Published in conjunction with a December 1999 symposium held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and an exhibition, "The Artist as Collector: Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the C.C. Wang Family Collection." Twelve contributions give dissenting opinions regarding a book recently published by The Museum titled Along the Riverbank, which seeks to attribute the painting called "Riverbank" to the 10th-century landscape master Dong Yuan--an attribution that would call for the rewriting of early Chinese painting history. This volume contains 239 bandw illustrations to support the contributors' efforts to explain their opinions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
This volume reflects on the fundamental issues in the theory and practice of connoisseurship of Chinese painting in particular and those of connoisseurship of art in general.
This volume addresses questions of canon, value, historiographical interest, and large-scale historical structures as they apply to Chinese art history in the context of post-colonial studies. As the field of Chinese art history moves into postcolonial studies, institutional critique, and economic and social contextualization, it is especially important that questions of canon, value, historiographical interest, and large-scale historical structures not be left behind. The aim of this book is to examine critically the historiography of the field of Chinese painting, to assess what achievements have been made, and to understand what and how personal backgrounds of scholars and institutional constraints may have affected various practices in the field. "This volume is a comprehensive and critically self-aware introduction to the history of Chinese art historiography in America, and includes reflections on more general issues of the encounters between East and West. This is a timely, much-needed book." -Olga Lomová, Director, Institute of East Asian Studies, Charles University, Prague, and Dircetor, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation International Sinological Center, Prague; Editor of Recarving the Dragon: Understanding Chinese Poetics. "This volume provides a true dialogical interaction of ideas in scholarship and reveals Western, Chinese and Japanese approaches to Far Eastern artistic heritage. The mutual elucidation of pedagogical wisdoms brings about salutary heuristic lessons that help readers overcome assumptions in which Western theoretical methodology has been trapped for so long." -Shigemi Inaga, Professor, International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Kyoto, Japan); John Kluge Chair of Modern Culture in the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress; Editor of Crossing Cultural Borders: Beyond Reciprocal Anthropology; author of Kaiga no tasogare: Eduaru Mane botsugo no toso . "This volume contributes importantly toward understanding the current state of Chinese art history in the US and its complicated historiography. It is provocatively argued, engagingly written, and passionately felt." -Katharine P. Burnett, Associate Professor of Art History, University of California at Davis, has published articles in Art History, Word & Image, and Orientations and is working on a book, Dimensions of Originality: Essays in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Art. "This volume is the next in Jason Kuo's long bibliography of original and important contributions to the study of Chinese painting. Each essay raises questions that draw Chinese painting into the discourse of modernism more generally." -Nancy S. Steinhardt, Professor of East Asian Art and Curator of Chinese Art at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania. Author of Chinese Traditional Architecture, Chinese Imperial City Planning, and Liao Architecture. Editor and adaptor of Chinese Architecture, and co-editor of Hawaii Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture.
Comments by noted landscapists, poet-painters, historians, and theoreticians; discussions of Ch'an Buddhism and its relation to painting; methods of study and aesthetic principles, more.
Exploring the history of art in China from its earliest incarnations to the present day, this comprehensive volume includes two dozen newly-commissioned essays spanning the theories, genres, and media central to Chinese art and theory throughout its history. Provides an exceptional collection of essays promoting a comparative understanding of China’s long record of cultural production Brings together an international team of scholars from East and West, whose contributions range from an overview of pre-modern theory, to those exploring calligraphy, fine painting, sculpture, accessories, and more Articulates the direction in which the field of Chinese art history is moving, as well as providing a roadmap for historians interested in comparative study or theory Proposes new and revisionist interpretations of the literati tradition, which has long been an important staple of Chinese art history Offers a rich insight into China’s social and political institutions, religious and cultural practices, and intellectual traditions, alongside Chinese art history, theory, and criticism
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.
This book presents a detailed account of authenticity in the visual arts from the Paleolithic to the postmodern. The restoration of works of art can alter the perception of authenticity and may result in the creation of fakes and forgeries. These interactions set the stage for the subject of this book, which initially examines the conservation perspective, then continues with a detailed discussion of notions of authenticity and philosophical background. There is a disputed territory between those who view the present-day cult of authenticity as fundamentally flawed and those who have analyzed its impact upon different cultural milieus, operating across performative, contested, and fragmented ground. The book discusses several case studies where the ideas of conceptual authenticity, aesthetic authenticity, and material authenticity can be incorporated into an informative discourse about art from the ancient to the contemporary, illuminating concerns relating to restoration and art forgery.
This book takes an interdisciplinary, transnational and cross-cultural approach to reflect on, critically examine and challenge the surprisingly robust practice of making art after death in an artist's name, through the lenses of scholars from the fields of art history, economics and law, as well as practicing artists. Works of art conceived as multiples, such as sculptures, etchings, prints, photographs and conceptual art, can be—and often are—remade from original models and plans long after the artist has passed. Recent sales have suggested a growing market embrace of posthumous works, contemporaneous with questioning on the part of art history. Legal norms seem unready for this surge in posthumous production and are beset by conflict across jurisdictions. Non-Western approaches to posthumous art, from Chinese emulations of non-living artists to Native American performances, take into account rituals of generational passage at odds with contemporary, market-driven approaches. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, the art market, art law, art management, museum studies and economics.
