Brilliant Strokes: Chinese Paintings from the Mactaggart Art Collection

On the date of November 4th, 2008 room 17 & room 21 arrived at the Mactaggart Art Collection at the Telus Centre. The classes dropped their things and divided into two groups. Each group walked to a different part of the museum to study something different - but both were about Chinese culture. Room 21 first studied clothes. There were ancient emperor and empress robes, a warrior hat and level symbols – the dragon with five claws was the highest level. Room 17 first studied ancient scrolls and paintings. We saw how beautiful they were and how old they were. Some of us wondered what the different characters meant and started to make up our own codes. In one hallway using a copy of a 15 m. scroll, we had a game of searching for characters to discover what job the town’s people attended to. To meet the other class, we passed through the storage room which contained many, many lockers of preserved things.

R & C

On Tuesday, November fourth we went to the Mactaggart Art Gallery. Inside the Gallery there was ancient Chinese Calligraphy Art. A picture that really stood out and told a story was a fifteen meter long scroll. It showed the story of the Emperor travels around his country. In some area’s there were people bowing down to him, and others preparing for his arrival. We noticed that a lot of them wearing hats with small red strings dangling down from the center of the hat. This told a story because it shows the ancient levels of people in China. A smaller scroll that we looked at really told a story of its own. The simple drawing of mountains, tree’s and a small house, something really stood out about, like there was a real meaning to this painting. Our guide started off by telling us that this scroll was finished in 1427, the gallery’s oldest artifact. On the top of the painting was a beautiful poem, telling this man that he will be missed, loved and cared for. The guide wasn’t able to recite the poem for us, but did give us a vague idea about it. The picture was a farewell gift from one friend to another. This friend must have obviously meant a lot to the other. Later, we went into the “storage” area, which had on display, robes, simple pieces of cloth and a hat. The types of robes people wore, displayed, what level of class they were. Yellow, meant they were an Emperor or an Empress, which was the highest class, but they, only wore for the most special of occasions, they would usually were other, more simple robes. Also if the dragon has five claws, they are defiantly the Emperor. The clothes would be worn on the judges, army people, the Emperors. The judges were very bright and colourful, a peacock, which stood from the other clothes. The army’s cloth’s were duller, and had a strong, dangerous looking leopard. It signifies danger and a strong, army. The Emperor’s had a five clawed dragon. Later we were handed a key of symbol facts. Most of the symbols were only allowed to be worn on the Emperor’s clothes. Some of the important symbols were the pearl, the Fish and the Bronze Cups. We had a really fun time, learning about how symbols and painting could stories in such different ways.

C, H, and E.

Visit the Mactaggart Art Collection website at http://museums.ualberta.ca/mactaggart/index.aspx