Imitation and Reference in China's Pictorial Tradition (original) (raw)
Related papers
Pastimes: From Art and Antiquarianism to Modern Chinese Historiography by Shana J. Brown
China Review International, 2011
Over the last decade, broad scholarly interest in antiquarianism has steadily increased. The opening salvos of this academic surge included several large projects related to antiquarianism in China. In 2004, Peter N. Miller and François Louis of Bard College organized a symposium, "The Age of Antiquaries in Europe and China," and edited selected papers into a scholarly volume entitled Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500-1800.1 A year later, the Princeton University Art Museum held the exhibition "Recarving China's Past: Art, Archaeology and Architecture of the 'Wu Family Shrines,'" accompanied by a six-hundred-plus-page exhibition catalog.2 In the following year, Wu Hung of the University of Chicago organized the symposium "Reinventing the Past: Archaism and Antiquarianism in Chinese Art and Visual Culture," whose selected proceedings were published in an edited volume with the same title in 2010.3 In the same year, a symposium that was organized by the Fondation maison des sciences de l'homme of France and the Getty Research Institute, I would like to thank Matthew Flannery for his editorial assistance in the preparation of this review.
Chinese Art Going Out and Coming Back: The Power of Antiquity and Contemporary China
The 4th Peking University International Doctoral Student Forum of Art Studies, 2022
This paper discusses the power of antiquity in politically charged exhibitions for contemporary China, where the economy is flourishing, nationalist sentiment is rising, and international tensions are high. The first exhibition under examination is “The Journey Back Home” at the National Museum of China in 2019 which highlighted important repatriated cultural relics by the People’s Republic of China since 1949. The display, narration and representation of the exhibition will be examined to understand how antiquity was being utilised to celebrate national achievements convey the political message, and enhance national pride by creating contrasts between the prosperous present and the humiliated past, “Self” and “The Others”. In this way, why the repatriation of cultural relics matters to China, as well as the world, will be analysed. On the other hand, the International Exhibition of Chinese Art at Burlington House London in 1935 displayed Chinese art with the support of the government of the Republic of China. As politically significant as the former exhibition, it was the first time that the authority of China took advantage of its antiquities to demonstrate the charm of the country and earn its international standing. Nowadays, most exhibits that participated in the 1935 Exhibition are housed in the Palace Museum in Taipei, which adds another layer of political meaning to these national treasures. Based on the critical reading of extensive literature, media coverage and images, this paper provides a critical read of the two exhibitions, trying to understand how the events, where national historical myths were enacted, disseminated, and consumed by the public, created a political discourse through antiquity. Finally, the curatorial rationales of the exhibitions are analogised to demonstrate and significance of antiquity for China in today’s contexts. This paper is awarded "Specially Recommended Paper" at the 4th Peking University International Doctoral Student Forum of Art Studies, 2022.
Modern Chinese Art: Narrativizing Western Influence and Chinese Response in the Modern Era
The Waterfall and the Fountains, 2019
In this essay the author lays a foundation for constructing a narrative model, which aims at rewriting the development of Chinese art in modern times, especially, in the first half of the 20th century. Building this model, the author primarily emphasizes the importance of context, which consists of external and internal aspects, with multiple layers within each aspect. With this model, the author examines the fundamental change to Chinese art in the early 20th century, and throughout the century as well, and proposes a reinterpretation as the main thesis: the interaction of Western influence and Chinese response has shaped the development of Chinese art in modern times. As the preliminary result of Chinese response since the early 20th century, a great divergence occurred in modern Chinese art, splitting it into two mainstreams: Chinese-style art and Western-style art, with a sub-split in each. Running two mainstreams forward side by side is the uniqueness of the development of modern Chinese art, and the uniqueness reveals the Chinese anxiety of cultural and national identity, which is the drive behind the Chinese response to Western influence.
The Role of Tradition in Chinese Contemporary Art
This paper mainly discusses how traditional Chinese art and ideology affect Chinese artists now. It is composed of three parts, each an interview with a artist who describes his/her relation with this issue.
The China Journal, 2011
Western understandings of the trajectory of Chinese art following Mao’s death in 1976 have been hampered by several factors. A persistent element is the propensity of Western art historians and critics to impose Western historical patterns, esthetic standards, and critical methods to the analysis of Chinese art, its production and expression. This tendency was exacerbated by China’s closing to the West after 1949, which discouraged scholarship and Chinese language study and resulted in a 30-year hiatus in scholarly communications and firsthand knowledge, and at the same time invited imagination and speculation favoring an obsessive preference in the West for art that could be interpreted as politically subversive. When China opened in the 1980s, scholars of contemporary Chinese art faced the further problem of trying to make sense of an anarchic disarray of theories and practices rushing in to fill the vacuum afforded by the collapse of Marxism-Leninism-Mao-Zedong ideology. The prolific but scattered writings and publications by Chinese artists, critics and theorists were accessible only to those few who already possessed a high level of Chinese language facility including the specially nuanced vocabulary of the art world, as well as a wide-ranging and balanced network of personal contacts. This collection addresses the need for wider access to these Chinese sources by readers of English.
Chinese Painting Between Modernity and Tradition: Reflections on an Exhibition and a Conference
It has been immensely stimulating for me to see the Tenth National Exhibition of Chinese Painting and to hear the papers presented at this conference. I was invited as an outside observer, and an outsider I am, in two senses. First, I am not a scholar of Chinese painting; while I have seen collections and exhibition of Chinese art in American and European museums, I have never studied it formally. Secondly, I am a Westerner by birth, culture, and scholarly specialty; my teaching and research are dedicated to the modern and contemporary art of the West with particular emphasis on the art, art theory, and art criticism of Germany. I am painfully aware of my own limitations in this context-most if not all of the Chinese participants in this conference are more familiar with my tradition than I am with theirs. Nevertheless, what I have seen and heard here has engaged me profoundly and has pushed my thinking onto untrodden paths, provoking me to reflect in fresh ways on the relationship between tradition, modernity, and the medium of painting in my own culture. I offer some of those reflections here. I shall present my brief remarks in three parts: The first relates to the issue of tradition and modernity in contemporary art with reference to the Tenth National Exhibition of Chinese Painting. The second concerns the relation between theory and arthistorical method on one side, and artistic practice on the other. The third part addresses the place of issues of medium and technique in the methodology of Western Art History.
Dimensions of Originality: Essays on Seventeenth-century Chinese Art Theory and Criticism
2013
Dimensions of Originality investigates the issue of conceptual originality in seventeenth-century art criticism, a period in which China dynamically reinvented itself. 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." Burnett speculates on why many have dismissed originality as a "traditional Chinese" value, and the ramifications this has had on understanding. She further demonstrates that a study of key terms can reveal social and cultural values, and provides a linear history of the increase in use of qi as "originality" through the seventeenth centuries.
THE BEGINNINGS OF ART HISTORY AND CONNOISSEURSHIP STUDIES IN ANCIENT CHINA
Roczniki Humanistyczne, 2014
The article presents a history of creating thoughts on art and antiquities in ancient China starting from the Wei and Jin dynasties and ending at the early Song dynasty. The goal of this paper is to present theoretical concepts on painting and calligraphy written by artists and literati scholars in different times, as well as the beginnings of interests in connoisseurship. The article presents, how studies on art theory have changed, achieving higher level of maturity in half of the 9 th century, i.e. when Zhang Yanyuan wrote "A Record of the Famous Painters of All Dynasties" giving the same a rise to further studies on art. SCHOLAR-OFFICIALS AS ARTISTS, COLLECTORS, AND ART HISTORIANS As a result of cultural development in China, from the late Tang dynasty (618-907 AD) began to emerge a new group of independent artists called shiren hua. In general they were intellectuals occupying official positions, however, in spare time creating art and poetry. Their art, reflecting very often personal impressions rather than trained patterns typical for professional artists, earned more and more popularity amongst imperial as well as private collectors. Nevertheless, shiren hua, apart from being learnt men, painters, calligraphers and poets in one person, they also might have been art collectors, who thanks to their intellectual abilities, rather then aristocratic background, developed new more professional attitude towards art col-BOGNA àAKOMSKA-Interdepartmental