthly desires during the medieval era
• Trimurti, Elephanta Caves


  • Three headed statue of Shiva representing creation, protection, and destruction
• Sculpture of Ravana Shaking Mount Kailasa


  • Ravana tried to lift Mount Kailasa but Shiva pushed the mountain down and trapped Ravana underneath
• Indian temple architecture


  • Forms limited to reliquary stupas, rock-cut temples, and freestanding temples
  • Quarried blocks of granite or sandstone laid with no mortar
  • Tranquility and humility of flat, static slabs resting on beams preferred