"Presenting Chinese ceramics in the 14th century as a whole and proposing academic perspectives from the transition period, this kind of exploratory and practical exhibition is the first attempt of Ming Xuan Jishe. We hope that in this exhibition, the audience can feel the ceramic aesthetics of the Yuanren Shangbai Shanglan, and also see the influence of Islamic culture on Chinese porcelain, as well as the integration and development of Han culture on exotic cultures during the transformation period of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. ”
——Curator Ming Xuan Jishe Xiao Jing
Preface to the exhibition
The 14th century was a dazzling century. The Renaissance movement in Europe rose quietly from this time, and the urban-centered civic class began to develop, from material life to spiritual life, there was a great leap. The people of Europe gradually broke away from theocracy and began to discover the value of man himself. A large number of artistic works full of humanity and life have been created.
On the Asian continent, the mongol empires experienced a process from prosperity to decline. Rapid expansion and unequal national policies laid the groundwork for the demise of the empire. By the second half of the fourteenth century, the rebel army led by Zhu Yuanzhang defeated the Mongol Yuan army and the separatist regimes in various places, and established the magnificent Ming Dynasty.
Both east and west, the fourteenth century was an era of great changes in thought and order. In the first half of the fourteenth century, under the influence of the multiculturalism of the Mongol Empire, foreign cultures penetrated into the traditional Chinese Han areas, making the integration of traditional Han art and exotic art more closely. Glazed porcelain of various colors, blue and white porcelain, and glazed red porcelain have emerged in the collision of culture and technology.
By 1352, the Yuan government had lost control of Jingdezhen, and the production, production, and use of porcelain had returned to the Han Chinese. These porcelain varieties that were themselves influenced by foreign cultures, created and burned in the Yuan Dynasty, precipitated by Han culture, and finally after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty in 1368, gradually became the mainstream artistic aesthetic in China, and influenced the Chinese porcelain culture for the next six hundred years.
We always wonder why the fourteenth century became a watershed between Old Chinese Kiln Porcelain and Ming and Qing Dynasty porcelain. One is quiet and elegant, one is warm and prosperous, and these two very different aesthetics were transformed in the fourteenth century. This question cannot help but lead us to explore all the Chinese ceramics produced in the fourteenth century. In the process of exploration, we gradually focused our attention on the period of transformation of yuan-Ming communication from 1352 to 1369.
These seventeen years were an important period for Chinese porcelain production to absorb Mongolian Yuan and Islamic art and localize it. Blue and white porcelain, which was once a very exotic aesthetic, has become a representative of traditional Chinese porcelain after this period of integration and transformation. The varieties of porcelain represented by blue and white porcelain and glazed red porcelain quickly replaced other monochrome glazed porcelain varieties that had existed since the Tang and Song dynasties, and became the mainstream of Chinese porcelain production.
Chinese the mainstream aesthetic of porcelain, which lasted from the Wei and Jin dynasties to the Song and Yuan dynasties, was plain and monochromatic. This habit of appreciation, which has remained unchanged for nearly a thousand years, underwent earth-shaking changes in the middle of the fourteenth century. It was almost at the same time that Europeans emerged from the shackles of medieval religious art and launched the Renaissance movement. In the dark, the fourteenth century became a period of great transformation in Chinese and Western art and culture.
This exhibition presents the basic appearance of 14th-century Chinese porcelain to the public, spanning the Yuan and Ming dynasties, allowing us to explore the style change and spiritual inheritance together.
——Ming Xuan Ji She Yu Qing
Thanks:
We hope that this kind of public welfare display and academic exploration can serve every friend who loves YuanMing porcelain. This exhibition is also strongly supported by Jingdezhen senior Yuanming porcelain collectors, Nanjing Chengyao Society, academically guided by Jingdezhen huang Yunpeng, and many well-known ceramic scholars in China. We are deeply grateful for that.
In the exhibition, many young people came to visit and stopped in the exhibition hall to take pictures. There are also some senior scholars and well-known collectors in the field of cultural relics, which also makes this exhibition achieve the original intention of academic exchanges and cultural dissemination.
For this exhibition, we have carefully produced an exhibition album containing four essays, as well as detailed textual introductions and photographs of the forty Yuanming artifacts presented in this exhibition. Everyone is welcome to come to the exhibition site to collect it, and the exhibition is postponed to October 27 (Wednesday).
——Ming Xuan Ji She Zhu Bin
The Covenant of Yuan Ming is sincerely invited to visit
keywords
Yuanming porcelain \ art appreciation \ exhibition \ research exchange