The Yungang Grottoes

I think this is a example of gesture that is serious and holy. The Yungang Grottoes is influenced by Buddhist religion, the shape and line of the sculpture is clean. The sculpture makes me feel I am just only a small part of this world.

The folling artical is from Wikipedia

The Yungang Grottoes (simplified Chinese: 云冈石窟; traditional Chinese: 雲崗石窟; pinyin: Yúngāng Shíkū) are ancient Buddhist temple grottoes near the city of Datong in the Chinese province of Shanxi. They are excellent examples of rock-cut architecture and one of the three most famous ancient sculptural sites of China. The others are Longmen and Mogao.
The site is located about 16 km south-west of the city, in the valley of the Shi Li river at the base of the Wuzhou Shan mountains. The grottoes were mainly constructed in the period between 460-525 AD during the Northern Wei dynasty. They are an outstanding example of the Chinese stone carvings from the 5th and 6th centuries. All together the site is composed of 252 grottoes with more than 51,000 Buddha statues and statuettes. In 2001, the Yungang Grottoes were made a UNESCO World Heritage Site The Yungang Grottoes is considered by UNESCO a "masterpiece of early Chinese Buddhist cave art... [and] ...represent the successful fusion of Buddhist religious symbolic art from south and central Asia with Chinese cultural traditions, starting in the 5th century CE under Imperial auspices."

East Asian calligraphy

I think it is very interesting. In Chinese language,the evolution of some character are formed by the gesture itself. it's called hieroglyphic.Gesture can represent something and it is meaningful. It helps people to remember it easily. The following artical is from Wikipedia--
Asian calligraphy typically uses ink brushes to write Chinese characters (called Hanzi in Chinese, Hanja in Korean, Kanji in Japanese, and Hán Tự in Vietnamese). Calligraphy (in Chinese, Shufa 書法, in Korean, Seoye 書藝, in Japanese Shodō 書道, all meaning "the way of writing") is considered an important art in East Asia and the most refined form of East Asian painting.
Calligraphy has also influenced ink and wash painting, which is accomplished using similar tools and techniques. Calligraphy has influenced most major art styles in East Asia, including sumi-e, a style of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese painting based entirely on calligraphy.
Historical evolution of Eastern calligraphy
Ancient China
In ancient China, the oldest Chinese character we still have are Jiǎgǔwén characters carved on ox scapula and tortoise plastrons, while brush-written ones have decayed over time. During the divination ceremony, after the cracks were made, the characters were written with a brush on the shell or bone to be latter carved, perhaps by a separate individual and in a specific workshop (Keightley, 1978).
With the development of Jīnwén (Bronzeware script) and Dàzhuàn (Large Seal Script) we continue to see "cursive" signs. Moreover, it is evident that each archaic kingdom of current China had its own set of characters.
Imperial China
In Imperial China, the graphs on old steles — some dating from 200 BC, and in Xiaozhuan style — are still accessible to us.
About 220 BC, the emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first to conquer all Chinese basin, imposed several reforms, among them Li Si's character uniformisation, which created a set of 3300 standardized Xiǎozhuàn characters. Despite the fact that the main writing implement of the time was already the brush, few papers survive from this period, and the main examples of this style are on steles.
Then, the Lìshū style (clerical script) which is more regularized, and in some ways similar to modern text was then developed.
Kǎishū style (traditional regular script) — still in use today — is even more regularized. It can be seen that the Kaishu shape of characters 1000 years ago was mostly similar as that at the end of Imperial China. But tinies slides have be made, in example in the shape of 广 which is not absolutely the same in the Kangxi dictionary of 1716, than in modern books. The Kangxi and current shapes have tiny differences, while current stroke order is still the same, according to old style.
Kǎishū simplified Chinese script was created by the Chinese communist government after World War 2, in order to promote simplification of writing and increase the literacy rate. Simplified script is often considered a corruption of general Hanzi text and is not used in calligraphy.
Cursive styles and hand-written styles
Cursive styles such as Xíngshū (semi-cursive or running script) and Cǎoshū (cursive or grass script) are "high speed" calligraphic styles, where each move made by the writing tool is visible. This styles especially like to play with stroke order rules, creating new visual effects.
Native writers, moreover, create their own style and stroke order rules to ease and speed their own use, which imply wide variations in the resulting character shapes from one word and one writer to the same word by another writer (and other stroke order/shape).

Glove puppetry

this is traditional puppetry in Taiwan.The gesture and color is dramatic and vivid, because that the original idea is from local opera.There are some kung fu actions. the gesture is acting by the hand.Combine the gesture and dress and voice, I can feel the character.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sun Wukong puppet in pò·-tē-hì.
Glove puppetry (POJ: pò·-tē-hì; Chinese: 布袋戲; pinyin: bùdàixì), also known as budai mu'ouxi, shoucao kuileixi, shoudai kuileixi, chang-chung hsi (pinyin: zhǎngzhōngxì), xiaolong, or zhihuaxi is a type of local opera using cloth puppets that originated during the 17th century in Quanzhou or Zhangzhou, in China's Fujian province, and has been historically practiced in Quanzhou, Zhongzhou, Chaozhou in Guangdong, Taiwan, and other parts of southern China. The puppet's head uses wood carved into the shape of a hollow human head, but aside from the head, palms, and feet, which are made of wood, the puppet's torso and limbs consist entirely of cloth costumes. At the time of the performance, a gloved hand enters the puppet's costume and makes it perform. In previous years the puppets used in this type of performance strongly resembled "cloth sacks," hence the name, which literally means "cloth bag opera."
Glove Puppetry performances
Glove Puppetry (Pò·-tē-hì) performances, similar to those other types of Chinese opera, are divided into a first half and a second half show. During the first half, known as the "show platform" (戲台), the audience is shown a demonstration by a master puppeteer on the stage. The second half consists of the puppet master, the orchestra, and the spoken parts. Several key points of a show to be appreciated include: the dexterity of the master puppeteer's manipulation of the puppet, the accompaniment of the orchestra, and the poetic spoken parts of the voice actors. With few exceptions, from traditional pò·-tē-hì to modern performances, human vocal music and operatic singing is rarely heard.

Character gesture

This is the character gesture which I apply in chinese art.I did this painting in my undergraduate.It's a delicate painting.I use chinese ink to draw. I want to transmit ponder feeling from the gesture.

chinese sculpture

Chinese artifacts date back as early as 10,000 BC -- and skilled, Chinese artisans have been active up to the present time -- but the bulk of what is displayed as sculpture in Euro-culture museums come from a few, select, historical periods. The first period of interest has been the Western Zhou Dynasty (1050-771 BC), from which come a variety of intricate cast bronze vessels. The next period of interest was the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) -- beginning with the spectacular Terracotta army assembled for the tomb of the first emperor of the very brief Qin Dynasty that preceded it (Qin Shi Huang) in 210–209 BC.) Tombs excavated from the Han period have revealed many figures found to be vigorous, direct, and appealing 2000 years later.
The first Buddhist sculpture is found dating from the Three Kingdoms period (third century), while the sculpture of the Longmen Grottoes (Wei dynasty, 5th and 6th century, located near Luoyang, Henan Province) has been widely recognized for its special elegant qualities.

A wooden Bodhisattva from the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD)
The period now considered to be China's golden age is the Tang Dynasty (coinciding with what in Europe is sometimes called "The Dark Ages"). Decorative figures like those shown below became very popular in 20th century Euro-American culture, and were made available in bulk as warlords in the Chinese civil wars exported them to raise cash. Considered especially desirable, and even profound, was the Buddhist sculpture, often monumental, begun in the Sui Dynasty, inspired by the Indian art of the Gupta period, and many are considered treasures of world art.
Following the Tang, Western interest in Chinese artifacts drops off dramatically, except for what might be considered as ornamental furnishings, and especially objects in jade. Pottery from many periods has been collected, and again the Tang period stands out apart for its free, easy feeling. Chinese sculpture has no nudes --other perhaps than figures made for medical training or practice -- and very little portraiture compared with the European tradition. One place where sculptural portraiture was pursued, however, was in the monasteries.
Almost nothing, other than jewelry, jade, or pottery is collected by art museums after the Ming Dynasty ended in the late 17th century -- and absolutely nothing has yet been recognized as sculpture from the tumultuous 20th century, although there was a school of Soviet-influenced social realist sculpture in the early decades of the Communist regime, and as the century turned, Chinese craftsmen began to dominate commercial sculpture genres (the collector plates, figurines, toys, etc) and avant garde Chinese artists began to participate in the Euro-American enterprise of contemporary art.

tri-colored glazed pottery of the Tang Dynasty

For me,it is a cut sculpture.In Tang Dynasty,Chinese is a prosperous and strong country. The culture is open at that time.the gesture of the sculpture is relax and free. I can see the soft sensibility gesture.

tri-colored glazed pottery of the Tang Dynasty is the essence of chinese art.the color is glaze on the pottery.the main color is yellow,green,white.the pottery reflect the style and the age feature in that time.the warrior figure pottery are all strong and powerful.the horse and camel are husky.the woman are all plentiful and fat.the figure shape are vivid and lively.you can see the shape is more open and relax.It shows the Tang Dynasty is strong and rich.

sculpture(1)

I think I can begin from sculpture.This is an example of gesture that is stiff and humble.I can feel tense from the gesture.

The premier sculpture is 兵馬俑(bing ma yong) .It's wood or clay figures of warriors and horses buried with the dead.They show serious emotion.Most of gesture is tighter and manners.Because they are ready to fight.

research

What I want to research is to focus on gesture in old painting and sculpture.Before animation coming out,people also can show movement and emotion in the painting.In different culture, people have habitual gesture to show often.Maybe I can research 1. "the same gesture show different emotion" or "the same emotion show different gesture" in the old painting and sculpture. 2.how culture affect gesture to show character. 3. present the gesture in different type of art before animation coming out in old painting.Will it work?I am not sure if it worth to do the research?