Handscroll;Ink and color on silk;101cm(width)*22cm(height) This painting depicts court ladies in a quiet and spacious garden, living a playful, extravagant life. It is a magnificent Tang Dynasty Palace scroll painting. The women's full and round forms are decked out in a variety of costumes, with their hair in buns perched high on their heads, adorned with fresh flowers. Their movements are leisurely. They flap butterflies, play with dogs, admire cranes, or simply sit idly. Their maids follow them with fans.
In the first exploration of Chinese paintings as both material products and pictorial representations, The Double Screen shows how the collaboration and tension between material form and image gives life to a painting. A Chinese painting is often reduced to the image it bears; its material form is dismissed; its intimate connection with social activities and cultural conventions neglected. A screen occupies a space and divides it, supplies an ideal surface for painting, and has been a favorite pictorial image in Chinese art since antiquity. Wu Hung undertakes a comprehensive analysis of the screen, which can be an object, an art medium, a pictorial motif, or all three at once. With its diverse roles, the screen has provided Chinese painters with endless opportunities to reinvent their art. The Double Screen provides a powerful non-Western perspective on issues from portraiture and pictorial narrative to voyeurism, masquerade, and political rhetoric. It will be invaluable to anyone interested in the history of art and Asian studies.
Tang dynasty (618–907) China hummed with cosmopolitan trends. Its capital at Chang’an was the most populous city in the world and was connected via the Silk Road with the critical markets and thriving cultures of Central Asia and the Middle East. In Empire of Style, BuYun Chen reveals a vibrant fashion system that emerged through the efforts of Tang artisans, wearers, and critics of clothing. Across the empire, elite men and women subverted regulations on dress to acquire majestic silks and au courant designs, as shifts in economic and social structures gave rise to what we now recognize as precursors of a modern fashion system: a new consciousness of time, a game of imitation and emulation, and a shift in modes of production. This first book on fashion in premodern China is informed by archaeological sources—paintings, figurines, and silk artifacts—and textual records such as dynastic annals, poetry, tax documents, economic treatises, and sumptuary laws. Tang fashion is shown to have flourished in response to a confluence of social, economic, and political changes that brought innovative weavers and chic court elites to the forefront of history. Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/empire-of-style
Applying a comparative approach to Chinese and Western art, this book examines the characteristics of traditional Chinese art and analyses the distinction between figure painting and portraiture. It examines the scenery in Chinese landscape painting and the sense of poetry within the paintings of flowers and birds so that the reader comes to understand the unique essence of Chinese art and is gradually led towards the ethereal world of spiritual abstraction displayed in Chinese painting. The author relates the development of Chinese painting to the pursuit of the conceptual sense (yijing) found in Chinese philosophy and classical literature. She describes how Confucianism determined the content of the development of painting while Daoism guided the concept of aestheticism within it. Professor Law also examines the way in which differences of method and media profoundly influenced the artistic outcome producing the western skills in the handling of color and light and shade, and in China the imaginative use of ink on paper. All this is reflected in numerous illustrations ranging from Van Gogh to the great Chinese painters of all the different dynasties from the early Jin dynasty to the Ming and Qing dynasties.After reading this book, readers will follow the author' s rich experience in Chinese painting to understand the characteristics of the different genres of Chinese painting and be able to deeply appreciate the inner meaning of Chinese painting.
This volume covers Chinese art during the reign of the Sui and Tang Dynasties during which the various disciplines of plastic and performing arts all entered a stage of unprecedented prosperity and development. It also traces new explorations in calligraphy, painting, and mural art and highlights architectural achievements during the historic period. A General History of Chinese Art comprises six volumes with a total of nine parts spanning from the Prehistoric Era until the 3rd year of Xuantong during the Qing Dynasty (1911). The work provides a comprehensive compilation of in-depth studies of the development of art throughout the subsequent reign of Chinese dynasties and explores the emergence of a wide range of artistic categories such as but not limited to music, dance, acrobatics, singing, story telling, painting, calligraphy, sculpture, architecture, and crafts. Unlike previous reference books, A General History of Chinese Art offers a broader overview of the notion of Chinese art by asserting a more diverse and less material understanding of arts, as has often been the case in Western scholarship.
The Color of Fashion is a stunning book with fascinating stories of fashion woven throughout history with COLOR. Whether it's mellow yellow, in the pink, feeling blue, or green with envy, COLOR is so entwined with our emotions that there are countless expressions and song lyrics devoted to it. But what meaning does color have in what we wear? What does a green dress convey when worn to a cocktail party, what significance does a white trouser suit have when worn by a female politician, and why does a woman in red command attention? The Color of Fashion delves into the significance of color in dress and explores how the symbolism has shifted over time. Think of how black transitioned from a color of mourning to the ultimate in elegance, how millennial pink has defined the Instagram generation, and beige, once a sophisticated favorite of Chanel, now reflects the normcore subculture. Featuring images of iconic colorful moments in fashion history - including Jennifer Lopez in green Versace, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in white tailoring and Audrey Hepburn in that Little Black Dress - this book is an essential read for fashion lovers everywhere.
This book is the winner of the 2020 Joseph Levenson Pre-1900 Book Prize, awarded by the Association for Asian Studies. In Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire, Lara Blanchard analyzes images of women in painting and poetry of China’s middle imperial period, focusing on works that represent female figures as preoccupied with romance. She discusses examples of visual and literary culture in regard to their authorship and audience, examining the role of interiority in constructions of gender, exploring the rhetorical functions of romantic images, and considering connections between subjectivity and representation. The paintings in particular have sometimes been interpreted as simple representations of the daily lives of women, or as straightforward artifacts of heteroerotic desire; Blanchard proposes that such works could additionally be interpreted as political allegories, representations of the artist’s or patron’s interiorities, or models of idealized femininity.
In Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants and Trees, Ernst and Johanna Lehner explore the rich cultural heritage and symbolic meanings associated with various flora across different societies and traditions. This comprehensive guide offers insights into how these natural elements have been woven into myths, legends, and everyday life, providing readers with a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness between nature and human culture.
This journal subline serves as a forum for stimulating and disseminating innovative research ideas, theories, emerging technologies, empirical investigations, state-of-the-art methods, and tools in all different genres of edutainment, such as game-based learning and serious games, interactive storytelling, virtual learning environments, VR-based education, and related fields. It covers aspects from educational and game theories, human-computer interaction, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, and systems design. The 19 papers presented in the 14th issue were organized in topical sections named: 3D modeling and visualization; image; e-learning and games; and miscellaneous.
