The Acrobats

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The Acrobats
"Strongman", from the The Acrobats series, pit K9901. Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor Qin Shihuang, 210 BCE.[1]
MaterialTerracotta
Sizec. 180 cm tall
Created210 BCE
DiscoveredMausoleum of the First Qin Emperor (Qin Shihuang)
Present locationMuseum of the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor
Xi'an is located in Continental Asia
Xi'an
Xi'an
class=notpageimage|
Excavation site of the Acrobats
Xi'an is located in China
Xi'an
Xi'an
Xi'an (China)

The Acrobats (百戏俑) are a series of terracotta sculptures from pit K9901 of the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor Qin Shihuang (dated to 210-209 BCE). They are famous for their naturalism, and the artistic understanding of human anatomy that they represent. Because of this, they are at the center of academic attention regarding the possible local and foreign influences that led to their creation, and beyond them, to the creation of the Terracotta Army. In particular, the 1999 discovery of The Acrobats by Duan Qingbo, Chief archaeologist of the Mausoleum from 1998 to 2008, led to his proposal that West Asian cultures, and particularly Hellenistic art, possibly influenced the works of the first Qin Emperor.[2][3]

Characteristics[edit]

The acrobats were discovered in 1999 inside a pit right inside of the Mausoleum walls.[4]

The sculptures display an advanced understanding of human anatomy. Wheareas the anatomy of the terracotta warriors is rather uncertain under their bulky uniforms, the acrobats on the contrary display many details of human anatomy which had never been shown in Far Eastern art traditions: the proportions of the body are accurate, the musculature appears bulging under the skin, the ribs appear along the flanks and the emergence of the spinal vertebrae is precisely shaped in the back of the athletes. The kinetic laws of body movement are also mastered, as shown by the variable bulging of the belly in response to specific postures or movements.[5]

The original function of these statues remains unclear, but they are described as either acrobats or dancers.[1] Their number was relatively few compared to the warriors in uniform, probably about a few dozens. The figures are essentially naked, except for a loincloth. These figures are very vivid and less stereotypical than the soldiers Terracotta Army, especially through the dynamic treatment of the musculature and bone joints. Some of the men are very lean, while others have massive bodies. Several of them are shown in the process of moving or making gestures. These terracotta statues demonstrate an advanced mastery of the depiction of the shapes and proportions of the human body.[1]

Plan of the Qin Shihuang Mausoleum and location of the Acrobats pit K9901 (in red), and the pit itself under excavation. The central tomb itself has yet to be excavated.[4]

Chinese precedents[edit]

See also: Art of China

Before the Terracotta Army, very few sculptures had ever been created, and none were naturalistic.[6] Among the very few such depictions known in China before that date: four wooden figurines[7] from Liangdaicun (梁帶村) in Hancheng (韓城), Shaanxi, possibly dating to the 9th century BCE; two wooden human figurines of foreigners possibly representing sedan chair bearers from a Qin state tomb in Longxian (隴縣), Shaanxi, from about 700 BCE; and more numerous statuettes from around 5th century bronze musicians in a miniature house from Shaoxing (紹興) in Zhejiang; a 4th-century human-shaped lamp stand from Pingshan (平山) county royal tomb, Hebei.[8]

The Taerpo horserider is a Chinese Zhou dynasty period Warrior-State Qin terracotta figurine from a tomb in the Taerpo cemetery (塔兒坡墓) near Xianyang in Shaanxi Province, dated to the 4th-3rd century BCE. Another nearly-identical statuette is known, from the same tomb. Small holes in his hands suggest that he was originally holding reins in one hand, and a weapon in the other.[9] This is the earliest known representation of a cavalryman in China.[9]

According to Duan Qingbo, there is a possibility that these miniature human and horse shapes were already inspired by the Art of the steppes, as seen in objects such as the figurines of the Saka incense burners.[10]

Theories of possible influences[edit]

The "Strongman" and another acrobat (top). Bottom: an acrobat raising his arm; silhouette of an acrobat under restoration as of 2016;[4] and two more acrobats, including a slender one with head. Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor Qin Shihuang, 210 BCE.

The acrobats have been at the center of the research trying to establish the origin of the Qin statues. Since the time of their discovery, the figures have been noted for their exceptional stylistic realism and individualism, with assessments having found that no two figures share the exact same features.[11][12] The naturalism of the statues has encouraged claims of Hellenistic art influence.[1][4][13]

The earliest note on this aspect was that of 20th century art historian German Hafner who, in 1986, was the first to speculate on a possible Hellenistic link to these sculptures due to the unusual display of naturalism relative to general Qin era sculpture: "the art of the terracotta army originated from Western contact, originated from knowledge of Alexander the Great and the splendor of Greek art".[13] This idea was also generally supported by Duan Qingbo, Director of the excavation team at the First Emperor's necropolis from 1998 to 2008,[13] or by Professor Lukas Nickel of SOAS.[14][15] Duan Qingbo also noted the close similarity of the Terracotta Army with the Central Asian Khalchayan statuary, in style as well as in technique.[16] Li Xiuzhen, senior archaeologist from the Mausoleum Site Museum, acknowledged Western influence but insisted on Chinese authorship: "We now think the Terracotta Army, the acrobats and the bronze sculptures found on site were inspired by ancient Greek sculptures and art",[17] but although "the terracotta warriors may be inspired by Western culture, they were uniquely made by the Chinese" and "we found no Greek names on the backs of Terracotta Warriors, which supports my idea that there was no Greek artisan training the local sculptors".[18]

Others have argued that such speculations rest on flawed and old "Eurocentric" ideas that assumed other civilizations were incapable of sophisticated artistry and thus foreign artistry must be seen through Western traditions.[19] Darryl Wilkinson of Dartmouth College has instead argued that the Qin era display of sculptural naturalism, alongside that of the pre-Columbian Moche culture in Peru, indicate that “the Greeks did not invent naturalism” and that “naturalism is not the product of any one culture’s civilizational ‘genius.'"[20] Dr. Raoul McLaughlin, an independent researcher on Roman trade, said there is no Greek influence on the Terracotta Army and emphasized the differences in artisanship, construction material, and symbology.[21]

Possibles foreign sources of inspiration[edit]

Various Hellenistic sources from Central Asia, more or less contemporary with the Qin Mausoleum have been suggested.[22] In the 4th and 3rd century BCE, Alexander the Great and its successors state the Seleucid Empire and the Greco-Bactrian kingdom are known to have ruled over large part of Central Asia as far as Sogdiana, at the doorstep of the Tarim Basin and China beyond. Alexander is known to have brought artists with him in his expeditions, such as Lysippos and Apelles. In the centuries after him, major Hellenistics cities developed in Central Asia, such as Ai-Khanoum and Takht-i Sangin. These cities, thriving with Hellenistic, could well have been the source of artistic influence over China, until the fall of Ai-Khanoum circa 135 BCE, to Saka and Yuezhi nomads.[22] Some of the Helenistic art of Central Asia persisted in the 1st century BCE, as seen in the statuary of Khalchayan, using clay-molding techniques and human-sized realism similar to those of the Qin Terracotta Army.[16][22]

The Sakas (8th-2nd century BCE), are known to have been in contact with China and contributed to the transfer of horseriding and metal technologies.[24] They also may have contributed to the transfer of artistic realism from Central Asia. A naturalistic bronze statuette of a warrior was excavated north of the Tian Shan, which how far and wide Hellenistic styles travelled.[22][25][26] Could alternatively be a Greek hoplite.[27]

Chinese records of transmission[edit]

Main article: Twelve Metal Colossi
Detail of the left forearm of the "Strongman" of the Acrobats.

Chinese records seem to suggest to that the Qin Emperor built monumental bronze statues for his Palace, that replicated some large foreign statues or giants (大人 daren) encountered at the western end of the country, in Lintao, Gansu. These bronze statues, known as the Twelve Metal Colossi, remained very famous in ancient China and were the object of numerous commentaries, until they were lost around the 4th century CE. These records indicate that the Qin Emperor received from western regions a major impulse for the creation of monumental statuary, which may naturally have influenced the creation of the monumental statues of his Mausoleum.[28] Lukas Nickel believes the first Qin Emperor seems to have made monumental statues on the western model for his Palace, which provides an intriguing precedent for the monumental naturalistic statuary of his Mausoleum.[28] However Frederick Shih-chung Chen disputes that foreign statues at the western border may have been the model for the Twelve Metal Colossi of the First Emperor. Based on narrative context in the records, the mention of twelve giants represented a sign of ill omen represented by human abnormalities.[29] Wu Hung, an art historian with a focus on China, says that the records present some support for the theory of foreign influence, but considers the descriptions of the twelve statues to be tales and legends requiring "substantial new archaeological evidence" to substantiate.[30]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d Nickel, Lukas (October 2013). "The First Emperor and sculpture in China". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 76 (3): 422–427. doi:10.1017/S0041977X13000487. ISSN 0041-977X.
  2. ^ Qingbo, Duan (January 2023). "Sino-Western Cultural Exchange as Seen through the Archaeology of the First Emperor's Necropolis". Journal of Chinese History. 7 (1): 22. doi:10.1017/jch.2022.25. ISSN 2059-1632. S2CID 251690411. Stimulated by his discovery of the terracotta entertainers at the necropolis, which display a style of sculpture unprecedented in East Asia, as well as by the internal steplike architecture embedded within the emperor's tomb mound, Duan began to explore the influence of West Asian cultures on the Qin. He published some preliminary ideas on this topic in his 2011 monograph on the necropolis, but it was most fully explored in three articles published in successive issues of his university journal, Xibei daxue xuebao, in 2015 (translated here in their entirety).
  3. ^ Qingbo, Duan. "Persian and Greek Participation in the making of China's First Empire". Video of 2018 conference at UCLA.
  4. ^ a b c d WILLIAMS, A. R. (12 October 2016). "Discoveries May Rewrite History of China's Terra-Cotta Warriors". National Geographic. Archived from the original on February 28, 2021.
  5. ^ Qingbo, Duan (2022). "Sino-Western Cultural Exchange as Seen through the Archaeology of the First Emperor's Necropolis". Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊. 7: 21–72. doi:10.1017/jch.2022.25. ISSN 2059-1632. S2CID 251690411. The methods for portraying expression in the torso, skeleton, and musculature, along with the highly accurate bodily proportions, reveal that the artists had a very refined grasp of human anatomy. The bulging arm muscles when a figure exerts itself, the visible musculature and ribs along the flanks, the suggestion of spinal vertebrae, and the postural shift in the bulging belly when a figure is lifting something heavy, all demonstrate that the sculptor had also developed mastery concerning the kinetics of the human body (see Figure 3). That kind of artistic style, at this stage in the development of Far Eastern art traditions, is unprecedented.
  6. ^ Nickel, Lukas (October 2013). "The First Emperor and sculpture in China". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 76 (3): 413–414. doi:10.1017/S0041977X13000487. ISSN 0041-977X. Sculpture as an artistic medium was widely employed in the arts of Greece and the Hellenistic East, but played only a minor role in ancient East Asia. This changed dramatically with the First Emperor of China (...) Naturalistic sculpture was entirely unknown. No long-standing sculptural tradition preceded the making of the First Emperor's famous terracotta warriors. No earlier or contemporary member of the Chinese elite had demonstrated any significant interest in sculpture at all.
  7. ^ Image from Liangdaicun Ruiguo Relics Museum (梁带村芮国遗址博物馆)
  8. ^ Nickel, Lukas (October 2013). "The First Emperor and sculpture in China". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 76 (3): 416–418. doi:10.1017/S0041977X13000487. ISSN 0041-977X. From the centuries immediately preceding the Qin Dynasty again we know of only a few depictions of the human figure (...) figures of people and animals were very rare exceptions to the conventional imagery of the Zhou period (...) Depictions of the human figure were not a common part of the representational canon in China before the Qin Dynasty (...) In von Falkenhausen's words, "nothing in the archaeological record prepares one for the size, scale, and technically accomplished execution of the First Emperor's terracotta soldiers". For his contemporaries, the First Emperor's sculptures must have been something dramatically new.
  9. ^ a b Khayutina, Maria (Autumn 2013). "From wooden attendants to terracotta warriors" (PDF). Bernisches Historisches Museum the Newsletter. No.65: 2, Fig.4. Other noteworthy terracotta figurines were found in 1995 in a 4th-3rd century BCE tomb in the Taerpo cemetery near Xianyang in Shaanxi Province, where the last Qin capital of the same name was located from 350 to 207 BCE. These are the earliest representations of cavalrymen in China discovered up to this day. One of this pair can now be seen at the exhibition in Bern (Fig. 4). A small, ca. 23 cm tall, figurine represents a man sitting on a settled horse. He stretches out his left hand, whereas his right hand points downwards. Holes pierced through both his fists suggest that he originally held the reins of his horse in one hand and a weapon in the other. The rider wears a short jacket, trousers and boots – elements of the typical outfit of the inhabitants of the Central Asian steppes. Trousers were first introduced in the early Chinese state of Zhao during the late 4th century BCE, as the Chinese started to learn horse riding from their nomadic neighbours. The state of Qin should have adopted the nomadic clothes about the same time. But the figurine from Taerpo also has some other features that may point to its foreign identity: a hood-like headgear with a flat wide crown framing his face and a high, pointed nose. {{cite journal}}: |volume= has extra text (help) Also in Khayutina, Maria (2013). Qin: the eternal emperor and his terracotta warriors (1. Aufl ed.). Zürich: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. p. cat. no. 314. ISBN 978-3-03823-838-6.
  10. ^ Qingbo, Duan. "Persian and Greek Participation in the making of China's First Empire (Video timing: 41:00-44:00)". Video of 2018 conference at UCLA.
  11. ^ von Falkenhausen, Lothar (2008). "Action and Image in Early Chinese Art". Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie. 17: 51–91. doi:10.3406/asie.2008.1272. ISSN 0766-1177. JSTOR 44171471. Archived from the original on 30 January 2023. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  12. ^ Chen, Yumin (2013). "Reflections on China's First Collection of Terracotta Acrobats (an exhibition review)". Visual Communication. 12 (4): 497–502. doi:10.1177/1470357213498175. ISSN 1470-3572. S2CID 147420437. Archived from the original on 30 January 2023. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  13. ^ a b c Qingbo, Duan (2022). "Sino-Western Cultural Exchange as Seen through the Archaeology of the First Emperor's Necropolis". Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊. 7: 21–72. doi:10.1017/jch.2022.25. ISSN 2059-1632. S2CID 251690411. More than thirty-five years ago [1986], there was a European scholar (German Hafner, 1911–2008) who considered that the art of the terracotta army "originated from Western contact, originated from knowledge of Alexander the Great and the splendor of Greek art." Lukas Nickel of SOAS has put forward a similar proposition.
  14. ^ Nickel, Lukas (October 2013). "The First Emperor and sculpture in China". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 76 (3): 413–447. doi:10.1017/S0041977X13000487. ISSN 0041-977X.
  15. ^ "Early links with West likely inspiration for Terracotta Warriors, argues SOAS scholar". School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Archived from the original on 6 October 2017. Retrieved 28 December 2013.
  16. ^ a b c Qingbo, Duan (2022). "Sino-Western Cultural Exchange as Seen through the Archaeology of the First Emperor's Necropolis". Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊. 7: 21–72. doi:10.1017/jch.2022.25. ISSN 2059-1632. S2CID 251690411. The only thing that closely matches the artistic style of the imperial Qin terracotta warriors is the head of a painted pottery figure unearthed in Uzbekistan (...) The way of assembling the head and body for this Kushan figure of a warrior (possibly Saka) was the same as that employed for the Qin terracotta warriors, in that they were fabricated separately, and then the head was inserted into the trunk of the figure.
  17. ^ "Western contact with China began long before Marco Polo, experts say". BBC News. 12 October 2016.
  18. ^ "Chinese archaeologist refutes BBC report on Terracotta Warriors". China Daily 中國日報. Xinhua 新華網. www.chinadaily.com. 2016-10-18. Archived from the original on 9 June 2021. Retrieved 9 June 2021.
  19. ^ Hanink, Johanna; Silva, Felipe Rojas (20 November 2016). "Why China's Terracotta Warriors Are Stirring Controversy". Live Science. Archived from the original on 5 January 2020. Retrieved 5 October 2017. Originally published in Hanink, Johanna; Silva, Felipe Rojas (18 November 2016). "Why there's so much backlash to the theory that Greek art inspired China's Terracotta Army". The Conversation. Archived from the original on 14 September 2020. Retrieved 22 February 2018.
  20. ^ Wilkinson, Darryl (2022), "On the Ontological Significance of Naturalistic Art", Ancient Art Revisited, Routledge, pp. 47–66, doi:10.4324/9781003131038-3, ISBN 978-1-003-13103-8, retrieved 2023-10-10
  21. ^ Bulla, Patrick Michelle (October 2019). "The Qin Dynasty, the Hellenistic Empire, and the Art that May Connect Them: Why Exploring Cultural Connections Matters for Educators and Students of World History". World History Connected. 16 (3).
  22. ^ a b c d e f g Nickel, Lukas (October 2013). "The First Emperor and sculpture in China". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 76 (3): 427–436. doi:10.1017/S0041977X13000487. ISSN 0041-977X.
  23. ^ Bopearachchi, Osmund (1998). "A Faience Head of a Graeco-Bactrian King from Ai Khanum". Bulletin of the Asia Institute. 12: 27. ISSN 0890-4464. JSTOR 24049090.
  24. ^ Liu, Yan; Li, Rui; Yang, Junchang; Liu, Ruiliang; Zhao, Guoxing; Tan, Panpan (26 April 2021). "China and the steppe: technological study of precious metalwork from Xigoupan Tomb 2 (4th–3rd c.BCE) in the Ordos region, Inner Mongolia". Heritage Science. 9 (1): 46. doi:10.1186/s40494-021-00520-5. ISSN 2050-7445.
  25. ^ "Metropolitan Museum of Art". www.metmuseum.org.
  26. ^ Figure 13.5. Statuette of warrior (a), and bronze cauldron (b), Saka culture, Xinjiang. in Di Cosmo, Nicola (1999). "The Northern Frontier in Pre-Imperial China". The Cambridge History of Ancient China. pp. 885–966. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521470308.015. ISBN 978-1-139-05370-9.
  27. ^ Betts, Alison; Vicziany, Marika; Jia, Peter Weiming; Castro, Angelo Andrea Di (19 December 2019). The Cultures of Ancient Xinjiang, Western China: Crossroads of the Silk Roads. Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. p. 103. ISBN 978-1-78969-407-9.
  28. ^ a b Nickel, Lukas (October 2013). "The First Emperor and sculpture in China". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 76 (3): 436–450. doi:10.1017/S0041977X13000487. ISSN 0041-977X.
  29. ^ Chen 2021, p. 430-432.
  30. ^ Hung 2020, p. 124-125.

Bibliography[edit]

  • Chen, Frederick Shih-chung (2021), "Not That Kind of Big Men: A Response to Lukas Nickel's Interpretation of the Term da ren 大人 in Lintao 臨洮", Journal of the American Oriental Society
  • Hung, Wu (2020), "Thinking Through Scale: The First Emperor's Sculptural Enterprise", Figurines: Figuration and the Sense of Scale, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-886109-6
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