Clouds in motion: The art of Mawangdui

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Among the lacquerware unearthed from the Mawangdui Tombs, dating to the 160s BC in central China's Hunan Province, no motif recurs more often than the cloud pattern. Its lineage reaches back to the "cloud-and-thunder" designs of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, perhaps reflecting an early, practical longing for rain and blessing. But as Taoist thought evolved, vapor came to mean more than mere decoration. It became a meeting point between artistic form and cosmological vision, and in the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), it came fully into its own. The cloud motif ceases to be just an ornament and becomes the very force that structures space. It is depicted as weightless, flowing curves arranged in a measured pattern and possesses vortex-like loops that coil, return and unfurl again, conveying a sense of perpetual movement and life in endless renewal.

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