Visual Culture is a weekly lecture my course has that explores the history and the impact art has had on the world and the impact art has had on history. The first lecture was about The Symbolic Arts of Imperial China and showed the basic history of Imperial China and how it's influenced modern times. It was interesting to learn about it's religious heritage with the likes of Taoism (Daoism) and Buddhism been huge contributors to the empire. The Emperor and Empress of china were depicted as a five toed dragon and a phoenix to show their great power in this ancient civilisation, with the Emperor known as the celestial being and the Empress known as the celestial servant. Art was a big part of Imperial China and symbols in ceramics were used as gifts but it was more about the meaning of the symbol than the material object given. Decorations in this culture were never purely ornamental and always had a symbolic meaning behind them, it was also interesting to find out about colours and how they can auspicious or inauspicious and the Emperor would wear certain colours reflecting his feelings such as:
Black-Water
Red-Fire
Blue-Wood
White- Metal
Yellow-Earth
These were all known within this culture and was a way of expression without words. There is also the language of the plants where certain plants and flowers would represent a season like:
Peony-Spring
Lotus- Summer
Chrysanthemum- Autumn
Plum Blossom- Winter
It was interesting to see all these hidden languages and forms of expression Imperial China had and in some cases still has but is becoming a lost art, Imperial China has become lost in modern China with it evolving with technology and global affairs but it's culture was and still is rich and offers lots to learn.
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