THE ART OF CHINA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22860, 15 October 1937, Page 14

THE ART OF CHINA

WORLD-WIDE INFLUENCE EFFECTS THROUGH CENTURIES The ideals of Chinese art changed from generation to generation, and what was admired as good art by one generation was generally despised by the next, according to Mr. Henry Ah Kew, who gave a talk yesterday upon the contact of Western and Chinese art to members of the Auckland Society of Arts. At one time Chinese art was regarded as trivial and somewhat fantastic, he said, but to-day it was recognised as fit to take its place with that of Greece and Egypt. The Chinese sought for the truth in art in tho spiritual world, said Mr. Ah Kew, but the Europeans sought it in the material, and, although most people seemed to think that China wad the land of pigtails and illusion, tho land of the willow pattern, actually the truth was entirely different. The willow pattern, for instance, was invented by the British in 1870. Jn the 18th century Chinese art and European art had much in common —the former was that of a mighty nation, an art of beautiful lino, and glowing colour. The French school was the lirst to come under the domination of the Chinese method, and the courts of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. and those of China had much in common. In the middle of the 16th century Louis XIV. appeared at a court hall attired in a costume that was half Persian and half Chinese in character, and at tho end of the 17th century France was inundated, by the craze for Chinese art. Gradually tho craze became international in scope, and a Chinese pagoda was built even in tho gardens of Hampton Court Palace, London. Tho impact of Chinese art upon Western art forms had been pronounced, continued Mr. Ah Kew, and although at different times in the course of many dynasties representatives of various faiths and nations had tried to impinge their teachings upon tho Chinese, they ultimately desisted for ono reason or another. Everything tho Japanese had in their art they owed to the Chinese. Similarly, though Western civilisations always were affected by civilisations around them, China's isolation Jiad left her art comparatively untouched, and Christianity had left very slight marks upon it.