Porcelain creates shared artistic language

In one of his late masterpieces, The Feast of the Gods, Italian painter Giovanni Bellini placed three pieces of blue-and-white porcelain at the center of the composition, using them as striking decorative accents.

According to Chinese historian Yan Chongnian, the vessel held by a woman in the painting bears a remarkable resemblance to blue-and-white porcelain excavated from the imperial kiln site in Jingdezhen, in East China's Jiangxi province.

Weng Yanjun, head of the Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Institute, says: "While embellishing a mythical banquet scene, these porcelain pieces also stand as enduring evidence of historical exchanges between civilizations."

Bellini's work is not an isolated case. As still-life painting gained popularity and porcelain imports surged in Europe, blue-and-white porcelain became a recurring motif in Western oil paintings, reflecting its profound influence on European art and society.

Known as China's porcelain capital, Jingdezhen boasts more than 1,700 years of ceramic production, and its influence on global culture and the art world remains as strong as ever.

Over the centuries, ceramics from Jingdezhen have been exported to Central Asia, West Asia, Europe and Africa. The cultural exchanges flowed both ways. While porcelain enriched Western oil painting, Chinese ceramics also drew inspiration from Western artistic traditions.

Mythological themes became a popular choice for exported Chinese porcelain in the mid-18th century, according to Li Shiqi, an assistant researcher at the Jiangxi Provincial Academy of Culture and Tourism.

Li says this fusion marked an aesthetic and creative breakthrough, fostering greater mutual understanding and deeper cultural exchange.

Today, artists are blending the rich techniques of oil painting with the distinctive pigments of ceramic art. Wang Yantian, a young ceramic artist based in Jingdezhen, is one of them.

"The fusion enriches artistic expression, promotes cultural inheritance and exchange, and supports the growth of the ceramic industry," says Wang, noting that realistic oil painting techniques, themes and visual language have been widely integrated into contemporary enamel porcelain paintings.

The exchange continues to inspire international artists. David Reid, a 71-year-old Australian artist who has spent more than four decades drawing and painting, arrived in Jingdezhen in 2018, driven by a passion for ceramics.

From abstraction to Eastern aesthetics, the interplay of Eastern and Western cultures comes alive at his fingertips.

"Here I create ink paintings, oil paintings and ceramics. Jingdezhen constantly sparks my inspiration to fuse Chinese elements with Western modernism," says Reid.

Camille Kami of France recalls her amazement on arriving in Jingdezhen, wondering how an entire city could devote itself to a single craft for more than 1,000 years.

She found herself unexpectedly reluctant to leave Jingdezhen and ultimately decided to make the city her home.

Chen Kelong, Jingdezhen's Party chief, says the city has established partnerships with more than 180 cities in more than 70 countries. Artists from about 50 countries and regions have flocked to the city to live, work and create.