Chinese art

Chinese art is visual art that originated in or is practiced in China, Greater China or by Chinese artists. Art created by Chinese residing outside of China can also be considered a part of Chinese art when it is based on or draws on Chinese culture, heritage, and history. Major art forms include painting, calligraphy, sculpture, architecture, garden design, furniture, ceramics, bronze work, lacquerware, and textiles, sharing motifs and aesthetic principles, and often integrated to create unified environments, encompassing architecture to gardens, interiors, and objects within.

Early "Stone Age art" dates back to 10,000 BC, mostly consisting of simple pottery and sculptures. After that period, Chinese art, like Chinese history, was typically classified by the succession of ruling dynasties of Chinese emperors, most of which lasted several hundred years. The Palace Museum in Beijing and the National Palace Museum in Taipei contains extensive collections of Chinese art.

Chinese art is marked by an unusual degree of continuity within, and consciousness of, tradition, lacking an equivalent to the Western collapse and gradual recovery of Western classical styles of art. Decorative arts are extremely important in Chinese art, and much of the finest work was produced in large workshops or factories by essentially unknown artists, especially in Chinese ceramics, where technical mastery served broader aesthetic ideals, subtlety of glaze, purity of form, elevating craft to a medium of contemplation.

Much of the most technically elaborate ceramic work was produced by Imperial factories, though folk kilns and regional workshops also created wares of exceptional artistic merit. In contrast, the tradition of ink wash painting, practiced mainly by scholar-officials and court painters especially of landscapes, flowers, and birds, developed aesthetic values depending on the individual imagination of and objective observation by the artist that are similar to those of the West, but long pre-dated their development there.

Following the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Socialist Realism became the dominant officially sanctioned style, and traditional arts were subject to ideological scrutiny, particularly during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), when much of China's artistic heritage was actively suppressed or destroyed. Since the 1980s, traditional ink painting has revived, with earlier masters such as Qi Baishi and Li Keran gaining international recognition, alongside the emergence of contemporary avant-garde artists.