While readers will come away from Chinese Art with a nuanced understanding of Chinese culture, the volume is also a work of art in its own right—a must-have collectible for any devotee of Chinese art and culture. Assouline’s Ultimate Collection is an homage to the art of luxury bookmaking—the oversized volume is hand-bound using traditional techniques, with several of the plates hand-tipped on art-quality paper and housed in a luxury silk clamshell.
Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970 is a first-ever survey exploring the lives and artistic production of artists of Asian Ancestry active in the United States before 1970, and features ten essays by leading scholars, biographies of more than 150 artists, and more than 400 reproductions of artwork and photographs of artists, together creating compelling narratives of this heretofore forgotten American art history.
The late Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, curator of Indian art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, uniquely combined art historian, philosopher, orientalist, linguist, and expositor in his person. His knowledge of the arts and handcrafts of the Orient was unexcelled and his numerous monographs on Oriental art either established or revolutionized entire fields. He was also a great Orientalist, with an almost unmatched understanding of traditional culture. He covered the philosophic and religious experience of the entire premodern world, east and west, and for him primitive, medieval European, and classical Indian experiences of truth and art were only different dialects in a common language. Finally, Coomaraswamy was a provocative writer, whose erudition was expressed in a delightful, aphoristic style. The nine essays in this book are among his most stimulating. They discuss such matters as the true function of aesthetics in art, the importance of symbolism, and the importance of intellectual and philosophical background to the artist; they analyze the role of traditional culture in enriching art; they demonstrate that abstract art and primitive art, despite superficial resemblances, are completely divergent; and they deal with the common philosophy which pervades all great art, the nature of medieval art, folklore and modern art, the beauty inherent in mathematics, and the union of traditional symbolism and individual portraiture in premodern cultures.
Thanks to Salem sea captains, Gilded Age millionaires, curators on horseback and missionaries gone native, North American museums now possess the greatest collections of Chinese art outside of East Asia itself. How did it happen? The China Collectors is the first full account of a century-long treasure hunt in China from the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion to Mao Zedong's 1949 ascent. The principal gatherers are mostly little known and defy invention. They included "foreign devils" who braved desert sandstorms, bandits and local warlords in acquiring significant works. Adventurous curators like Langdon Warner, a forebear of Indiana Jones, argued that the caves of Dunhuang were already threatened by vandals, thereby justifying the removal of frescoes and sculptures. Other Americans include George Kates, an alumnus of Harvard, Oxford and Hollywood, who fell in love with Ming furniture. The Chinese were divided between dealers who profited from the artworks' removal, and scholars who sought to protect their country's patrimony. Duanfang, the greatest Chinese collector of his era, was beheaded in a coup and his splendid bronzes now adorn major museums. Others in this rich tapestry include Charles Lang Freer, an enlightened Detroit entrepreneur, two generations of Rockefellers, and Avery Brundage, the imperious Olympian, and Arthur Sackler, the grand acquisitor. No less important are two museum directors, Cleveland's Sherman Lee and Kansas City's Laurence Sickman, who challenged the East Coast's hegemony. Shareen Blair Brysac and Karl E. Meyer even-handedly consider whether ancient treasures were looted or salvaged, and whether it was morally acceptable to spirit hitherto inaccessible objects westward, where they could be studied and preserved by trained museum personnel. And how should the US and Canada and their museums respond now that China has the means and will to reclaim its missing patrimony?
