“This is the essence of abstract art. Everyone can tell these are frogs, but clearly, they are not mere imitations of the real creature,” he said, smiling. 

 

It’s a general consensus that abstract painting is a style considered as the Western, first practiced by twentieth-century artists such as Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, also antithetical to the spirit of Chinese art as it’s possible to get. So what to make of a claim that the medium was first adopted by Chinese ancestors some 4,000 years ago?

That is exactly the discovery touted by Wang Zhi’an, an aficionado of Majiayao painted pottery(马家窑彩陶Mǎjiāyáo cǎitáo), who has devoted himself to collecting and studying the ancient objects for more than three decades.

Growing up a village boy, living not far from the Majiayao relics in Lintao County, Gansu Province, at the upper stream of the Yellow River, Wang, now in his sixties, has become one of the country’s foremost experts in the field.

“You have no idea how interesting it is,” Wang said, in front of several objects from his large collection. “Studying this pottery, even the subtle difference of the lines and colors of the designs on them, is to me like a long and vivid journey back to ancient China.

“It always fills me with a kind of awe toward our ancestors,” Wang said. “The more things I dig out, the more innocent I find myself.”

Wang illustrated his new theory on the abstract nature of many of these designs point by observing some frog portraitures.

“The four legs of the frogs are over-emphasized, and the other body parts almost neglected,” he said, pointing at several designs.