Facing China is an exploration of the portrait arts in China from the dynastic to the modern and contemporary, in painting, sculpture, photography and video. The book focuses on truth and memory in the portraiture process, from encounters between subject, portrait and artist, to broader familial, social and political arenas. It also examines the influence of location on portrait production, reception and display, from tombs, ancestral shrines, temples, gardens, and palace halls to public and private spaces. Featuring 150 fine illustrations, with 100 in colour, Facing China has much to say to specialists in the field as well as general readers interested in Chinese art.

From starry-eyed fans with dreams of fame to cotton entrepreneurs turned movie moguls, the Bombay film industry has historically energized a range of practices and practitioners, playing a crucial and compelling role in the life of modern India. Bombay Hustle presents an ambitious history of Indian cinema as a history of material practice, bringing new insights to studies of media, modernity, and the late colonial city. Drawing on original archival research and an innovative transdisciplinary approach, Debashree Mukherjee offers a panoramic portrait of the consolidation of the Bombay film industry during the talkie transition of the 1920s-1940s. In the decades leading up to independence in 1947, Bombay became synonymous with marketplace thrills, industrial strikes, and modernist experimentation. Its burgeoning film industry embodied Bombay's spirit of "hustle," gathering together and spewing out the many different energies and emotions that characterized the city. Bombay Hustle examines diverse sites of film production-finance, pre-production paperwork, casting, screenwriting, acting, stunts-to show how speculative excitement jostled against desires for scientific management in an industry premised on the struggle between contingency and control. Mukherjee develops the concept of a "cine-ecology" in order to examine the bodies, technologies, and environments that collectively shaped the production and circulation of cinematic meaning in this time. The book thus brings into view a range of marginalized film workers, their labor and experiences; forgotten film studios, their technical practices and aesthetic visions; and overlooked connections among media practices, geographical particularities, and historical exigencies.

In 1923, French artist Andre Joyeux published a visually stunning, limited edition homage to Indochina in memory of his friend, Pierre Rey, who was killed in action during WWI. His concept revolved around French sonnets by Rey (nom de plume of Capitaine Paul Philibert Regnier) that Joyeux brought to life with 33 original watercolors. Former Governor-General of French Indochina, Albert Sarraut, contributed the Foreword to this artistically rare vision of the land, customs and people of Southeast Asia. In this modern, full-color hardcover edition, graphic designer Rebecca Klein hand-retouched each of Joyeux's original watercolors, adapting their elements to fit this larger format. To introduce this important French Colonial work to new audiences, an English language translation of M. Albert Sarraut's foreword is provided, with a biographical profile of both artists in a preface by researcher Joel Montague.

Conceptualizes "graft"- the violent and creative processes of suturing arts as a method of empire building in western eighteenth-century India Grafted Arts focuses on Maratha military rulers and British East India Company officials who used the arts to engage in diplomacy, wage war, compete for prestige, and generate devotion as they allied with (or fought against) each other to control western India in the eighteenth century. This book conceptualizes the artistic combinations that resulted as ones of "graft"-a term that acknowledges the violent and creative processes of suturing arts, and losing and gaining goods, as well as the shifting dynamics among agents who assembled such materials. By tracing grafted arts from multiple perspectives-Maratha and British, artist and patron, soldier and collector-this book charts the methods of empire-building that recast artistic production and collection in western India and from there across India and in Britain. This mercenary method of artistry propagated mixed, fractured, and plundered arts. Indeed, these "grafted arts"-disseminated across India and Britain over the nineteenth century to aid in consolidating empire or revolting against it entirely-remain instigators of nationalist agitation today. Distributed for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

This pack contains 200 high-quality origami sheets printed with beautiful and inspiring Japanese woodblock prints. These colorful origami papers were developed to enhance the creative work of origami artists and paper crafters. The pack contains 12 unique designs, and all of the papers are printed with coordinating colors on the reverse to provide aesthetically pleasing combinations in origami models that show both the front and back. This origami paper pack includes: 200 sheets of high-quality origami paper 12 unique designs Bright, vibrant colors Double-sided color 8.25 x 8.25 inch (21 cm) squares Step-by-step instructions for 6 easy-to-fold origami projects The woodblock prints in this paper pack are from famed ukiyo-e artists Hokusai and Hiroshige. Hokusai is best known for The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1830-32), while Hiroshige became famous for his series of prints The 53 Stations of the Tokaido (1832-1833).

Beginning in late Edo, the Japanese faced a rapidly and irreversibly changing world in which industrialization, westernization, and internationalization was exerting pressure upon an entrenched traditional culture. The Japanese themselves felt threatened by Western powers, with their sense of superiority and military might. Yet, the Japanese were more prepared to meet this challenge than was thought at the time, and they used a variety of strategies to address the tension between modernity and tradition. Inexorable Modernity illuminates our understanding of how Japan has dealt with modernity and of what mechanisms, universal and local, we can attribute to the mode of negotiation between tradition and modernity in three major forms of art-theater, the visual arts, and literature. Dr. Hiroshi Nara brings together a thoughtful collection of essays that demonstrate that traditional and modern approaches to life feed off of one other, and tradition, whether real or created, was sought out in order to find a way to live with the burden of modernity. Inexorable Modernity is a valuable and enlightening read for those interested in Asian studies and history.

A look at the painting traditions of northwestern India in the eighteenth century, and what they reveal about the political and artistic changes of the era In the long eighteenth century, artists from Udaipur, a city of lakes in northwestern India, specialized in depicting the vivid sensory ambience of its historic palaces, reservoirs, temples, bazaars, and durbars. As Mughal imperial authority weakened by the late 1600s and the British colonial economy became paramount by the 1830s, new patrons and mobile professionals reshaped urban cultures and artistic genres across early modern India. The Place of Many Moods explores how Udaipur's artworks-monumental court paintings, royal portraits, Jain letter scrolls, devotional manuscripts, cartographic artifacts, and architectural drawings-represent the period's major aesthetic, intellectual, and political shifts. Dipti Khera shows that these immersive objects powerfully convey the bhava-the feel, emotion, and mood-of specific places, revealing visions of pleasure, plenitude, and praise. These memorialized moods confront the ways colonial histories have recounted Oriental decadence, shaping how a culture and time are perceived. Illuminating the close relationship between painting and poetry, and the ties among art, architecture, literature, politics, ecology, trade, and religion, Khera examines how Udaipur's painters aesthetically enticed audiences of courtly connoisseurs, itinerant monks, and mercantile collectives to forge bonds of belonging to real locales in the present and to long for idealized futures. Their pioneering pictures sought to stir such emotions as love, awe, abundance, and wonder, emphasizing the senses, spaces, and sociability essential to the efficacy of objects and expressions of territoriality. The Place of Many Moods uncovers an influential creative legacy of evocative beauty that raises broader questions about how emotions and artifacts operate in constituting history and subjectivity, politics and place.

'The kind of history deserving of a cinematic blockbuster' Julia Lovell, Literary Review '[A] gripping and meticulously researched account of an epic effort to transport delicate scrolls, paintings and carvings thousands of miles under the threat of bombing and invasion' Rana Mitter, Times Literary Supplement 'Brilliant and thrilling... A tale of daring and adventure... A desperate race against time' Paul French, South China Morning Post _____ The gripping true story of the intrepid curators who saved China's finest art from the ravages of the Sino-Japanese War and World War II. Spring 1933. The silent courtyards and palaces of Peking's Forbidden City are tense with fear and expectation. Japan's aircraft drone overhead; its troops and tanks are only hours away. All-out war between China and Japan is coming, and the curators of the Forbidden City are faced with an impossible question: how will they protect the vast imperial art collections in their charge? The magnificent collections contain a million pieces of art - objects that carry China's deepest and most ancient memories. Among them are irreplaceable artefacts: exquisite paintings on silk, vanishingly rare Ming porcelain and the extraordinary Stone Drums of Qin, which are adorned with 2,500-year-old inscriptions of crucial cultural significance. For sixteen terrifying years, under the quiet leadership of museum director Ma Heng, the curators would go on to transport the imperial art collections thousands of miles across China - up rivers of white water, across mountain ranges and through burning cities. In their search for safety the curators and their fragile, invaluable cargo journeyed through the maelstrom of violence, chaos and starvation that was China's Second World War. Told for the first time in English and playing out across a vast historical canvas, this is the exhilarating story of a small group of men and women who, when faced with war's onslaught on civilisation, chose to resist. 'Fascinating... Brookes marries a reporter's grasp of detail with a novelist's narrative flair to bring clarity and readability to a complicated period of China's troubled history' Mail on Sunday

A collection of works by celebrated Chinese artist Lu Ming, who is widely recognized as the leading representative of Chinese realist comics. Few artists are as complete as Lu Ming. Known for his hyper-realistic comics and his universe inspired by both medieval (Chinese and European) and music (he is also a professional guitarist and drummer), this collection is a look at his paintings, advertising illustrations (for which he won a Palme d'or at the Cannes Lion festival in 2008), storyboard and conceptual design work for feature films (including the legendary Tsui Hark's Flying Sabers), and his sculptures (including the monumental "Desert Grade" presented at the Burning Man festival in Nevada)."

Buddhist temples in Southeast Asia are centres for the preservation of local artistic traditions. Chief among these are manuscripts, a vital source for our understanding of Buddhist ideas and practices in the region. They are also a beautiful art form, too little understood in the West. The British Library has one of the richest collections of Southeast Asian manuscripts, principally from Thailand and Burma, anywhere in the world. It includes finely painted copies of Buddhist scriptures, literary works, historical narratives, and works on traditional medicine, law, cosmology and fortune-telling. This stunning new book illustrates over 100 examples of Buddhist art in the Library's collection, relating each manuscript to Theravada tradition and beliefs, and introducing the historical, artistic and religious contexts of their production. It is the first book in English to showcase the beauty and variety of manuscript art and reproduces many works that have never been photographed before.

One of the largely untold stories of Orientalism is the degree to which the Middle East has been associated with "deviant" male homosexuality by scores of Western travelers, historians, writers, and artists for well over four hundred years. And this story stands to shatter our preconceptions of Orientalism. To illuminate why and how the Islamicate world became the locus for such fantasies and desires, Boone deploys a supple mode of analysis that reveals how the cultural exchanges between Middle East and West have always been reciprocal and often mutual, amatory as well as bellicose. Whether examining European accounts of Istanbul and Egypt as hotbeds of forbidden desire, juxtaposing Ottoman homoerotic genres and their European imitators, or unlocking the homoerotic encoding in Persian miniatures and Orientalist paintings, this remarkable study models an ethics of crosscultural reading that exposes, with nuance and economy, the crucial role played by the homoerotics of Orientalism in shaping the world as we know it today. A contribution to studies in visual culture as well as literary and social history, The Homoerotics of Orientalism draws on primary sources ranging from untranslated Middle Eastern manuscripts and European belles-lettres to miniature paintings and photographic erotica that are presented here for the first time.

Featuring elegant designs and high-quality paper, Floating Worlds Japanese Prints Coloring Book is the perfect stress-reliever for fans of classical Japanese woodblock prints. The floating world of Geisha, Kabuki actors, cherry blossoms and the majestic Mt. Fuji--with this coloring book for adults you are there, recreating woodblock prints of people, landscapes, flora and fauna. This fine art, adult coloring book includes 22 woodblock prints from the Ukiyo-e genre, all ready for the touch of your colored pencils or fine markers. A copy of the richly-colored original print sits opposite your coloring "canvas" to use as a reference, or not. Before beginning, enjoy a little of the story behind the image, as each print comes with a brief yet fascinating introduction to the original work. Altogether, it's the perfect way to relax and have fun with art. When your masterpiece is complete, tear it out at the perforation to frame and display.

The art of Japanese woodblock printing, known as ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world"), reflects the rich history and way of life in Japan hundreds of years ago. Ukiyo-e: The Art of the Japanese Print takes a thematic approach to this iconic Japanese art form, considering prints by subject matter: geisha and courtesans, kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, erotica, nature, historical subjects and even images of foreigners in Japan. An artist himself, author Frederick Harris--a well-known American collector who lived in Japan for 50 years--pays special attention to the methods and materials employed in Japanese printmaking. The book traces the evolution of ukiyo-e from its origins in metropolitan Edo (Tokyo) art culture as black and white illustrations, to delicate two-color prints and multicolored designs. Advice to admirers on how to collect, care for, view and buy Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints rounds out this book of charming, carefully selected prints.

From precious jade articles to monumental stone arches, Huizhou salt merchants in Jiangnan lived surrounded by objects in eighteenth-century China. How and why did these businessmen devote themselves to these items? What can we learn about eighteenth-century China by examining the relationship between merchants and objects? Luxurious Networks examines Huizhou salt merchants in the material world of High Qing China to reveal a dynamic interaction between people and objects. The Qianlong emperor purposely used objects to expand his influence in economic and cultural fields. Thanks to their broad networks, outstanding managerial skills, and abundant financial resources, these salt merchants were ideal agents for selecting and producing objects for imperial use. In contrast to the typical caricature of merchants as mimics of the literati, these wealthy businessmen became respected individuals who played a crucial role in the political, economic, social, and cultural world of eighteenth-century China. Their life experiences illustrate the dynamic relationship between the Manchu and Han, central and local, and humans and objects in Chinese history.

Textile artist Takaku Kuboku (1908-1993) is a paragon among modern artists of Japan, fusing rural and urban, traditional and innovative, and Asian and European influences in his life and work. This volume introduces his aesthetic ideas and artistic practice to an English-speaking audience for the first time. In a milieu where artists championed indigenous craft techniques as a vital component of authentic Asian artistic achievement, he specialized in wax-resist textile dyeing, or roketsuzome. His works on silk were among the most highly sought-after by the elite classes of Japanese society. With his daughter Hisako (b. 1944) he produced obi and kimono that combine the Japanese aesthetic of spontaneous inkbrush painting with modern Cubist and abstract designs, while maintaining ties with traditional Japanese painting. The subjects are predominantly drawn from nature, with a spiritual undertone indicating an awareness of and sensitivity to the idea of a life force that courses through and unifies all living things.

Originally published in 1937, this book surveys the underlying scientific principles that produce the chief glaze effects on Chinese ceramics. Hetherington provides a general introduction on the nature of a glaze before describing how glazes with various chemical contents can be manipulated to produce striking effects in terms of colour and texture. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Chinese ceramics and the history of art.

Japanese screens (byobu) are made of wooden lattices with two to twelve panels, covered with a canvas of paper or fabric. Artists, embracing the dynamic format of screens, incorporated shadows and other elements on the canvas to direct the viewer's eye from one panel to the next. Screens are unique for being beautiful artworks as well as lightweight, portable objects, acting as backdrops for court ceremonies or partitions for intimate tea services. This sumptuous book explores the 1,300-year history of screens created in Japan. In the text, leading experts on Japanese art and culture describe how screens developed from the 8th to the 21st century, from their ceremonial use in royal residences and Buddhist temples to their functional and decorative use in the homes of samurai and aristocracy. The authors examines the stylistic evolution of screens and the wide variety of subjects depicted, such as flying dragons, the passing of seasons, monumental battles, and The Tale of Genji. This book includes 250 colour illustrations, many that are reproduced to full page, and shows the screens to their best advantage with a landscape orientation and large-format size. It features Japanese-sewn binding and is kept in a clamshell box, which contains foldout poster reproductions of six screens housed in a separate pocket inside the box. This volume is an elegant addition to the library of any admirer of Japanese art.

A History of Chinese Art is a lavishly illustrated work covering the history of Chinese art from the Pre-Qin period (pre-221 BCE) to the early twentieth century in two volumes. Compiled by leading art historians at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, the volumes offer a Chinese perspective on the rich artistic tradition that has flourished throughout China's long history, from ancient pottery and tomb painting to furniture, sculpture, ceramics, calligraphy and fine art. Discussion is supported by full-colour illustrations throughout, sourced from collections in China and around the world, including recent archaeological discoveries. A History of Chinese Art provides an introductory point of reference for those with an interest in Chinese history, culture and art.

Japonisme, the 19th-century fascination for Japanese art, has generated an enormous body of scholarship since the beginning of the 21st-first century, but most of it neglects the women who acquired objects from the Far East and sold them to clients or displayed them in their homes before bequeathing them to museums. The stories of women shopkeepers, collectors, and artists rarely appear in memoirs left by those associated with the japoniste movement. This volume brings to light the culturally important, yet largely forgotten activities of women such as Clemence d'Ennery (1823-98), who began collecting Japanese and Chinese chimeras in the 1840s, built and decorated a house for them in the 1870s, and bequeathed the "Musee d'Ennery" to the state as a free public museum in 1893. A friend of the Goncourt brothers and a 50-year patron of Parisian dealers of Asian art, d'Ennery's struggles to gain recognition as a collector and curator serve as a lens through which to examine the collecting and display practices of other women of her day. Travelers to Japan such as the Duchesse de Persigny, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Laure Durand-Fardel returned with souvenirs that they shared with friends and family. Salon hostesses including Juliette Adam, Louise Cahen d'Anvers, Princesse Mathilde, and Marguerite Charpentier provided venues for the discussion and examination of Japanese art objects, as did well-known art dealers Madame Desoye, Madame Malinet, Madame Hatty, and Madame Langweil. Writers, actresses, and artists-Judith Gautier, Therese Bentzon, Sarah Bernhardt, and Mary Cassatt, to name just a few- took inspiration from the Japanese material in circulation to create their own unique works of art. Largely absent from the history of Japonisme, these women-and many others-actively collected Japanese art, interacted with auction houses and art dealers, and formed collections now at the heart of museums such as the Louvre, the Musee Guimet, the Musee Cernuschi, the Musee Unterlinden, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Die Heldengalerie des Qianlong-Kaisers stellt die erste umfassende Dokumentation und Analyse eines in der chinesischen Kunstgeschichte zahlenmassig absolut einmaligen, nicht mehr ubertroffenen Bildprogramms dar. Hiermit wird erstmals eine systematisch vergleichende Arbeit uber das Genre des Portrats verdienter Untertanen (gongchenxiang bzw. gongchentu), womit in diesem Falle spezifisch Offiziersportrats gemeint sind, im 18. Jahrhundert vorgelegt. Bilder dieses Typs des verewigten Helden wurden - zumindest bis in die jungste Vergangenheit - nicht ernsthaft als Kunstwerke betrachtet. Die Untersuchung behandelt in vier Themenkomplexen Tradition, Kontext der Werkgenese, Bildaufbau einschliesslich Format- und Serienversionen sowie Funktion dieser aussergewoehnlichen Bildgattung. Ein ausfuhrlicher Werkkatalog und Tabellen im Anhang sowie ein separater Abbildungsteil auf der beiliegenden CD erganzen die Studie.