Dark past

THE Homage to the Ancestors complements the recent The First Emperor exhibition, with its fascinatingly realistic and impassive terracotta warriors.

HOMAGE to the Ancestors is an exhibition that complements The First Emperor, with its fascinatingly realistic and impassive terracotta warriors, that closed a month ago.

This enormously popular and beautifully installed show presented objects from the vast and as yet only partially excavated tomb complex of Qin Shihuang, the man who unified most of China in 221 BC, a few years before his death. The empire he had boasted would last 10,000 years barely survived for 15, yet it established a paradigm for the more durable dynasties to come.

The present exhibition deals with the preceding kingdom of Chu, whose vast territory in southern China was conquered by Qin in a crucial but late stage of his imperial expansion. In due course, it was also from Chu that resistance arose to Qin rule and the Chu leader who eventually prevailed in the ensuing conflict became the founder of the Han dynasty (206 BC to AD220). It is from this period onwards that China passes through the succession of dynasties that are roughly familiar to most people in the West: the Tang, Sung, Yuan, Ming and Qing.

The roots of Chinese culture, though, like those of Europe, go back to the great Bronze Age civilisations of the second millennium BC. Contemporary with our Mycenaean and Minoan periods was the Shang dynasty in China, from which we have magnificent bronze vessels, mostly destined for ritual use in preparing food and wine for ceremonies of ancestral and animistic worship. The most characteristic of these include the three-legged ding vessels, designed in this way so that they could be set in a bed of hot coals.

These early bronzes are ornamented with geometric motifs, including images of cicadas -- symbols of rebirth -- dragons, and the taotie mask, which looks like the head of monster split from the back and flattened into a stylised pattern. Anthropologists have long puzzled over the similarity of this motif to a design that appears in the work of the Kwakiutl Indians of northwestern Canada and even the tiki motif in Maori art, suggesting its immense antiquity, going back to shamanistic beliefs and the earliest migrations of peoples around the Pacific rim.

The Shang dynasty was followed by the Zhou, which began in 1046 BC and lasted nominally until the rise of Qin, but had effectively dissolved into a collection of independent feudal states from 771 BC. The first part of the ensuing age is known as the Spring and Autumn period (eighth to fifth centuries), and the second as the Warring States (from fifth to third).

With all the military conflict the name implies, but also a cultural rivalry expressed through aesthetic display and lavish patronage, this was a time of fundamental development in Chinese civilisation. Religious belief evolved from primitive animism to more sophisticated theological conceptions, which formed the basis for the political doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven. The great philosophers Confucius and Lao Tzu, founder of the Taoist philosophy, both lived during the Spring and Autumn periods, and Mencius in the Warring States.

Many of the most durable characteristics of Chinese civilisation took shape, including its respect for tradition and love of learning, and the duality of nature and spirituality embodied in Taoism, a pervasive influence on Chinese art, and the ethical system of Confucianism, which determines relations within the family and society. At the same time, there was also the alternative philosophy of Legalism, embraced by Qin Shihuang because it stressed the absolute power of the ruler. Qin, as readers may recall, resented the Confucian conception of ethical values independent of the ruler's will, and had hundreds of Confucian scholars buried alive.

The Chu rebels who overthrew his brief dynasty and set up the Han returned to the standards of Confucianism, but also had a sympathy for Taoism. It is especially this cult of nature -- and even certain darker and older tendencies -- that strikes the viewer in Homage to the Ancestors.

The first three works have been chosen to make an impression. Even, or perhaps especially, if you have some acquaintance with Chinese bronzes, you are likely to be amazed by the strange, indeed bizarre, forms you encounter. The first is a kind of crane with an almost comically long neck and curved, sweeping deer antlers. This extraordinary and rather sinister composite form arises from the obscure world of supernatural or animistic beliefs, which are recalled in the final piece in the exhibition, a far cruder but striking antlered tomb guardian in lacquered wood.

The second of these impressive works is an enormous squarish vessel with several components called a Jian-fou set. There are other examples in the exhibition that are easier to understand: essentially they are large wine containers (fou) set in a basin (jian) which could hold, depending on the season, either hot water or ice to heat or cool the wine. This colossal example is harder to recognise at first sight because, in addition to the lid of the fou jar itself, there is another lid that closes the top of the jian basin and simultaneously holds the jar in place.

Every part of the bronze surface is alive with movement, but most animated of all are the curling serpentine forms at each corner and in the middle of each side. Described as leopard-like dragons, these are mysterious composite beasts from the domain of nature mythology and magic. But neither of the first two items is as remarkable as the third. What appears to be a writhing mass of tentacles turns out to be a tangle of intertwined snakes or dragons whose tails resemble the slippery and elastic forms of invertebrates like molluscs. There is no doubt these disquieting creatures speak of a natural world alive with organic and magical forces.

For all the extravagant zoomorphic motifs that adorn these bronzes, their possession and use were subject to precise customs and regulations. The rank of an aristocrat determined how many of each category he was allowed to own, and sets of magnificent bronzes were accordingly symbols of social status. Most of the objects in this exhibition were found in the tombs of two great fifth and fourth century noblemen of the Chu kingdom, which have been excavated during the past three decades.

The first was the Marquis Yi, ruler of Zeng, whose tomb was excavated in 1978, while the second was an anonymous nobleman buried at Jiuliandun, farther to the east. The first tomb contained more than 15,000 objects, including about 6200 bronzes and 535 lacquered wooden vessels and objects that had been almost miraculously preserved because of the waterlogged, boggy soil.

All of these things were intended for the Marquis's use in the next world, as were evidently a score of maidens sent to accompany him. Such was the life of a ruler's concubines: pampered in life but destined to die with their master. It is conceivable they believed this to be an honour. The brutality of such ritual slaying is undeniable, however, and is vividly evoked in the second, anonymous burial at Jiuliandun, which dates from approximately a century later.

Here, in accordance with custom, the nobleman was interred with a squadron of 41 chariots and 88 horses. The chariots are in two rows and the horses have evidently been systematically killed then laid out neatly, still yoked, back-to-back in the case of the two-horse chariots, and in the case of the four-horse ones, with the two outer animals aligned symmetrically with the central pair. The drama of this slaughter, the struggle of death and the rivers of blood, can still be imagined in spite of the careful rearrangement of the cadavers.

The extraordinary abundance of precious materials buried with these aristocrats -- though many of the objects from Jiuliandun are coarser and sometimes almost perfunctory in their finish -- was not only to provide for their needs in the next world, but also to allow them to continue to make appropriate offerings to the divinities and spirits. And they were not simply vessels of various forms suited to the handling of wine and food, but also, notably, musical instruments. Drums, as in many cultures, had important ritual functions, as did bells. While the drums have perished, whole sets of magnificent bronze bells have survived and are included in the exhibition.

A complete set of 34 bells -- one of two found at Jiuliandun -- is included in the exhibition, suspended from its original lacquered wooden rack, the only one that survives from ancient China. It is of exceptional musicological as well as artistic interest. Each bell, sounded by striking (not on the characteristic bosses, but on the flat striking panels), can produce two notes, depending on whether it is struck on the side or in the centre, and the range of the set is two octaves.

In addition to drums and bells, there were sets of stone chimes. Two pieces are exhibited here from a complete set that comprised 25 pieces of chime stone of different sizes. There were also zithers, one of which, in lacquered wood, is included in the exhibition; it had 23 silk strings. Several other stringed instruments were found in these burial sites, as well as various flutes and pipes, all of which testify to the richness of the orchestral ensembles of the period as well as to the importance of music in the celebration of ritual.

The musical instruments in Marquis Yi's tomb are particularly astonishing, including a set of 65 bells weighing in total 2500kg, which is apparently the heaviest musical instrument in the world. In fact, the catalogue also informs us, the collection of musical instruments found in the Marquis's tomb is the largest single group surviving from any ancient civilisation.

As well as the bronzes, the exhibition presents, as already mentioned, a wealth of lacquer, testifying to the antiquity and durability of this art, which goes back to the Shang dynasty. Lacquer is an extraordinary substance, long a mystery in the West: it is made from the toxic sap of the lacquer or varnish tree, rhus verniciflua (now known as toxicodendron vernicifluum), and coloured with the even more toxic cinnabar, the ore from which mercury is extracted.

One of the curious things about the works in this exhibition is the way items in lacquer mimic the form of bronzes, or sometimes vice versa. It suggests not only a highly refined artistic milieu -- visible in the way that patterns become lower in relief but more highly decorated with metal and stone inlays -- but also a sophisticated self-consciousness expressed in formal borrowing and exchanges between categories of object whose distinct materials had previously kept their morphology segregated.

Homage to the Ancestors: Ritual Art from the Chu Kingdom
Art Gallery of NSW until April 26.