Architectural Decoration— Central Asia
Throughout Asia indigenous peoples use local resources in developing regional types of architecture. Desert regions use clay, adobe, and fired bricks. In Western Asia, parts of India, China, Japan, and Korea, builders used carved wood. Great stone temples were built in Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia.
In Asia there is a distinction between the private and the public sphere. Public architecture must conform to certain rules. Public decorative architecture relies heavily on symmetry, which helps place the building and its users in a societal hierarchy that defines the rank of building itself. In China it is the difference between Taoism and Confucianism. Taoism is private and Confucianism is public. In the private sphere the symmetry collapses, and naturalistic forms of flowers, plants, and representational art are used to decorate structures. Private homes in China have unpainted wood, and ink paintings on the rough plaster walls. In Mughal India, harem buildings have paintings of dancing girls that would be strictly forbidden for a throne room.
In China, dating back to the Shinju dynasty, the use of colors defined status. Yellow was reserved for the royal family and black was for peasants, according to societal laws that remained in force until the end of the nineteenth century. Tie beams were carved with motifs of stylized dragons, mythical animals, nine-tailed turtles, and lucky symbols (including the auspicious swastika, a symbol of the sun or the rolling of time). The glazing of roof tiles began in the Tang dynasty.
In Muslim countries, geometric patterns are used to conform to the nonrepresentational art of Qurʾanic law, and colors create distinctions between ruling powers. During the classical phase of Islamic architecture, the use of muqarnas (stalactite or honeycomb vaulting) was introduced. In the mosques, the formal structure is organized with the orientation of the mihrab, the niche that indicates the direction of Mecca. In Bukhara the ninth- to tenth-century mausoleum of the Samanids exemplifies the use of patterned and carved brick in a jewel of geometric balance. In Samarqand, palaces, mosques, and mausoleums displayed faultless, exquisite blue tiles; color variation was not allowed. In China, all decorations on the Temple of Heaven are perfect and geometrically precise; the woodwork, beams, brackets, floor tiles, and cobalt-blue roof tiles are as close to perfection as humanly possible. By contrast, in Japan the height of style and elegance is a teahouse with thatched roof, unpainted posts and lintels, and a floor made of rough boards. Nowhere in Asia was the imperfect valued as highly as in Japan.
Further Reading
Hoag, John D. (1977) Islamic Architecture. New York: Abrams.
Pulatov, T. and L. Y. Mankovskaja. (1991) Bukhara: A Museum in the Open. Tashkent, Uzbekistan: Gafur Gulyam.
Williams, C. A. S. (1974) Chinese Symbols and Art Motifs. Boston: Tuttle.
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