7. Looking Eastwards

(E.H.Gombrich/The Story of Art)

-Islam, China, second to thirteenth century

-イスラム教では偶像崇拝を禁止したため、アラベスク模様で世界観が表現された。なるほど！

-中国の絵画では流れるようなカーブが好まれた。たなびく布や魚の尾ひれなど、動きもなめらかに表現された。

-仏教で何よりも重視された瞑想。それに呼応して、特定の教えを盛り込まず、はたまた単なる装飾とも異なる、山水画が発達。じっ…と眺めていられる教材のようなモチーフ。

It is interesting to see how two other great religions reacted to the question of images. (111)

[In] the religion of the Muslim, [...] the making of images was forbidden. [...]The craftsmen of the East, who were not permitted to represent human beings, let their imagination play with patterns and forms. (111)

The [Chinese] artists were less fond of rigid angular forms than the Egyptians had been, and preferred swerving curves. (112)

The religions of the East taught that nothing was more important than the right kind of meditation. [...]Devout artists began to paint water and mountains in a spirit of reverence, not in order to teach any particular lesson, nor merely as decorations, but to provide material for deep thought. Their pictures were [...] to be looked at and pondered over as one might open a book of poetry and read and reread a beautiful verse. (114)