Ｔｈｅ　Ａｒｔ　ｏｆ　Ｗｏｍａｎｈｏｏｄ.docVIP

Ｔｈｅ　Ａｒｔ　ｏｆ　Ｗｏｍａｎｈｏｏｄ 　　GUAN Zhong (c. 725-645 B.C.), a prominent politician, reformer, and prime minister of the State of Qi during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 B.C.), clearly defined the traditional social division of labor between men and women 2,600 years ago: “A farmer has a constant task, and a woman has a constant chore; if a farmer does not farm, there will be people of hunger as a consequence, and if a woman does not weave, there will be people who have no clothes to keep themselves warm.” This division of labor addressed basic human needs and sustained the agricultural society of feudal China for thousands of years, providing the basis from which Chinese culture and Confucianism developed. 　　 　　In the early days of the “men farming and women weaving” society, the products of women’s weaving and collateral activities were referred to as “the work of womanhood,” or “nügong” in Chinese. Later the character “gong,” meaning “work,” was replaced by a more refined homonym that refers to feminine art. The “art of womanhood” encompasses an expanded social connotation of womanhood, from the basic domestic skills required of the gender for human survival, to the moral, temperamental and artistic qualities required by a more sophisticated society. 　　 　　Inspiration from an 　　Ancient Painting 　　 　　Pestling Cloth is painted by Tang Dynasty (618-907) court artist Zhang Xuan, who excelled at depicting women. Many of Zhang’s works reflect the lives of female aristocrats, including this one. It depicts one of the daily jobs that constituted “women’s work” 1,300 years ago. Pestling was a finishing process in weaving. When silk, linen or cotton cloth came fresh from handlooms it was stiff and needed boiling, bleaching, pestling and ironing before it was ready for making clothes. 　　There are 12 women in the painting. Judging from their nice clothes and healthy looks, they are court ladies, or women from well-off families. They form a team performing three proce