In A Dark Pathway: Precontact Native American Mud Glyphs from 1st Unnamed Cave, Tennessee, Jan Simek and his colleagues present two decades of research at a precontact dark zone cave art site in East Tennessee. Discovered in 1994, 1st Unnamed Cave ushered in an extensive and systematic effort to research precontact cave art sites in the Eastern Woodlands, where the tradition of cave art production was widespread among ancient peoples. Indeed, when a preliminary report about 1st Unnamed Cave was first published in 1997, there were only seven known cave art sites across the Southeast; today, that number exceeds ninety. From the tale of the cave’s discovery in chapter 1 to descriptions of its art in later chapters, A Dark Pathway boasts nearly one hundred maps, high-resolution photographs, and illustrations that bring the story of one of North America’s premier cave art sites to life. Importantly, Simek and his colleagues also orient 1st Unnamed Cave within the broader context of cave art sites across the Southeast, elevating them as a whole to the notable prominence they deserve. Yet his analysis does more than present and situate the discovery of 1st Unnamed Cave within the greater realm of regional cave art site studies; it also calls for the protection and preservation of these fragile sites and for the acknowledgment of the still-vibrant indigenous cultures that produced them. With a foreword by Russell Townsend, tribal historic preservation officer for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, A Dark Pathway is a long-awaited volume more than twenty years in the making. Even as he delivers a comprehensive archaeological analysis, Simek’s clear presentation makes for accessible and thrilling reading not only for students of archaeology, anthropology, and Native American studies, but for interested readers as well.

An inkstone, a piece of polished stone no bigger than an outstretched hand, is an instrument for grinding ink, an object of art, a token of exchange between friends or sovereign states, and a surface on which texts and images are carved. As such, the inkstone has been entangled with elite masculinity and the values of wen (culture, literature, civility) in China, Korea, and Japan for more than a millennium. However, for such a ubiquitous object in East Asia, it is virtually unknown in the Western world. Examining imperial workshops in the Forbidden City, the Duan quarries in Guangdong, the commercial workshops in Suzhou, and collectors' homes in Fujian, The Social Life of Inkstones traces inkstones between court and society and shows how collaboration between craftsmen and scholars created a new social order in which the traditional hierarchy of "head over hand" no longer predominated. Dorothy Ko also highlights the craftswoman Gu Erniang, through whose work the artistry of inkstone-making achieved unprecedented refinement between the 1680s and 1730s The Social Life of Inkstones explores the hidden history and cultural significance of the inkstone and puts the stonecutters and artisans on center stage.

Available in a limited print run of 1,000 sets-the stunning nine-volume presentation of the incredible Buddhist caves at Dunhuang in northwestern China Situated at an important juncture within the network of silk routes from China through central Asia, the oasis city of Dunhuang was an ancient site of Buddhist religious activity. Southeast of the city, the Mogao Caves, also known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, are an astonishing group of hundreds of caves-carved in the cliffs between the fourth and fourteenth centuries-containing sculptures and paintings. Further east sit the Yulin Caves, another critical and richly decorated site. Featuring some of the finest examples of Buddhist imagery to be found anywhere in the world, these caves have enticed explorers, archaeologists, artists, scholars, and photographers since the early twentieth century. Visualizing Dunhuang: The Lo Archive Photographs of the Mogao and Yulin Caves presents for the first time in print the comprehensive photographic archive-created in the 1940s by James C. M. Lo (1902-1987) and his wife, Lucy L. Lo (b. 1920)-of the remarkable Buddhist caves at Dunhuang. This extraordinary nine-volume set features more than 3,000 of the original black-and-white photographs that provide an indispensable historical record. Invaluable for their documentary worth and artistic quality, and thorough in their coverage and clarity, the images represent a rare perspective on significant monuments, many now irretrievably changed. The Lo Archive serves as a treasure trove of historical, cultural, and artistic information for researchers, art historians, and conservators. The introductory volume includes an essay about the formation and history of the Lo Archive, as well as maps, diagrams, photographs of the Mogao site, and concordances. The central volumes contain photographs of the Mogao and Yulin Caves, collaged photographs, several hundred newly created diagrammatic plans, and English and Chinese captions. The final volume is a collection of essays that addresses the complexity and richness of the Lo Archive, and how Dunhuang has been viewed from ancient times to the present. Contributors include Neville Agnew, Dora Ching, Jun Hu, Annette Juliano, Richard Kent, Wei-Cheng Lin, Cary Liu, Maria Menshikova, Jerome Silbergeld, Roderick Whitfield, and Zhao Shengliang. Exquisitely produced, this monumental set's abundant photographs have been lavishly printed as tritones, allowing for the closest possible match to James Lo's original black-and-white photographs, and for the clearest, richest images possible. With numerous silk-screened pages and an eight-page double-sided gatefold, Visualizing Dunhuang stands as a definitive reference for scholars, collectors, and libraries in art history and Asian studies. Published in association with the Tang Center for East Asian Art, Princeton University

This is the companion volume to the authors' groundbreaking Symmetries of Culture, the classic reference for symmetry analysis of pattern for anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, mathematicians, and designers. Central to symmetry analysis is the use of symmetry in the more precise sense of its geometrical isometries in contrast to its everyday meaning of balance. For this volume, Donald Crowe and Dorothy Washburn invited colleagues from several disciplines to apply the method of symmetry analysis to actual case studies from cultures around the world. The essays compiled here explore how cultural information is embedded in the symmetrical structure of pattern. From descriptions of patterns on objects as diverse as Nasca embroideries, Ica Valley ceramics, Quechua textiles, Yombe mats, and Zulu beadwork, as well as from Amazonian shamanic therapy, ceramic design among the Shipibo, and Turkish Yoeruk weaving, the contributors reveal how the symmetrical structures in the patterns describe aspects of each culture's fundamental principles for living in the world. This approach offers a profoundly fresh way to read the meaning in pattern by arguing that pattern communicates through the structural metaphors embedded in the symmetrical relationship of the pattern parts. The two volumes together offer readers a revolutionary new window into the communicative importance of design.

Taking an approach that is equal parts anthropological and art historical, this lavishly illustrated volume offers a rare look at the art, artifacts, and culture of the Naga people, an ethnic group spanning several tribes native to northeastern India and northwestern Myanmar. The book seeks to shed light on this geographically isolated and historically insular people, identifying cultural aspects and artistic traditions that are common among all Naga tribes, as well as ways in which the tribes differ. The works featured include textiles, baskets, wood carving, pottery, metalwork, jewelry, and beadwork, and make use of a wide range of materials such as glass, stone, metal, wood, shell, seeds, bone, and hair. Archival photography is used to place clothing, accessories, and ornaments within the cultural practices of the Naga. Distributed for Mercatorfonds

This richly illustrated book provides an anthology and summation of the work of one of the world's leading historians of Chinese painting and calligraphy. Wen Fong helped create the field of East Asian art history during a distinguished five-decade career at Princeton University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Few if any other writers in English have such a broad knowledge of the history and practice of calligraphy and Chinese painting. In this collection of some of his most recent essays, Fong gives a sweeping tour through the history of Chinese painting and calligraphy as he offers new and revised views on a broad range of important subjects.

The topics addressed include "art as history," in which each art object preserves a moment in art's own significant history; the museum as a place of serious study and education; the close historical relationship between calligraphy and painting and their primacy among Chinese fine arts; the parallel development of representational painting and sculpture in early painting history; the greater significance of brushwork, seen abstractly as a means of personal expression by the artist, in later painting history; the paradigmatic importance of the master-to-follower lineage--of genealogy as a social force--in shaping the continuity and directing the subtle changes in Chinese painting history; the role of collectors; and the critical necessity of authenticated works for establishing an accurate art history.

Throughout the book, Fong skillfully combines close analysis and detailed contextualization of individual works to reveal how the study of Chinese painting and calligraphy yields deep insights about Chinese culture and history.

First Nation's artist Robert E Stanley Sr shares his knowledge and technique in rendering classic Northwest Native drawings. Now you too, can learn to draw some of the legendary animals of the First Nation's tribes, by learning Robert's technique's passed down to him from generation to generation.

Cemeteries are the repositories of history and personal narrative, places of comfort and beauty. Beginning in 1994, photographer and installation artist Kathy T. Hettinga began a fourteen-year project to document an unknown body of funerary folk art displayed in the cemeteries of the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. The book begins with the author's story of death and loss as a young widow living in the San Luis Valley. Years later, the beauty of the valley was relentless in calling her back to document the places and the ways people honor those that have died. Grave Images recounts Hettinga's spiritual and artistic journey to find meaning in the cemeteries of rural and largely Hispanic communities of the San Luis Valley. Her photographs of unique grave markers made of wood, concrete, metal, sandstone, glass and other materials by individuals or families to commemorate the passing of loved ones capture the ethereal beauty of the cemeteries and serve as a touchstone for our common understanding of loss, grief, and the need to memorialize and pay tribute. Hettinga's illuminating narrative articulates the meaning of this visual record from the perspective of an artist and provides religious and historical perspectives on the San Luis Valley as final resting place. This book will appeal to artists, art historians, ethnographers, historians, scholars of religion and general audiences interested in photography, folk art, and the history of the San Luis Valley.

One of the last great names in the Japanese "ukiyo-e" style, Utagawa Kuniyoshi was an undisputed master of the warrior woodblock print. Born in Tokyo in 1797, his talent became evident by the tender age of 12, when he became an apprentice to a famous print master. Starting out with vivid illustrations of cultural icons -- including Kabuki actors and Japanese heroes -- he moved on to a unique treatment of warrior prints, incorporating elements of dreams, omens, and daring feats that characterized his distinctive style. These dramatic eighteenth-century illustrations represent the pinnacle of his craft. One hundred and one full-color portraits of legendary samurai pulse with movement, passion, and remarkably fine detail. A must for collectors of Japanese art and a perfect first work for those who want to start their own collection, it includes brief captions and a new introduction.

The Admonitions scroll is an internationally recognized masterpiece of narrative painting and is arguably the earliest surviving Chinese painting. Painted in ink and colour on silk and traditionally attributed to the 'founding figure' of Chinese painting, Gu Kaizhi (c.345-c.406), the scroll entered the British Museum in 1903 and has become one of its most famous objects. The scroll illustrates a poem written in AD 292 by the poet-official Zhang Hua (232-300), who was reprimanding Empress Jia (257-300) who had wantonly abandoned the Confucian-based ethical behaviour expected of court ladies, including personal sacrifice to save the emperor should he be in danger. The Admonitions scroll was painted centuries later in order to admonish a different wayward ruler - this time an emperor himself. While didactic and morally instructive, the painted scenes also reveal deep psychological insights into some of the figures as well as offer touching glimpses of court life, including in the bedchamber and a grooming session with the children. Modern scholarship holds that the Admonitions scroll dates from the sixth to eighth century AD. While it may or may not be a copy of an original work by Gu, without doubt it accurately represents a style current in his lifetime and as such represents the seminal development of the features that came to distinguish Chinese ink painting as a distinctive world tradition. The Admonitions scroll has been held in many prestigious Chinese private and imperial collections, as well as having been copied by other Chinese artists, before arriving in London over a century ago. The story of the scroll is of fascinating historical interest and this accessible and beautifully illustrated book really gets to the heart of it.

Research outside Japan on the history and significance of the Japanese visual arts since the beginning of the Meiji period (1868) has been, with the exception of writings on modern and contemporary woodblock prints, a relatively unexplored area of inquiry. In recent years, however, the subject has begun to attract wide interest. As is evident from this volume, this period of roughly a century and a half produced an outpouring of art created in a bewildering number of genres and spanning a wide range of aims and accomplishments. Since Meiji is the first sustained effort in English to discuss in any depth a time when Japan, eager to join in the larger cultural developments in Europe and the U.S., went through a visual revolution. Indeed, this study of the visual arts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries suggests a fresh history of modern Japanese culture--one that until now has not been widely visible or thoroughly analyzed outside that country. In this extensive collection, which includes some 190 black-and-white and color reproductions, scholars from Japan, Europe, Australia, and America explore an impressive array of subjects: painting, sculpture, prints, fashion design, crafts, and gardens. The works discussed range from early Meiji attempts to create art that referenced Western styles to postwar and contemporary avant-garde experiments. There are, in addition, substantive investigations of the cultural and intellectual background that helped stimulate the creation of new and shifting art forms, including essays on the invention of a modern artistic vocabulary in the Japanese language and the history of art criticism in Japan, as well as an extensive account of the career and significance of perhaps the best-known Japanese figure concerned with the visual arts of his period, Okakura Tenshin (1862-1913), whose Book of Tea is still widely read today. Taken together, the essays in this volume allow readers to connect ideas and images, thus bringing to light larger trends in the Japanese visual arts that have made possible the vitality, range, and striking achievements created during this turbulent and lively period. Contributors: Stephen Addiss, Chiaki Ajioka, John Clark, Ellen Conant, Mikiko Hirayama, Michael Marra, Jonathan Reynolds, J. Thomas Rimer, Audrey Yoshiko Seo, Eric C. Shiner, Lawrence Smith, Shuji Tanaka, Reiko Tomii, Mayu Tsuruya, Toshio Watanabe, Gennifer Weisenfeld, Bert Winther-Tamaki, Emiko Yamanashi.

This broad-ranging and profoundly influential analysis describes how Western art institutions and vocabulary were transplanted to Japan in the late nineteenth century. In the 1870s and 1880s, artists, government administrators, and others in Japan encountered the Western "system of the arts" for the first time, as objects and information from Japan reached European and American audiences following the collapse of the shogun's regime. Under pressure to exhibit and sell its artistic products abroad, Japan's new Meiji government came face-to-face with the need to create European-style art schools, museums, government-sponsored exhibitions, and artifact preservation policies--and even to establish Japanese words for "art," "painting," "artist," and "sculpture." "Modern Japanese Art and the Meiji State" represents nothing less than a reconceptualization of the field of Japanese art history. It exposes the politics through which the words, categories, and values that still structure our understanding of the field came to be while revealing the historicity of Western and non-Western art history.

Three essays by leading scholars in the field of Japanese art explore Sesson's unique existence and unconventional painting style, as well as how scholarly perceptions of the artist have changed over time. Fifty-three entries highlight major works by Sesson as well as those by other artists before, during, and after his time. Sesson Shukei stands out as an anomaly in the history of Japanese art. Among the vast canon of Japanese ink painting, Sesson departed from convention. Inspired by the untamed landscape of the eastern regions of Japan, Sesson led a peripatetic existence caused by a lifetime of experiencing warfare and upheaval-yet he created some of the most visually striking images in the history of Japanese ink painting. This publication explores new ways of understanding and interpreting one of Japan's greatest painters and the world that shaped him.

Renowned photographer Jonathan M. Singer presents his striking black-and-white images of Chinese ornamental rocks from a leading collection. Shaped by nature and selected by man, scholars' rocks, or gongshi, have been prized by Chinese intellectuals since the Tang dynasty, and are now sought after by Western collectors as well. They are a natural subject for the photographer Jonathan M. Singer, most recently acclaimed for his images of those other remarkable hybrids of art and nature, Japanese bonsai. Here Singer turns his lens on some 140 fine gongshi, ancient and modern, from the world-class collection of Kemin Hu, a recognized authority on this art form. In his photographs, Singer captures the spiritual qualities of these stones as never thought possible in two dimensions. He shows us that scholars' rocks truly are, in Hu's words, "condensations of the vital essence and energy of heaven and earth." Hu contributes an introductory essay on the history and aesthetics of scholars' rocks, explaining the traditional terms of stone appreciation, such as shou (thin), zhou (wrinkled), lou (channels), and tou (holes). She also provides a narrative caption for each stone, describing its history and characteristics. Spirit Stones forms a trilogy with Singer's two previous books, Botanica Magnifica and Fine Bonsai. In these volumes, he has established a new style of photography that blends the tonal richness and chiaroscuro of Old Master painting with a scientific clarity of detail; they represent a lasting achievement.

Taking as its departure point Bernard Smith's classic study, European Vision and the South Pacific (1960), Double Vision explores the ambivalences of European perceptions of the Pacific and juxtaposes them with the indigenous visual cultures that challenge Western assumptions about art and representation. Double Vision addresses these larger interpretive questions through case studies of the cultures of voyages, colonial art, and indigenous affirmations of identity. It suggests that images and texts can be combined through a new practice of innovative, visually oriented cultural history. This approach yields a fresh understanding of history, colonialism and culture in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. Double Vision is a challenging combination of visual and textual inquiry, and its outstanding list of contributors offers a fresh perspective on art and history in the Pacific.

After the death of Joseph Stalin, Soviet-era Russia experienced a flourishing artistic movement due to relaxed censorship and new economic growth. In this new atmosphere of freedom, Russia's satirical magazine Krokodil (The Crocodile) became rejuvenated. John Etty explores Soviet graphic satire through Krokodil and its political cartoons. He investigates the forms, production, consumption, and functions of Krokodil, focusing on the period from 1954 to 1964. Krokodil remained the longest-serving and most important satirical journal in the Soviet Union, unique in producing state-sanctioned graphic satirical comment on Soviet and international affairs for over seventy years. Etty's analysis of Krokodil extends and enhances our understanding of Soviet graphic satire beyond state-sponsored propaganda. For most of its life, Krokodil consisted of a sixteen-page satirical magazine comprising a range of cartoons, photographs, and verbal texts. Authored by professional and nonprofessional contributors and published by Pravda in Moscow, it produced state-sanctioned satirical comment on Soviet and international affairs from 1922 onward. Soviet citizens and scholars of the USSR recognized Krokodil as the most significant, influential source of Soviet graphic satire. Indeed, the magazine enjoyed an international reputation, and many Americans and Western Europeans, regardless of political affiliation, found the images pointed and witty. Astoundingly, the magazine outlived the USSR but until now has received little scholarly attention.

Die Autorin analysiert umfassend das Fruhwerk des deutschen Kunstlers Otto Freundlich (1878-1943). Dieser begann bereits wahrend seines ersten Paris-Aufenthaltes 1908 eine eigenstandige, nicht-gegenstandliche Formensprache zu entwickeln, ohne sich wie zahlreiche seiner Zeitgenossen den vorherrschenden Kunststilen anzupassen oder unterzuordnen: "Ich habe [...] nach meiner inneren UEberzeugung geschaffen, die verlangte, von der Tradition abzugehen." Anhand der Rekonstruktion seines Netzwerkes positioniert die Untersuchung den Kunstler als selbstbewussten Wegbereiter der Abstraktion innerhalb der Pariser Avantgarde.

Art, Observation, and an Anthropology of Illustration examines the role of sketches, drawings and other artworks in our understanding of human cultures of the past. Bringing together art historians and anthropologists, it presents a selection of detailed case studies of various bodies of work produced by non-Western and Western artists from different world regions and from different time periods (from Native North America, Cameroon, and Nepal, to Italy, Solomon Islands, and Mexico) to explore the contemporary relevance and challenges implicit in artistic renditions of past peoples and places. In an age when identities are partially constructed on the basis of existing visual records, the book asks important questions about the nature of observation and the inclusion of culturally-relevant information in artistic representations. How reliable are watercolours, paintings, or sketches for the understanding of past ways of life? How do old images of bygone peoples relate to art historical and anthropological canons? How have these images and technologies of representation been used to describe, illustrate, or explain unknown realities? The book is an essential tool for art historians, anthropologists, and anyone who wants to understand how the observation of different realities has impacted upon the production of art and visual cultures. Incorporating current methodological and theoretical tools, the 10 chapters collected here expand the area of connection between the disciplines of art history and anthropology, bringing into sharp focus the multiple intersections of objectivity, evidence, and artistic licence.

This important book examines the history, process and significance of official portrait making during Korea's Joseon dynasty (1392-1910)-the country's last and longest-ruling Confucian dynasty. By highlighting significant pieces in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco's collection, including draft portraits of Bunmu meritorious officials and the portrait of Song Siyeol (1607-1689), it also discusses the complex philosophies and delicate techniques in the art of portrait making. With more than 95 photos and illustrations, Likeness and Legacy in Korean Portraiture is the ultimate guide to this specialized art form and its history. The inclusion of contemporary works that are related to or inspired by the portrait-making tradition will demonstrate to readers that this practice is still thriving in the modern art scene. See the Likeness and Legacy in Korean Portraiture exhibit at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco: April 10 - August 16, 2020.

Assembly of the Exalted presents some 50 pieces from the remarkable collection of Alice S. Kandell. The works, dating from the late 13th century to the early 20th, include great masterpieces and emblematic examples of Tibetan Buddhist art. They are all presented here as the constituents of a Tibetan Buddhist shrine. Shrines, both modest and grand, are the primary sites of Tibetan Buddhist practice, whether it be reciting scriptures, performing rituals, saying prayers, or engaging in meditation. The introductory essays thus focus on the Tibetan Buddhist shrine, describing its evolution over the history of Buddhism, its special role in Tibet, and how the pieces in the Kandell Collection came to be assembled and displayed in shrines at institutions across America. Illustrated with vivid photography, forty short essays, each centered on a single work or set of objects, describe the pieces in terms of their importance for the practice of Buddhism, highlighting the many essential functions of Tibetan Buddhist art within the space of a shrine.

This is the definitive account of the ground-breaking conservation project to conserve the cave paintings of the Mogao Grottoes in China. The Mogao Grottoes, a World Heritage Site in northwestern China, are located along the ancient caravan routes, collectively known as the Silk Road, that once linked China with the West. Founded by a Buddhist monk in the late fourth century, Mogao flourished over the following millennium, as monks, local rulers, and travellers commissioned hundreds of cave temples cut into a mile-long rock cliff and adorned them with vibrant murals. More than 490 decorated grottoes remain, containing thousands of sculptures and some 45,000 square metres of wall paintings, making Mogao one of the world's most significant sites of Buddhist art. In 1997 the Getty Conservation Institute, which had been working with the Dunhuang Academy since 1989, began a case study using the Late-Tang dynasty Cave 85 to develop a methodology that would stabilize the deteriorating wall paintings. This abundantly illustrated volume is the definitive report on the project, which was completed in 2010.