The Century of Tung Chʻi-chʻang 1555-1636

The Century of Tung Chʻi-chʻang 1555-1636

Author: Wai-kam Ho

Publisher:

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 632

ISBN-13:

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"At the end of the sixteenth century, Tung Ch'i-ch'ang (1555-1636), painter, calligrapher, connoisseur, art historian and theoretician, and quintessential scholar-official, revolutionized Chinese painting and calligraphy. He brought to these arts a new vision and historical perspective, and established the direction both would follow for centuries to come. Indeed, he is generally recognized as the most important and influential figure in Chinese art to have appeared since the fourteenth century. The Century of Tung Ch'i-ch'ang, the first major exhibition and publication of Tung's painting and calligraphy, reappraises this unparalleled artist in light of modern scholarship. Not only are his most important works included in this study, but examples of the works of more than forty major seventeenth century artists who were influenced by his genius have also been assembled to demonstrate his enormous impact on both the Orthodox and Individualist movements of later Chinese painting. This international project, organized by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, has been realized through the unprecedented cooperation of China's two preeminent museums, the Beijing Palace Museum and the Shanghai Museum. One hundred of the one hundred and seventy-one works in the exhibition are on loan from these two renowned collections. The material is rare, and hitherto unknown masterpieces are made available for the first time to scholars and the general public alike. The remaining works have been gathered from the most important public and private collections in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Europe, Australia, and North America. This two-volume scholarly catalogue, featuring more than seven hundred illustrations and including extensive biographical, chronological, and critical material, is the work of a venerable team of international scholars who have made major contributions to the study of Tung Ch'i-ch'ang and his extraordinary influence on the history and evolution of Chinese painting and calligraphy." -- Provided by publisher


Art Without Borders

Art Without Borders

Author: Ben-Ami Scharfstein

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-08-01

Total Pages: 558

ISBN-13: 0226736113

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People all over the world make art and take pleasure in it, and they have done so for millennia. But acknowledging that art is a universal part of human experience leads us to some big questions: Why does it exist? Why do we enjoy it? And how do the world’s different art traditions relate to art and to each other? Art Without Borders is an extraordinary exploration of those questions, a profound and personal meditation on the human hunger for art and a dazzling synthesis of the whole range of inquiry into its significance. Esteemed thinker Ben-Ami Scharfstein’s encyclopedic erudition is here brought to bear on the full breadth of the world of art. He draws on neuroscience and psychology to understand the way we both perceive and conceive of art, including its resistance to verbal exposition. Through examples of work by Indian, Chinese, European, African, and Australianartists, Art Without Borders probes the distinction between accepting a tradition and defying it through innovation, which leads to a consideration of the notion of artistic genius. Continuing in this comparative vein, Scharfstein examines the mutual influence of European and non-European artists. Then, through a comprehensive evaluation of the world’s major art cultures, he shows how all of these individual traditions are gradually, but haltingly, conjoining into a single current of universal art. Finally, he concludes by looking at the ways empathy and intuition can allow members of one culture to appreciate the art of another. Lucid, learned, and incomparably rich in thought and detail, Art Without Borders is a monumental accomplishment, on par with the artistic achievements Scharfstein writes about so lovingly in its pages.


Beyond Representation

Beyond Representation

Author: Wen Fong

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 571

ISBN-13: 0300057016

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Beyond Representation surveys Chinese painting and calligraphy from the eighth to the fourteenth century, a period during which Chinese society and artistic expression underwent profound changes. A fourteenth-century Yuan dynasty (1279 - 1368) literati landscape painting presents a world that is totally different from that portrayed in the monumental landscape images of the early Sung dynasty (960 - 1279). To chronicle and explain the evolution from formal representation to self-expression is the purpose of this book. Wen C. Fong, one of the world's most eminent scholars of Chinese art, takes the reader through this evolution, drawing on the outstanding collection of Chinese painting and calligraphy in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Focusing on 118 works, each illustrated in full color, the book significantly augments the standard canon of images used to describe the period, enhancing our sense of the richness and complexity of artistic expression during this six-hundred-year era.


Possessing the Past

Possessing the Past

Author: 國立故宮博物院

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 666

ISBN-13: 0810964945

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A major scholarly work, published in conjunction with the exhibition titled "Splendors of Imperial China: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei" (on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during 1996, and scheduled for several other American cities during 1996-1997). Written by scholars of both Chinese and Western cultural backgrounds and conceived as a cultural history, the book synthesizes scholarship of the past three decades to present the historical and cultural significance of individual works of art and analyses of their aesthetic content, as well as reevaluation of the cultural dynamics of Chinese history. Includes some 600 illustrations, 436 in color. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


Eulogy for Burying a Crane and the Art of Chinese Calligraphy

Eulogy for Burying a Crane and the Art of Chinese Calligraphy

Author: Lei Xue

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2019-12-06

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 0295746351

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Eulogy for Burying a Crane (Yi he ming) is perhaps the most eccentric piece in China’s calligraphic canon. Apparently marking the burial of a crane, the large inscription, datable to 514 CE, was once carved into a cliff on Jiaoshan Island in the Yangzi River. Since the discovery of its ruins in the early eleventh century, it has fascinated generations of scholars and calligraphers and been enshrined as a calligraphic masterpiece. Nonetheless, skeptics have questioned the quality of the calligraphy and complained that its fragmentary state and worn characters make assessment of its artistic value impossible. Moreover, historians have trouble fitting it into the storyline of Chinese calligraphy. Such controversies illuminate moments of discontinuity in the history of the art form that complicate the mechanism of canon formation. In this volume, Lei Xue examines previous epigraphic studies and recent archaeological finds to consider the origin of the work in the sixth century and then trace its history after the eleventh century. He suggests that formation of the canon of Chinese calligraphy over two millennia has been an ongoing process embedded in the sociopolitical realities of particular historical moments. This biography of the stone monument Eulogy for Burying a Crane reveals Chinese calligraphy to be a contested field of cultural and political forces that have constantly reconfigured the practice, theory, and historiography of this unique art form. Art History Publication Initiative A McLellan Book


Dimensions of Originality

Dimensions of Originality

Author: Katharine P Burnett

Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press

Published: 2013-03-13

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 9629964562

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This book investigates the issue of conceptual originality in art criticism of the seventeenth century, a period in which China dynamically reinvented itself. In art criticism, the term which was called upon to indicate conceptual originality more than any other was "qi", literally, "different"; but secondarily, "odd," like a number and by extension, "the novel," and "extraordinary." This work finds that originality, expressed through visual difference, was a paradigmatic concern of both artists and critics. Burnett speculates on why many have dismissed originality as a possible "traditional Chinese" value, and the ramifications this has had on art historical understanding. She further demonstrates that a study of individual key terms can reveal social and cultural values and provides a linear history of the increase in critical use of "qi" as "originality" from the fifth through the seventeenth centuries, exploring what originality looks like in artworks by members of the gentry elite and commoner classes, and explains how the value lost its luster at the end of the seventeenth century.