Title: China - Visual arts | Britannica
Headings: 
Visual arts
Learn about Chinese art including their sculptures during the Han dynasty
Performing arts

Content: Chinese painting is predominantly of landscapes, done in black pine-soot ink on fine paper or silk, occasionally with the addition of faint colour washes. The most vigorous period for landscape painting spanned the years from the Song (960–1279) to the Ming (1368–1644) dynasty. Calligraphy rivals painting as a fine art in China, and paintings are often captioned with artfully written poems. Calligraphy reveals the great fondness the Chinese have for their written characters, and it ranges in style from meticulously and laboriously scribed “seal” characters to flamboyant and unconstrained “grass” characters. Calligraphy, as painting, is prized for a number of abstract aesthetic qualities, described by such terms as balance, vitality, energy, bones, wind, and strength. Painting has undergone numerous style changes since the beginning of the 20th century. Before 1949, painters such as Qi Baishi (1863–1957) developed distinct new styles that internationalized traditional Chinese aesthetics. After 1949, pressure for a form of socialist realism made painters shift their focus to such subjects as factory scenes, peasant villages, and convoys of tour buses. But, with the liberalization of the arts that followed Mao’s death in 1976, more-traditional values reasserted themselves. Qi Baishi: