T'ao T'ieh

Poets and mythology seem to have ignored it, but everyone at some time has discovered a T’ao T’ieh for himself at the corner of a capital or in the middle of a frieze, and felt a slight uneasiness. The dog that guarded the flocks of the threefold Geryon had two heads and a single body, and luckily was killed by Hercules. The T’ao T’ieh inverts this order and is still more horrible: its huge headis connected to one body on the right and another on the left. Generally it has six legs since the front pair serves for both bodies. Its face may be a dragon’s, a tiger’s, or a person’s; art historians call it an ‘ogre’s mask’ . It is a formal monster, inspired by the demon of symmetry for sculptors, potters, and ceramicists. Some fourteen hundred years b.c., under the Shang Dynasty, it already figured on ceremonial bronzes.

T’ao T’ieh means ‘glutton’ and it embodies the vices of sensuality and avarice. The Chinese paint it on their dishes in order to warn against self-indulgence.