page_title: China painting
section_title: Evolving styles and attitudes
hierarchical_section_title: China painting / Evolving styles and attitudes
caption_attribution_description: English: Bowl from Zittau, faience, 1663; Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg Deutsch: Schüssel aus Zittau, Fayence, 1663; Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg
context_page_description: China painting, or porcelain painting, is the decoration of glazed porcelain objects such as plates, bowls, vases or statues. The body of the object may be hard-paste porcelain, developed in China in the 7th or 8th century, or soft-paste porcelain, developed in 18th-century Europe. The broader term ceramic painting includes painted decoration on lead-glazed earthenware such as creamware or tin-glazed pottery such as maiolica or faience.
  Typically the body is first fired in a kiln to convert it into a hard porous biscuit or bisque. Underglaze decoration may then be applied, followed by glaze, which is fired so it bonds to the body. The glazed porcelain may then be painted with overglaze decoration and fired again to bond the paint with the glaze. Most pieces use only one of underglaze or overglaze painting, the latter often being referred to as "enamelled". Decorations may be applied by brush or by stenciling, transfer printing, lithography and screen printing.
  Porcelain painting was developed in China and later taken up in Korea and then Japan. Decorated Chinese porcelain from the 9th century has been found in the Middle East.
context_section_description: Overglaze decorations of earthenware, Faience or porcelain were traditionally made with carefully outlined designs that were then colored in. Later designs represented flowers, landscapes or portraits with little overpainting or blending of the colors. In the 20th century china painting techniques became more like oil painting, with blended colors and designs in which attention to light gives three-dimensional effects. More recently a style more like watercolor painting has become more common.
  For many years china painting was categorized as a craft, but in the 1970s feminist artists such as Judy Chicago restored it to the status of fine art.
  In 1979 Chicago wrote,
  During a trip up the northwest coast in the summer of 1971, I stumbled onto a small antique shop in Oregon and went in. There, in a locked cabinet, sitting on velvet, was a beautiful hand-painted plate. The shopkeeper took it out of the case, and I stared at the gentle color fades and soft hues of the roses, which seemed to be part of the porcelain on which they were painted. I became enormously curious as to how it had been done. The next year I went to Europe for the first time and found myself almost more interested in cases of painted porcelain than in the endless rows of paintings hanging on musty museum walls. 
  Chicago spent a year and a half studying china painting. She became intrigued by the effort that amateur women had put into the undervalued art form. She wrote, "The china-painting world, and the household objects the women painted, seemed to be a perfect metaphor for women's domestic and trivialized circumstances. It was an excruciating experience to watch enormously gifted women squander their creative talents on teacups."
  Chicago was criticized by other feminists for her condescending views on "women's crafts." 
  One wrote that "Chicago the feminist wants to give the china painters their historic due. Chicago the artist is offended by the aesthetic of what they have done."
caption: Faience bowl from Zittau, 1663, with typical outlined design
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 500D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2013:06:13 18:55:04", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "232", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "1000", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1114", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "12330", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/50", "EXIF FNumber": "9/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "1250", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2013:05:01 16:38:12", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2013:05:01 16:38:12", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "45/8", "EXIF ApertureValue": "35/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "33", "EXIF SubSecTime": "05", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "05", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "05", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3168", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3168", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "968", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "792000/149", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "3168000/593", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}