Chinese Art & Culture"Chinese Art and Culture is a refreshingly clear look at the oldest and most productive continuous artistic tradition on earth. From 7,000-year-old Neolithic pot-making and jade-carving cultures to contemporary artists' installations, video, and performance pieces, this engrossing survey embraces the richness and complexity of Chinese art. In all the right ways, this is a different kind of book on Chinese art. Departing from the predictable narration of dynasties and styles, Robert L. Thorp and Richard Ellis Vinograd present art as a cultural expression of societal expectations, politics, material culture, belief systems, and wider fields of culture. They emphasize works of ancient art and architecture found in their original archaeological settings. Where that is not feasible. they reconstruct interconnections among individual pieces and with their contexts of production. To the broad cultural picture, they add considerations of the material of which an object is made and the distinctive techniques used to make it. Thus an early Ming vase is shown as the product of a new advance in firing technology that enable control of copper red glazes and as a reflection--in its shape--of the lingering taste of the Early Ming emperors for things Tibetan. Chinese art is one of the most active and mutable areas of cultural scholarship today. Thorp and Vinograd are leaders in a generation of scholars who are re-examining long-held conceptions about Chinese art--for example, the notion that Chinese art has essential and permanent characteristics and the idea the Chinese art and culture were untouched by outside influences. Just as important, the authors give popular, religious and craft arts their just due. Richly illustrated--some of the objects have almost never been pictured before--and enhanced with special-topic sidebars, this long-awaited book answers the needs of students, collectors, and lovers of Chinese art for a work that is current in approach and scholarship and is at the same time reader-friendly." -- Provided by publisher |
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active Anyang architecture artists Beijing bodhisattva bronze Buddha Buddhist burial calligraphy capital carved century ceramic Chan Chang'an China Chinese colors on silk court painting cultural decoration depicted designs Detail of handscroll Ding wares Dong Qichang dragons Dunhuang dynasty early elite emperor European figures forms Gansu garden glaze Hall Hanging scroll Hangzhou Hebei height Henan Huizong illustrated images imperial ink and colors inscriptions jade Jingdezhen kilns lacquer landscape late Ming later Liao literary Luoyang Ming period Mongol motifs mountain murals National Palace Museum Northern Northern Wei official pagoda painter pictorial political porcelain production Qing regime region ritual River scene scholar-official script Shaanxi Shandong Shang social Southern Song stone styles Sutra Suzhou Tang taste Temple texts themes tion tomb traditional ture types urban vessels visual wall Wang wares Western Zhou Xi'an Yangzi Yuan Zhao