Eight studies examine key features of Chinese visual and material cultures, ranging from tomb design, metalware, ceramic pillows, and bronze mirrors, to printed illustrations, calligraphic rubbings, colophons, and paintings on Buddhist, landscape, and narrative themes. Questions addressed include how artists and artisans made their works, the ways both popular literature and market forces could shape ways of looking, and how practices and imagery spread across regions. The authors connect visual materials to funeral and religious practices, drama, poetry, literati life, travel, and trade, showing ways visual images and practices reflected, adapted to, and reproduced the culture and society around them. Readers will gain a stronger appreciation of the richness of the visual and material cultures of Middle Period China.

Do you ever stare at patterns and wonder how to construct them? Are you ever captivated and inspired by Celtic or Islamic art? Do you ever think about the illusion of depth perspective that your brain builds from your senses? Are you aware that symmetry informs your feeling of what is right? Is there a Golden secret which is hidden in nature and all the traditional arts? Packed with information and exquisite illustrations by more than twelve expert authors, DESIGNA is the ultimate sourcebook for visual artists, artisans and designers of every kind.

Since ancient times Leviathan and other monsters from the biblical world symbolize the life-threatening powers in nature and history. They represent the dark aspects of human nature and political entities and reveal the supernatural dimensions of evil. Ancient texts and pictures regarding these monsters reflect an environment of polytheism and religious pluralism. Remarkably, however, the biblical writings and post-biblical traditions use these venerated symbols in portraying God as being sovereign over the entire universe, a theme that is also prominent in the reception of these texts in subsequent contexts. This volume explores this tension and elucidates the theological and cultural meaning of 'Leviathan' by studying its ancient Near Eastern background and its attestation in biblical texts, early and rabbinic Judaism, Christian theology, Early Modern art, and film.

The complex interweaving of different Western visions of China had a profound impact on artistic exchange between China and the West during the nineteenth century. Beyond Chinoiserie addresses the complexity of this exchange. While the playful Western "vision of Cathay" formed in the previous century continued to thrive, a more realistic vision of China was increasingly formed through travel accounts, paintings, watercolors, prints, book illustrations, and photographs. Simultaneously, the new discipline of sinology led to a deepening of the understanding of Chinese cultural history. Leading and emerging scholars in the fields of art history, literary studies and material culture, have authored the ten essays in this book, which deal with artistic relations between China and the West at a time when Western powers' attempts to extend a sphere of influence in China led to increasingly hostile political interactions.

This lively, lavishly illustrated volume presents rare decorative arts from Asia - all of exceptional quality - from ornate handled daggers and exquisite silver fi ligree boxes to diamond-studded jewels, magnifi cent embroidered silk and divination bowls by master craftsmen. The decorative arts of South and Southeast Asia, and especially those of the 18th and 19th centuries, and trade items produced during the same period, constitute a much neglected area. Such items, which in a Europeanized context tend to be labelled objets de vertu, are under-represented in public and private collections. While the decorative arts of later Western Europe and North America might be strongly represented, when it comes to South and Southeast Asia, there is a bias towards the ancient, the religious and the sculptural. And yet the decorative arts of Asia of recent centuries is a more accessible and tangible fi eld for many. The relative attractiveness of more recent Asian decorative arts, for which provenance issues need not be so acute, grows as the movement of archaeological and other early material across international borders becomes evermore complex and problematic, be it for commercial or for exhibition purposes. Seeking to redress the balance, this volume presents objects of exceptional quality that are often incredibly rare - ranging from ornate handled daggers and exquisite silver fi ligree boxes to diamond-studded jewels and magnifi cent embroidered silk. Only some of these objects were made for religious reasons, and, though old, few are ancient. Instead, they are the product of cultural infl uences that have crossed borders, produced in the quest for beauty. The catalogue also includes a selection of items usually designated as 'tribal' art. Many of these have a decorative as much as a ritualistic component. Among the objects from Nigeria are a stunning 19th-century processional staff , topped with the figure of a queen, two museum-quality divination bowls carved by master craftsmen, and a striking and possibly unique fi ve-headed dance costume. Most have been sourced from old UK and European collections, and most are likely to have been collected during the colonial era. This is important. Overwhelmingly, most 'tribal' art items available commercially today are reproduction pieces and have no place in serious collections. Michael Backman is widely published on Asian culture, art and politics. He is the author of six books that cover all aspects of Asia. His Asian Eclipse was named by The Economist among its 'Books of the Year' and appeared on several bestseller lists. His gallery in central London specializes in works of art from India, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Himalayas, the Islamic World, and Colonial and Tribal art. The gallery sells to museums and important private collections across the world.

Hua Yan (1682-1756) and the Making of the Artist in Early Modern China explores the relationships between the artist, local society, and artistic practice during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Arranged as an investigation of the artist Hua Yan's work at a pivotal moment in eighteenth-century society, this book considers his paintings and poetry in early eighteenth-century Hangzhou, mid-eighteenth-century Yangzhou, and finally their nineteenth-century afterlife in Shanghai. By investigating Hua Yan's struggle as a marginalized artist-both at his time and in the canon of Chinese art-this study draws attention to the implications of seeing and being seen as an artist in early modern China.

'A truly transformative read' Sunday Times STYLE 'More than ever, we need books like this' Jessica Seaton, Co-Founder of Toast and author of Gather, Cook, Feast A whole new way of looking at the world - and your life - inspired by centuries-old Japanese wisdom. Wabi sabi ("wah-bi sah-bi") is a captivating concept from Japanese aesthetics, which helps us to see beauty in imperfection, appreciate simplicity and accept the transient nature of all things. With roots in zen and the way of tea, the timeless wisdom of wabi sabi is more relevant than ever for modern life, as we search for new ways to approach life's challenges and seek meaning beyond materialism. Wabi sabi is a refreshing antidote to our fast-paced, consumption-driven world, which will encourage you to slow down, reconnect with nature, and be gentler on yourself. It will help you simplify everything, and concentrate on what really matters. From honouring the rhythm of the seasons to creating a welcoming home, from reframing failure to ageing with grace, wabi sabi will teach you to find more joy and inspiration throughout your perfectly imperfect life. This book is the definitive guide to applying the principles of wabi sabi to transform every area of your life, and finding happiness right where you are.

An exuberant journey through what might be called the Golden Age of Outdoor Advertising in Cambodia. From 1990-2000, small businesses blossomed, in contrast to the preceding decades when the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese regimes suppressed or vigorously regulated entrepreneurial ventures. As free enterprise spread, so did an abundance of eye-catching, creative, hand-painted shop signs. Inspired by the simple beauty, and often humor, of their folk-art style, public health officer Joel Montague began collecting these unique advertising images in 1991. The Boston Center for the Arts and the Fowler Museum at the University of California have displayed his collection, now presented to readers here for the first time. Montague's other books include "The Colonial Good Life: A Commentary on Andre Joyeux's Vision of French Indochina," "Picture Postcards of Cambodia 1900-1950," and "La Terre de Bouddha: Artistic Impressions of French Indochina."

On the southern end of the Grand Rue, a major thoroughfare that runs through the center of Port-au-Prince, waits the Haitian capital's automobile repair district. This veritable junkyard of steel and rubber, recycled parts, old tires, and scrap metal might seem an unlikely foundry for art. Yet, on the street's opposite end thrives the Grand Rue Galerie, a working studio of assembled art and sculptures wrought from the refuse. Established by artists Andre Eugene and Celeur in the late 1990s, the Grand Rue's urban environmental aesthetics-defined by motifs of machinic urbanism, Vodou bricolage, the postprimitivist altermodern, and performative politics-radically challenge ideas about consumption, waste, and environmental hazards, as well as consider innovative solutions to these problems in the midst of poverty, insufficient social welfare, lack of access to arts, education, and basic needs. In Riding with Death, Jana Braziel explores the urban environmental aesthetics of the Grand Rue Sculptors and the beautifully constructed sculptures they have designed from salvaged automobile parts, rubber tires, carved wood, and other recycled materials.Through first-person accounts and fieldwork, Braziel constructs an urban ecological framework for understanding these sculptures amid environmental degradation and grinding poverty. Influenced by urban geographers, art historians, and political theorists, the book regards the underdeveloped cities of the Global South as alternate spaces for challenging the profit-driven machinations of global capitalism. Above all, Braziel presents Haitian artists who live on the most challenged Caribbean island, yet who thrive as creators reinventing refuse as art and resisting the abjection of their circumstances.

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.

Following male figures wearing a cap (cap-figures) in temple reliefs of the Javanese Majapahit period (ca. 1300-1500) leads to astonishing results on their meaning and function. The cap-figures, representing commoners, servants, warriors, noblemen, and most significantly Prince Panji, the hero from the East Javanese Panji stories, are unique to depictions of non-Indic narratives. The cap-figure constitutes a prominent example of Majapahit s creativity in new concepts of art, literature and religion, independent from the Indian influence. More than that, the symbolic meaning of the cap-figures leads to an esoteric level: a pilgrim who followed the depictions of the cap-figures and of Panji in the temples would have been guided to the Tantric doctrine within Hindu-Buddhist religion.

Stephanie J. Smith brings Mexican politics and art together, chronicling the turbulent relations between radical artists and the postrevolutionary Mexican state. The revolution opened space for new political ideas, but by the late 1920s many government officials argued that consolidating the nation required coercive measures toward dissenters. While artists and intellectuals, some of them professed Communists, sought free expression in matters both artistic and political, Smith reveals how they simultaneously learned the fine art of negotiation with the increasingly authoritarian government in order to secure clout and financial patronage. But the government, Smith shows, also had reason to accommodate artists, and a surprising and volatile interdependence grew between the artists and the politicians. Involving well-known artists such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, as well as some less well known, including Tina Modotti, Leopoldo Mendez, and Aurora Reyes, politicians began to appropriate the artists' nationalistic visual images as weapons in a national propaganda war. High-stakes negotiating and co-opting took place between the two camps as they sparred over the production of generally accepted notions and representations of the revolution's legacy-and what it meant to be authentically Mexican.