Asianart.com | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries

Dear Hongshan enthousiasts and jade collectors,

I've read your prose for a while, and I thank you for the amount of knowledge and skepticism I gain thanks to your debates and friendly conversations.

I am not a jade collector, but I inherited an unidentified jade from my grandfather that I discovered was Hongshan style, and I fall into the rabbit hole since then.

As I was doing my research I became stunned by the numbers of fakes out there, from the perfectly-made copies sold in galeries to the creative fantaisies pieces (and sometimes very credible fakes) sold on Ebay, Liveauctionners and so on.

But what really captured my imagination is the creativity behind the fantasy pieces. I am now doing research on these recreations as I found those inspired pieces inspiring. They often result of a combination of subjects and style, creating an imaginary Hongshan aesthetic that I am seeking to unwrap, by trying have a better understanding of the Hongshan culture.

My researches led me to two specific questions and I would love to have feedbacks from the Hongshan specialists and amateurs out here.

Chimera beast
I noticed that the "Sun god" figure was sometimes the basis for chimeric zoomorphic figures, as it can be seen on those examples below (figure a). Those double headed sculptures conveys a very shamanic to those characters.

Do you know of any genuine Hongshan pieces featuring double heads or combination of animals? Or any example in later neolithic styles of this type of chimera representations ?

I read on this forum that Hongshan culture may have invented the totem pole principle, but couldn't find any reliable source of that claim.

Phallic artefacts
I couldn't help but also notice the number of phallic pieces for sale (figure b). One might think it has a link with an interpretation of the fertility cult attached to Hongshan culture since the paper of Elizabeth Childs-Johnson and all the scholars that worked on Niuheliang site and have elaborated hypothesis about the Goddess Temple. But I wonder if this phallic cult is a complete modern invention aimed to appeal to collectors of if it has any roots in Hongshan or other Chinese neolithic cultures?

I'll be very interested to know if there is for instance any authentic artefacts with a phallic shape involved, or a mention of such piece in archeology literature.

I would be really grateful if some of you could could point me out to directions or share any reference that would help me separate the invention in these fantasy pieces from the genuine Hongshan culture.

And I will, at some point, post my supposedly Hongshan jade for you to happily dismiss. I am just not quite ready to hear that it's a modern piece yet :)

Respectfully,

Dorian

Figure a - Chimera representations
(Those are obviously modern pieces)

More examples of chimeric creatures

Figure b - Examples of phallic pieces
(fantaisie pieces as well)

And last but not least - combination of zoomorphic or anthropomorphic figures and sexual attributes

Thanks everyone for your inputs.

Asianart.com | Associations | Articles | Exhibitions | Galleries |