From cannibalism to light calligraphy, from self-harming to animal sacrifice, from meat entwined with sex toys to a commodity-embedded ice wall, the idiosyncratic output of Chinese time-based art over the past twenty-five years has invigorated contemporary global art movements and conversation. In Beijing Xingwei, Meiling Cheng engages with artworks created to mark China's rapid social, economic, cultural, intellectual, and environmental transformations in the post-Deng era. Beijing Xingwei - itself a critical artwork with text and images unfolding through the author's experiences with the mutable medium - contemplates the conundrum of creating site-specific ephemeral and performance-based artworks for global consumption. Here, Cheng shows us how art can reflect, construct, confound, and enrich us. And at a moment when time is explicitly linked with speed and profit, "Beijing Xingwei" provides multiple alternative possibilities for how people with imagination can spend, recycle, and invent their own time.

This richly illustrated book showcases a previously unseen and virtually unknown historical collection of Chinese ceramics, formed in the early twentieth century by George Eumorfopoulos, a pivotal figure in the appreciate of Asian art. Taken together, these artifacts, now located at the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, build a rare time capsule of Western tastes and preoccupations with the East in the decades prior to World War II. The years between the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and the establishment of the People s Republic of China in 1949 marked an opening up of China to the rest of the world and coincided with the first archaeological excavations of the country s early cultures. Working at the time in London, a center of imperialist power and global finance, Eumorfopoulos and his colleagues were instrumental in acquiring, assessing, interpreting, and manipulating the unearthed objects. The years of isolation that followed this period allowed aspects of his approach to become canonical, influencing later scholarly research on Chinese material culture.This groundbreaking exploration of approximately one hundred artifacts is not only an important account of Eumorfopoulos s work, but also a story about China and the West and the role antique materials played in their cultural interplay. "

During the course of the 19th century, a relatively modern medium entered the private space of Iranian houses of the wealthy and became a popular feature of interior design in Persia. This was print media - lithographed images on paper and postcards - and their subject was European women. These idealised images adorned houses across the country throughout the Qajar period and this trend was particularly fashionable in Isfahan and mural decorations at the entrance gate of the Qaysarieh bazaar. The interest in images of Western women was an unusual bi-product of Iran's early political and cultural encounters with the West. In a world where women were rarely seen in public and, even then, were heavily veiled, the notion of European women dressed in - by Iranian standards - elegant and revealing clothing must have sparked much curiosity and some titillation among well-to-do merchants and aristocrats who felt the need to create some association, however remote, with these alien creatures. The introduction of such images began during the Safavid era in the 17th century with frescoes in royal palaces. This spread to other manifestations in the form of tile work and porcelain in the Qajar era, which became a testament to the popularity of this visual phenomenon among Iran's urban elite in the 19th and early 20th century. Parviz Tanavoli, the prominent Iranian artist and sculptor, here brings together the definitive collection of these unique images. European Women in Persian Houses will be essential for collectors and enthusiasts interested in Iranian art, culture and social history.

The Haida are islanders first and foremost - a people apart. Discover the source of their distinctive culture and the inspirations for their arts in this book.

The family model has been central to patterns of social organization and cultural articulation throughout Chinese history, influencing all facets of the content and style of Chinese art. With contributors drawn from the disciplines of art history, anthropology, psychiatry, history, and literature, this volume explores the Chinese concept of family and its impact upon artistic production. In essays ranging from the depiction of children to adult portraiture, through literary constructions of gender and the psychodynamics of cinema, these authors consider the historical foundations of the family--both real and ideal--in ancient China, discuss the perpetuation of this model in later Chinese history and modern times, and analyze how family paradigms informed and intersected with art and literature.

A groundbreaking look at art made in China during the Cultural Revolution Although numerous books on the Cultural Revolution have been published, they do not analyze the profound shift in aesthetic values that occurred in China after the Communists took power. This fascinating book is the first to focus on artwork produced from the 1950s to the 1970s, when Mao Zedong was in leadership, and argues that important contributions were made during this period that require fuller consideration in Chinese art history, especially with relevance to the contemporary world. Previously, historians have tended to dismiss the art of the Cultural Revolution as pure propaganda. The authors of this volume (historians, art historians, and artists) argue that while much art produced during this time was infused with politics, and individual creativity and displays of free thought were sometimes stifled and even punished, it is short sighted to overlook the aesthetic sophistication, diversity, and accessibility of much of the imagery. Bringing together more than 200 extraordinary artworks, including oil paintings, ink scroll paintings, artist sketchbooks, posters, and objects from daily life, as well as primary documentation that has not been published outside of China or seen since the mid-20th century, this invaluable volume sheds new light on one of the most controversial and critical periods in history. Published in association with the Asia Society Museum Exhibition Schedule: Asia Society Museum (September 5, 2008 - January 4, 2009)

For hundreds of years the Bactrian camel ploughed a lonely furrow across the vast wilderness of Asia. This bizarre-looking, temperamental yet hardy creature here came into its own as the core goods vehicle, resolutely and reliably transporting to China - over huge and unforgiving distances - fine things from the West while taking treasures out of the Middle Kingdom in return. Where the chariot, wagon and other wheeled conveyances proved useless amidst the shifting desert dunes, the surefooted progress of the camel - archetypal 'ship of the Silk Road' - now reigned supreme. The Bactrian camel was a subject that appealed particularly to Chinese artists because of its association with the exotic trade to mysterious Western lands. In his lavishly illustrated volume, Angus Forsyth explores diverse jade pieces depicting this iconic beast of burden. Almost one hundred separate objects are included, many of which have not been seen in print before. At the same time the author offers the full historical background to his subject. The book will have a strong appeal to collectors and art historians alike.

Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746-1828) was fascinated by reading, and Goya's attention to the act and consequences of literacy-apparent in some of his most ambitious, groundbreaking creations-is related to the reading revolution in which he participated. It was an unprecedented growth both in the number of readers and in the quantity and diversity of texts available, accompanied by a profound shift in the way they were consumed and, for the artist, represented. Goya and the Mystery of Reading studies the way Goya's work heralds the emergence of a new kind of viewer, one who he assumes can and does read, and whose comportment as a skilled interpreter of signs alters the sense of his art, multiplying its potential for meaning. While the reading revolution resulted from and contributed to the momentous social transformations of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Goya and the Mystery of Reading explains how this transition can be tracked in the work of Goya, an artist who aimed not to copy the world around him, but to read it.

In this publication the sinologist Rupprecht Mayer presents 143 Chinese reverse glass paintings from a private collection in southern Germany. Traditional motifs of happiness, scenes from plays and novels, landscapes, Chi na's entrance into modernity, and the changing image of the Chinese woman define the central motifs. Production of reverse glass paintings began in Canton in the 18th century, of which only those that found their way to the West are known today. After th e end of exports in the middle of the 19th century this decorative art continued to enjoy popularity in China, but only very few of the many fragile paintings in Chinese households have survived the turmoil of wars and disruptions of the 19th and 20th cent uries. Reverse glass painting fell into oblivion in China, with no collections in museums and very few private collectors. This first study in the West presents the beauty of this traditional art in all of its facets.

Showcasing 45 artists, from top industry professionals to talented high school illustrators. "COMP x Artists Sponsorship" features the artwork of talented creators popular online from across Japan and beyond, each providing a stellar original illustration for the book alongside creator commentary. Featuring both Japanese and English text, and sold in a special protective vinyl slip bag.