Title: Chinese art | Britannica
Headings: Chinese art
Chinese art
Learn about Chinese art including their sculptures during the Han dynasty
Aesthetic characteristics and artistic traditions
Art as a reflection of Chinese class structure
The role of linearity in Chinese art

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One effect of the revolutions of the 20th century was the breaking down of the class barriers between amateur and professional. During the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76, literati art and artists were denigrated and an emphasis was placed on anonymous, proletarian-made art like that of the Tang dynasty (618–907) and earlier. The role of linearity in Chinese art
Since the 3rd century ce, calligraphy, or writing as a fine art, has been considered supreme among the visual arts in China. Not only does it require immense skill and fine judgment, but it is regarded as uniquely revealing of the character and breadth of cultivation of the writer. Since the time when inscribed oracle bones and tortoise shells (China’s oldest extant writing) were used for divination in the Shang dynasty ( c. 1600–1046 bce ), calligraphy has been associated with spiritual communication and has been viewed in terms of the writer’s own spiritual attunement. It is believed that the appreciation and production of calligraphy requires lofty personal qualities and unusual aesthetic sensitivity. The comprehension of its finer points is thought to require experience and sensibility of a high order. The Chinese painter uses essentially the same materials as the calligrapher—brush, ink, and silk or paper —and the Chinese judge his work by the same criteria they use for the calligrapher, basically the vitality and expressiveness of the brush stroke itself and the harmonious rhythm of the whole composition. Painting in China is, therefore, essentially a linear art. The painters of most periods were not concerned with striving for originality or conveying a sense of reality and three-dimensional mass through aids such as shading and perspective;