infusing chinese and japanese culture into humanities 101 at community college of philadelphia...

Infusing Chinese and

Japanese Culture into

Humanities 101 at

Community College of

Philadelphia

Elizabeth Catanese

Infusing Institute, East West Center

Summer 2013

Course Description

Humanities 101: Cultural Traditions

Interdisciplinary study of the humanities from the ancient world to the European renaissance drawing on works of literature, philosophy, art and history. Themes of continuing significance, including concepts of the hero, justice and the self are examined in Western and non-Western contexts. The course emphasizes oral and written analysis of primary texts.

Goals

Expand non-Western aspect of the course to two full weeks of inquiry into Chinese and Japanese culture.

Help students engage in written formal analysis of Chinese and Japanese art (new writing intensive requirement for course)

Create an assignment that asks students to explore the relationship between Chinese and Japanese art and philosophical texts.

Explore a few ways that Chinese and Japanese art fit into the course subtopic: jealousy and the human experience.

A Taste of Asian Art and Philosophy

Confucius/ Kongzi Kongzi= master Kong

6th Century BCE

After father died, fell into poverty

Received good education

Married age 19

Became a philosopher

Konzi, Laozi and Buddhist Arhat

Ming Dynasty, 17th Century

Ding Yungpeng

Confucianism: Basic Concepts

A pervasive philosophy (Written in The Analects)

People should lead moral lives

People should be conscious of their place in the family and in society and act from that place

People should respect elders

People should respect fellow humans and work for good

Laozi BackgroundLaozi

Lao= old

Zi= master

Ancient Chinese Philosopher

Late 4th Century BCE

Originally an archivist

Many legends about background

Portrait of Laozi, 13th Century China

Taoism: Basic Concepts

Tao= road, “the way” (Tao Te Ching= book)

Wu Wei= nonwillful action

Dynamic Balance: Yin and Yang

Oneness= people co-exist with nature

Language of Confucianism but inversion of concepts

Landscape Paintings

Important in both the Chinese and Japanese artistic tradition

Relied on visual balance and order

Mountain represented the emperor

People within the landscape needed to be doing their job within the landscape

In a Taoist sense, landscape painting represented a meditative withdrawal into the natural world

Except from “An Environmental Ethic in Chinese Landscape Painting” by Shelley

Drake Hawks, page 13

Landscape painting in Western art did not develop into an important category of painting until the 17th century. In contrast, landscape painting in China was already a prized art form by the 9th century. In fact, when Chinese art was systematically introduced to the West during the 19th and 20th centuries, the prominence afforded nature – as opposed to humans – startled Western audiences.

18th Century Landscape Painting: British School

Macauly CulkinGuo Xi’s Early Spring (1072 AD)

Guo Xi’s Early Spring (1072 AD)

Guo Xi’s Early Spring (1072 AD) / Kritios Boy (480 BCE)

Compare and Contrast Early Spring and Kritios Boy

Brainstorm the aesthetic elements of each work.

What similarities and differences can you identify?

Locate the S curve in each work.

What do you think is the function of the S curve in each work?

Formal Analysis

Reminder: Formal analysis is an objective, in-depth description of the visual components of a work of art, irrespective of cultural context, history, or artistic motivation.

Except from “Rhythm, Order, Change and Nature in Guo Xi’s Early Spring” by Stanley

Murashige, page 340

Early Spring portrays a mountain wreathed in mist and embellished with trees. The mountain climbs upward among the mists like a twisting serpent. It emerges from billowing cloud-like boulders at the bottom, then twists up and around to its peak at the top. As it wanders to the summit, it sprouts valleys, gorges, cliffs, and ridges. At the left, a hazy valley fades into the distance, passing beneath overhanging promontories. A stream emerges from the valley, circling around large boulders, and empties into a rock-enclosed pool.

Guo Xi’s Early Spring (1072 AD)


Murashige, page 340Tall barren pines grow from the cloud-like boulders at the bottom, reaching into the center of the painting. Twisted, gnarled trees, measured in groups, and often bereft of foliage, cling precariously to the sides of the cliffs and ridges. In the high distance, soft-toned, vertical trees grow along the upper ridges, aligned like teeth in a comb.

Details, Guo Xi’s Early Spring (1072 AD)


Murashige, page 340

Travellers and fishermen comfortably inhabit this mountain world. A fisherman poles his tiny boat in the pool at the lower right, while another adjusts his nets. Tiny figures scale paths and ridges, or cross a bridge; one rides a mule. In the lower left corner, two women have just left their boat and are heading home.

Details, Guo Xi’s Early Spring (1072 AD)

Assignment

• Read the remainder of Murashige’s excerpt.

• Why does Murashige order the elements of his formal analysis as he does?

• What is gained and lost by leaving out cultural context, history, and artistic motivation from the initial analysis?

• Choose an image from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao that speaks to you and perform a 3-paragraph formal analysis of that image.

• Locate a passage from the Analects or the Tao to pair with your image. Write a paragraph about why you chose that text/image pairing.

Course Theme: Jealousy

• How might human emotion be explored in a culture whose predominant artistic focus was on landscape and individual roles within the landscape?

Egui (Hungry Ghosts)

• a concept in Chinese Buddhism, Japanese Buddhism, and Chinese traditional religion representing beings who are driven by intense emotional needs in an animalistic way.

• in Japanese art, hungry ghosts represent souls who must feed on excrement, carrion, and vomit

• Beings become hungry ghosts because of greed, envy and jealousy

• They are associated with addiction

• Hungry ghost festivals occur throughout Asia

• Confucius said “respects ghosts and gods, but keep away from them”

Gaki-zoshi Scroll of the Hungry Ghosts, Late 12th Century Japan

Details: Gaki-zoshi Scroll of the Hungry Ghosts, Late 12th Century

Japan

Ghosts and Mountains in Chinese Art

The Nightmare Before Christmas, Henry Selick, 1993

Except from “Mountain Deities in China: The Domestication of the Mountain God and the

Subjugation of the Margins” by Terry F Kleeman, page 237

• [D]enizens of the mountain include mountain gods, ghosts of the dead, demons, and sprites, as well as fearsome fauna like tigers, wolves, and dholes. In early accounts all these creatures are dangerous because of their capriciousness, amorality, and supernatural powers.



• At this early stage [4th century AD] there seems to be no consistent differentiation between mountain gods (shanshen), mountain spirits (shanling), and mountain ghosts (shangui).



• Over time, the class of mountain gods was redefined as dead human beings filling fixed official posts in the supernatural bureaucracy. Ghosts, sprites, and demons were subjugated to their rule. In this way the order of civilized life was gradually extended to the mountains…

Zhong Kui (mythological figure)

• Zhong Kui is warrior who fights against ghosts. Chinese people had pictures of him in their homes to make sure not to be invaded by evil spirits. He is a funny-looking creature/ man.

• Zhong Kui is himself a ghost who committed suicide because he couldn’t pass the civil service exams. After this he hunted ghosts.

http://www.gbfans.com/ghostbusters/press/japanese-promo/

Portion of a scroll Zhong Kui Traveling with his Sister, Gong Kai 1222-1304.

Hungry Ghost (zhongyuan) Festivals

from childbook.com

Hungry Ghost Festival Food: China from http://kaleidoscope.cultural-china.com/en/8Kaleidoscope11404.htm

End of Unit Assignment

• Select a piece of art that we have looked at

• Reflect about the relationship between order and/or chaos in this piece of art

• In one to two sentences, speculate about how the handling of order and/or chaos might reveal something about the psyche of the time period.

• Recap three crucial pieces of information that you learned from this unit, the texts and/or your classmates.

infusing chinese and japanese culture into humanities 101 at community college of philadelphia...

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