Challenging cliches of Japanism as a feminine taste, Bachelor Japanists argues that Japanese aesthetics were central to contests over the meanings of masculinity in the West. Christopher Reed draws attention to the queerness of Japanist communities of writers, collectors, curators, and artists in the tumultuous century between the 1860s and the 1960s. Reed combines extensive archival research; analysis of art, architecture, and literature; the insights of queer theory; and an appreciation of irony to explore the East-West encounter through three revealing artistic milieus: the Goncourt brothers and other japonistes of late-nineteenth-century Paris; collectors and curators in turn-of-the-century Boston; and the mid-twentieth-century circles of artists associated with Seattle's Mark Tobey. The result is a groundbreaking integration of well-known and forgotten episodes and personalities that illuminates how Japanese aesthetics were used to challenge Western gender conventions. These disruptive effects are sustained in Reed's analysis, which undermines conventional scholarly investments in the heroism of avant-garde accomplishment and ideals of cultural authenticity.

Eaglemania celebrates Boston College's mascot, a monumental Japanese bronze eagle, following its recent conservation and return to view. Donated in the 1950s by the estate of diplomat and collector Larz Anderson (1866-1937) and his wife, Isabel (1876-1948), the eagle recently received in-depth restoration that has revealed its fine detail, carefully modeled form, and excellent material construction. Eaglemania brings the history of this stunning object to life. It features new research on topics that contextualize the Boston College eagle, assembling articles that discuss various aspects of its Edo- and Meiji-period origins. These include the Andersons' acquisition of the eagle; the Boston College eagle seen in comparison with other exceptional Meiji eagle figures; the meanings of eagle depictions in the Edo and Meiji periods; and Japan's rise as a destination for American collectors, particularly of sculpture, in the Meiji period. Through its focus on eagle imagery, this study illuminates cross-cultural dynamics resulting from American collectors' fascination with traditional and contemporary Japanese arts and Japanese artists' adaptation to this market.

In this beautiful and extraordinary zen calligraphy book, Shozo Sato, an internationally recognized master of traditional Zen arts, teaches the art of Japanese calligraphy through the power and wisdom of Zen poetry. Single-line Zen Buddhist koan aphorisms, or zengo, are one of the most common subjects for the traditional Japanese brush calligraphy known as shodo. Regarded as one of the key disciplines in fostering the focused, meditative state of mind so essential to Zen, shodo calligraphy is practiced regularly by all students of Zen Buddhism in Japan. After providing a brief history of Japanese calligraphy and its close relationship with the teachings of Zen Buddhism, Sato explains the necessary supplies and fundamental brushstroke skills that you'll need. He goes on to present thirty zengo, each featuring: An example by a skilled Zen monk or master calligrapher An explanation of the individual characters and the Zen koan as a whole Step-by-step instructions on how to paint the phrase in a number of styles (Kaisho, Gyosho, Sosho) A stunning volume on the intersection of Japanese aesthetics and Zen Buddhist thought, Shodo: The Quiet Art of Japanese Zen Calligraphy guides both beginning and advanced students to a deeper understanding of the unique brush painting art form of shodo calligraphy. Shodo calligraphy topics include: The Art of Kanji The Four Treasures of Shodo Ideogram Zengo Students of Shodo

What is Chinese painting? When did it begin? And what are the different associations of this term in China and the West? In Chinese Painting and Its Audiences, which is based on the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts given at the National Gallery of Art, leading art historian Craig Clunas draws from a wealth of artistic masterpieces and lesser-known pictures, some of them discussed here in English for the first time, to show how Chinese painting has been understood by a range of audiences over five centuries, from the Ming Dynasty to today. Richly illustrated, Chinese Painting and Its Audiences demonstrates that viewers in China and beyond have irrevocably shaped this great artistic tradition. Arguing that audiences within China were crucially important to the evolution of Chinese painting, Clunas considers how Chinese artists have imagined the reception of their own work. By examining paintings that depict people looking at paintings, he introduces readers to ideal types of viewers: the scholar, the gentleman, the merchant, the nation, and the people. In discussing the changing audiences for Chinese art, Clunas emphasizes that the diversity and quantity of images in Chinese culture make it impossible to generalize definitively about what constitutes Chinese painting. Exploring the complex relationships between works of art and those who look at them, Chinese Painting and Its Audiences sheds new light on how the concept of Chinese painting has been formed and reformed over hundreds of years.

From approximately the third century BCE through the thirteenth century CE, the remote mountainous landscape around the glacial sources of the Ganga (Ganges) River in the Central Himalayas in northern India was transformed into a region encoded with deep meaning, one approached by millions of Hindus as a primary locus of pilgrimage. Nachiket Chanchani's innovative study explores scores of stone edifices and steles that were erected in this landscape. Through their forms, locations, interactions with the natural environment, and sociopolitical context, these lithic ensembles evoked legendary worlds, embedded historical memories in the topography, changed the mountain range's appearance, and shifted its semiotic effect. Mountain Temples and Temple Mountains also alters our understanding of the transmission of architectural knowledge and provides new evidence of how an enduring idea of India emerged in the subcontinent. Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/mountain-temples-and-temple-mountains

The subject of this book is the so-called London Qazvini, an early 14th-century illustrated Arabic copy of al-Qazvini's The Wonders of Creation and the Oddities of Existing Things, which was acquired by the British Library in 1983 (Or. 14140). As is commonly the case for copies of this text, the London Qazvini is lavishly illustrated, with 368 extant paintings out of the estimated original ca. 520. Its large format, ambitious illustrative cycle and the fine quality of many of the illustrations suggest that the atelier where it was produced must have been well-established and able to attract craftsmen from different parts of the Ilkhanid area. It also suggests that its patron was wealthy and curious about scientific, encyclopedic and caja'ib literature, and keen to experiment with the illustration of new texts like this work, which had been composed by the author only two or three decades earlier. The only centre that was capable of gathering such artistic influences ranging from Anatolia to Mesopotamia appears to have been Mosul. The London Qazvini is an important newly surfaced document for the study of early illustrated Arabic copies of this text, representing the second earliest known surviving manuscript, as well as for the study of Ilkhanid painting. In a single and unique manuscript are gathered earlier Mesopotamian painting traditions, North Jaziran-Seljuq elements, Anatolian inspirations, the latest changes brought about after the advent of the Mongols, and a number of illustrations of extraordinary subjects which escape a proper classification.

This significant historical study recasts modern art in Japan as a "parallel modernism" that was visually similar to Euroamerican modernism, but developed according to its own internal logic. Using the art and thought of prominent Japanese modern artist Koga Harue (1895-1933) as a lens to understand this process, Chinghsin Wu explores how watercolor, cubism, expressionism, and surrealism emerged and developed in Japan in ways that paralleled similar trends in the west, but also rejected and diverged from them. In this first English-language book on Koga Harue, Wu provides close readings of virtually all of the artist's major works and provides unprecedented access to the critical writing about modernism in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s through primary source documentation, including translations of period art criticism, artist statements, letters, and journals.

A beautifully illustrated study of the caves at Dunhuang, exploring how this important Buddhist site has been visualized from its creation to today Situated at the crossroads of the northern and southern routes of the ancient silk routes in western China, Dunhuang is one of the richest Buddhist sites in the world, with more than 500 richly decorated cave temples constructed between the fourth and fourteenth centuries. The sculptures, murals, portable paintings, and manuscripts found in the Mogao and Yulin Caves at Dunhuang represent every aspect of Buddhism. From its earliest construction to the present, this location has been visualized by many individuals, from the architects, builders, and artists who built the caves to twentieth-century explorers, photographers, and conservators, as well as contemporary artists. Visualizing Dunhuang: Seeing, Studying, and Conserving the Caves is a paperback edition of the ninth volume of the magnificent nine-volume hardback set, and examines how the Lo Archive, a vast collection of photographs taken in the 1940s of the Mogao and Yulin Caves, inspires a broad range of scholarship. Lavishly illustrated with selected Lo Archive and modern photographs, the essays address three main areas-Dunhuang as historical record, as site, and as art and art history. Leading experts across three continents examine a wealth of topics, including expeditionary photography and cave architecture, to demonstrate the intellectual richness of Dunhuang. Diverse as they are in their subjects and methodologies, the essays represent only a fraction of what can be researched about Dunhuang. The high concentration of caves at Mogao and Yulin and their exceptional contents chronicle centuries of artistic styles, shifts in Buddhist doctrine, and patterns of political and private patronage-providing an endless source of material for future work. 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. Published in association with the Tang Center for East Asian Art, Princeton University

At a time when interest in China has never been greater, this revised edition of Mary Tregear's authoritative survey of the Chinese visual arts will be welcomed by art lovers, students and travellers alike. Generously illustrated and eminently readable, it covers not only bronzes, jades, calligraphy and painting, but also Buddhist sculpture, ceramics, textiles, metalwork, lacquer, garden design and architecture. For the revised edition, all Chinese names, places and terms have been romanized to current international usage. Throughout, information has been updated in view of recent finds, and the book contains new illustrations, a revised introduction and a new final chapter on twentieth-century art. An invaluable chronology of Chinese historical periods is included, together with six maps.

The Chinese are famed as the first to have discovered and mastered the techniques needed to produce porcelain. Yet carefully crafted ceramics are valued not only for their beauty, but also as precious cultural artifacts shedding light on the period in which they were produced. Chinese ceramics represent works of art both in themselves and as a medium for painting, poetry, calligraphy and sculpture. This accessible, introductory survey takes the reader through the rich history of Chinese ceramics from primitive pottery to delicate porcelain, complemented by full-color illustrations throughout.

Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings is the first complete translation of the well-known document produced at the court of Emperor Huizong (r. 1100–1125). Dated to 1120, the Catalogue is divided into ten categories of subject matter. Under Daoist and Buddhist Subjects, Figural Subjects, Architecture, Barbarian Tribes, Dragons and Fish, Landscape, Domestic and Wild Animals, Flowers and Birds, Ink Bamboo, and Vegetables and Fruit are biographies of 231 painters, ranging from famous early masters, such as Wu Daozi (ca. 685-758) and Li Cheng (919-967), to otherwise unknown artists of the Song-dynasty court, including fourteen eunuch officials and sixteen male and female members of the royal family. Titles of their pictures held in the palace collection are listed for each artist. These 6,396 paintings testify to the visual culture experienced by viewers of the twelfth century. The author's Introduction analyzes the Catalogue as a source of evidence about the formation of the Song-dynasty palace collection and argues that the majority of its pictures were already in the collection before Huizong's reign, as a result of conquest, confiscation, tribute, gift culture, collecting by earlier emperors, and the production of academy artists and regular officials at the Song court. Under Huizong's reign, around a thousand other pictures were added to the Catalogue through acquisition and reattribution. Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Offering a concise introduction of the invention and development of Chinese characters the book teases out the glyphic characteristics and rules for creating different calligraphic styles; visualizes the glyphic evolution of 132 commonly used characters and analyses a selection of over 60 outstanding type designs of renowned designers. It will enable designers to maximize the expression value of Chinese characters in visuals! Recent years have witnessed a Chinese character design boom, with influential activities popping up one after another across Asia. Institutions such as The Central Academy of Fine Arts, Just Fonts, 3type, Mojijuku have launched courses for Chinese character design. Meanwhile, various exhibitions, lectures, seminars, and competitions, online or offline, are popular with young designers. The innovative use of Chinese characters as main visual elements in design, such as brand identity, logos, books, and posters, enjoys growing trend globally. On the other hand, the cultural uniqueness of Chinese characters demands a sound understanding of its history from designers.

"War Baby / Love Child" examines hybrid Asian American identity through a collection of essays, artworks, and interviews at the intersection of critical mixed race studies and contemporary art. The book pairs artwork and interviews with 19 emerging, mid-career, and established mixed race/mixed heritage Asian American artists, including Li-lan and Kip Fulbeck, with scholarly essays exploring such topics as Vietnamese Amerasians, Korean transracial adoptions, and multiethnic Hawai'i. As an increasingly ethnically ambiguous Asian American generation is coming of age in an era of "optional identity," this collection brings together first-person perspectives and a wider scholarly context to shed light on changing Asian American cultures.

This multiauthor volume features a foreward by Kent A. Ono, a co-authored preface and introductory essay by the editors, 19 original artist interviews conducted by the editors, and original essays from Wei Ming Dariotis and the contributing authors: Camilla Fojas, Stuart Gaffney, Rudy Guevarra, Jr., Eleana J. Kim, Richard Lou, Margo Machida, Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, Lori Pierce, Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Ken Tanabe, and Wendy Thompson-Taiwo.

Laura Kina is associate professor of art, media, and design at DePaul University. Wei Ming Dariotis is associate professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University.

""War Baby / Love Child" is an interesting, original, and innovative project that expands the field of Asian American studies by using visual art as a point of entry and analysis for the discipline." -Mark Johnson, editor of "Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970 "

"One of the strengths of this original volume is its holistic combination of interviews with premier fine artists along with the textual, historical, and scholarly context provided by established and emerging scholars in Asian American Studies." -Nitasha Sharma, author of "Hip Hop Desis: South Americans, Blackness, and Global Race Consciousness"

A broad section of papers on paintings, prints and calligraphy stressing the interrelationship between scientific and historical research.

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

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.

Winner of the Shimada Prize for Outstanding Work of East Asian Art History By the end of the sixth century CE, both the royal courts and the educated elite in China were collecting works of art, particularly scrolls of calligraphy and paintings done by known artists. By the time of Emperor Huizong (1082-1135) of the Song dynasty (960-1279), both scholars and the imperial court were cataloguing their collections and also collecting ancient bronzes and rubbings of ancient inscriptions. The catalogues of Huizong's painting, calligraphy, and antiquities collections list over 9,000 items, and the tiny fraction of the listed items that survive today are all among the masterpieces of early Chinese art. Patricia Ebrey's study of Huizong's collections places them in both political and art historical context. The acts of adding to and cataloguing the imperial collections were political ones, among the strategies that the Song court used to demonstrate its patronage of the culture of the brush, and they need to be seen in the context of contemporary political divisions and controversies. At the same time, court intervention in the art market was both influenced by, and had an impact on, the production, circulation, and imagination of art outside the court. Accumulating Culture provides a rich context for interpreting the three book-length catalogues of Huizong's collection and specific objects that have survived. It contributes to a rethinking of the cultural side of Chinese imperial rule and of the court as a patron of scholars and the arts, neither glorifying Huizong as a man of the arts nor castigating him as a megalomaniac, but rather taking a hardheaded look at the political and cultural ramifications of collecting and the reasons for choices made by Huizong and his curators. The reader is offered glimpses of the magnificence of the collections he formed and the disparate fates of the objects after they were seized as booty by the Jurchen invaders in 1127. The heart of the book examines in detail the primary fields of collecting -- antiquities, calligraphy, and painting. Chapters devoted to each of these use Huizong's catalogues to reconstruct what was in his collection and to probe choices made by the cataloguers. The acts of inclusion, exclusion, and sequencing that they performed allowed them to influence how people thought of the collection, and to attempt to promote or demote particular artists and styles. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Chinese art history, social history, and culture, as well as art collectors. Published with the assistance of The Getty Foundation.

This volume explores the prehistoric beginnings of Chinese art and its development during the Xia, Shang, and Zhou Dynasties. It analyses the conditions of the emergence of Chinese art and its transformation of form, content and function throughout the Three Dynasties, a historical period marked by important changes in the social and cultural Chinese landscape. A General History of Chinese Art comprises six volumes with a total of nine parts spanning from the Prehistoric Era until the 3rd year of Xuantong during the Qing Dynasty (1911). The work provides a comprehensive compilation of in-depth studies of the development of art throughout the subsequent reign of Chinese dynasties and explores the emergence of a wide range of artistic categories such as but not limited to music, dance, acrobatics, singing, story telling, painting, calligraphy, sculpture, architecture, and crafts. Unlike previous reference books, A General History of Chinese Art offers a broader overview of the notion of Chinese art by asserting a more diverse and less material understanding of arts, as has often been the case in Western scholarship.

This volume studies the evolution of Chinese art during the Qin and Han Dynasties, The Three Kingdoms, Eastern and Western Jin, and the Northern and Southern Dynasties. It traces the initial artistic vocabularies of Chinese calligraphy as well as the rapid development of the performing and the decorative arts. A General History of Chinese Art comprises six volumes with a total of nine parts spanning from the Prehistoric Era until the 3rd year of Xuantong during the Qing Dynasty (1911). The work provides a comprehensive compilation of in-depth studies of the development of art throughout the subsequent reign of Chinese dynasties and explores the emergence of a wide range of artistic categories such as but not limited to music, dance, acrobatics, singing, story telling, painting, calligraphy, sculpture, architecture, and crafts. Unlike previous reference books, A General History of Chinese Art offers a broader overview of the notion of Chinese art by asserting a more diverse and less material understanding of arts, as has often been the case in Western scholarship.

This volume covers Chinese art during the reign of the Sui and Tang Dynasties during which the various disciplines of plastic and performing arts all entered a stage of unprecedented prosperity and development. It also traces new explorations in calligraphy, painting, and mural art and highlights architectural achievements during the historic period. A General History of Chinese Art comprises six volumes with a total of nine parts spanning from the Prehistoric Era until the 3rd year of Xuantong during the Qing Dynasty (1911). The work provides a comprehensive compilation of in-depth studies of the development of art throughout the subsequent reign of Chinese dynasties and explores the emergence of a wide range of artistic categories such as but not limited to music, dance, acrobatics, singing, story telling, painting, calligraphy, sculpture, architecture, and crafts. Unlike previous reference books, A General History of Chinese Art offers a broader overview of the notion of Chinese art by asserting a more diverse and less material understanding of arts, as has often been the case in Western scholarship.

This volume examines the progress of Chinese art during the time period of the Five Dynasties, Northern and Southern Song, Liao, Western Xia, Jin Dynasties as well as the Yuan Dynasty. A special focus lies on the analysis of cultural policies adopted during the reign of the respective dynasties and their effects on the development of dance, court music and drama. A General History of Chinese Art comprises six volumes with a total of nine parts spanning from the Prehistoric Era until the 3rd year of Xuantong during the Qing Dynasty (1911). The work provides a comprehensive compilation of in-depth studies of the development of art throughout the subsequent reign of Chinese dynasties and explores the emergence of a wide range of artistic categories such as but not limited to music, dance, acrobatics, singing, story telling, painting, calligraphy, sculpture, architecture, and crafts. Unlike previous reference books, A General History of Chinese Art offers a broader overview of the notion of Chinese art by asserting a more diverse and less material understanding of arts, as has often been the case in Western scholarship.

This volume investigates the artistic development during the Qing Dynasty, the last of imperial Chinese dynasties, and shows the importance of opera and playwriting during this time period. Further analysis is dedicated to the development of scroll painting and the revival of calligraphy and seal carving. A General History of Chinese Art comprises six volumes with a total of nine parts spanning from the Prehistoric Era until the 3rd year of Xuantong during the Qing Dynasty (1911). The work provides a comprehensive compilation of in-depth studies of the development of art throughout the subsequent reign of Chinese dynasties and explores the emergence of a wide range of artistic categories such as but not limited to music, dance, acrobatics, singing, story telling, painting, calligraphy, sculpture, architecture, and crafts. Unlike previous reference books, A General History of Chinese Art offers a broader overview of the notion of Chinese art by asserting a more diverse and less material understanding of arts, as has often been the case in Western scholarship.