Culture,StyleandGlobalismTheReceptionofWestern.docVIP

Culture, Style and Globalism : The Reception of Western Ornament in China and Taiwan Stephane LAURENT Professor, Art History, University of Paris Ⅰ Pantheon-Sprbonne, France Ornament is present everywhere in the world heritage and especially in the Chinese art, where it could be considered as an essential element of the culture. Following books and articles I have published on the social, symbolic and stylistic aspects of the ornament, this lecture is the result of a study achieved in 2008 and supported by a grant kindly provided by the Center for Chinese Studies. The aim of the research project I have conducted was to deepen the question of ornament by analyzing the case of some motives in Chinese Art. I achieve this more specific work through the analyse of the vine-scroll and of the lion. Such concern constitutes the following step of a previous research project I have conducted in Japan on both of the figures. It appeared necessary to investigate the area of the Chinese culture in this matter because of its great influence in Asia. Ornaments should be considered in the perspective of globalism: some patterns as the vine-scroll and the lion (vine is not well-know in Asia and the lion does not exist there) were imported from the western culture particularly through the Silk Road and the great movement of cultural religious exchanges coming from India and Central Asia along with Buddhism. In Asia, they were reinterpreted through specific cultural values which upset their original significance from Greece and Rome. The case of China and even of Taiwan is particularly interesting because of their geographical position on the Far East, which constitutes one of the final steps in the process of an aesthetical evolution. The question of globalism is also to be considered as a struggle between international influences and national and local customs and heritage. In fact, since the Neolithic period, China has developed a specific evolution of the spiral (lei wen, close to