In the study of Indian art prior to the Mughal period, portraiture has so far been much neglected, when its existence has not simply been denied. This book is an attempt to reassess this issue, by showing that portraits have existed in great number in early India, since probably the first artistic achievements. Through a close scrutiny of sculpted and (more rarely) painted images brought together with textual and epigraphical references, it aims at highlighting the specificities of Indian portraiture, its relationship with divine images and, consequently, at understanding the development of Indian imagery. It questions also the social and religious implications related to this issue.

"Asian Art "is the first comprehensive anthology of important primary documents and key contemporary scholarship on Asian art history.
Traces the rich artistic traditions in China, Japan, Korea, India, and Southeast Asia across time periods, media, cultural contexts, and geography - from the terracotta armies of the First Emperor of Qin to late 20th-century installation art
Covers both imperially commissioned works and popular, vernacular art
Includes an accessible introduction which provides suggestions of thematic connections across the vast array of visual culture and historical time covered
Captures the diversity and depth of Asian art through primary documents - from inscriptions and imperial decrees to writings by artists and travellers - and through examples of the very best scholarship in the field

Features introductory material for each extract, an easy-to-navigate chronological structure, and has been extensively tested by the editors and their colleagues in classrooms.

With How to Draw Manga Furries, you'll follow the lead of five professional Japanese artists as they show you how to bring dynamic fantasy characters to life--on the page or on screen! Furries are anthropomorphic characters--animals who have human traits (not to be confused with kemonomimi, or humans with some animal features!). They're widely popular in manga, anime and cosplay--from fan favorites like Wolf's Rain and Lackadaisy to the newer Beastars and BNA: Brand New Animal. The genre allows creators to be more imaginative, freeing artists from traditional human personality traits, actions and physical appearance. With the help of the expert authors, you'll learn to draw: Anatomically correct furry manga bodies, skulls, faces, appendages and tails with human proportions Characters based on cats, dogs, wolves, foxes, goats, birds, whales, sharks, crocodiles, dragons--and more! Furries seen from their most powerful perspective--from muzzle to rump to flipper tip Illustrations shown from many various angles with different poses, positions and movements And so much more! With this book as your guide, your imagination will run wild as you create memorable heroes, wicked villains and compelling sidekicks with your pen or on screen. *Recommended for artists 10 & up*

Visual Culture in Shanghai, 1850s-1930s is a study of formal and informal meanings of Haipai ("Shanghai School" or "Shanghai Style"), as seen through the paintings of the Shanghai school as well as other media of visual representation. The book provides us a point of entry into the nexus of relationships that structured the encounter between China and the West as experienced by the treaty-port Chinese in their everyday life. Exploring such relationships gives us a better sense of the ultimate significance of Shanghai's rise as China's dominant metropolitan center. This book will appeal not only to art historians, but also to students of history, gender studies, women's studies, and culture studies who are interested in modern China as well as questions of art patronage, nationalism, colonialism, visual culture, and representation of women. "This book constitutes a significant contribution to the literature about a period and a city that were pivotal to the emergence of modern China." -Richard K. Kent, Franklin & Marshall College. "This book navigates the complexity of Chinese modernity.. It bridges, conceptually and visually, the China of the past to present-day Shanghai, the symbol of the urban economy of 21st-century China." -Chao-Hui Jenny Liu, New York University. "Shanghai was the rising and dynamic metropolis, where many aspects of modernity were embraced with enthusiasm. Pictorial art was no longer the domain of the elite, but professionalization, commercialization, popularization, and Westernization contributed to the dissemination of images to a larger and diverse audience." -Minna Torma, University of Helsinki.

The Lives of Chinese Objectsis a fascinating book. It is the result of excellent historical research as well as curatorial expertise. The reader is taken on an amazing journey starting with the startling discovery of the image of five Chinese bronzes on display as part of the Great Exhibition in 1851...The stories uncovered are riveting, a mix of curatorial detail and description, historical research and theoretical analysis. This book is beautifully written - clear, detailed and informative. The author is ever present in the text and the book is as much a story of her journey, as it is a story of the lives of the 'Putuo Five'. I just wanted to keep reading." . Suzanne MacLeod, University of Leicester

This is the biography of a set of rare Buddhist statues from China. Their extraordinary adventures take them from the Buddhist temples of fifteenth-century Putuo - China's most important pilgrimage island - to their seizure by a British soldier in the First Opium War in the early 1840s, and on to a starring role in the Great Exhibition of 1851. In the 1850s, they moved in and out of dealers' and antiquarian collections, arriving in 1867 at Liverpool Museum. Here they were re-conceptualized as specimens of the 'Mongolian race' and, later, as examples of Oriental art. The statues escaped the bombing of the Museum during the Second World War and lived out their existence for the next sixty years, dismembered, corroding and neglected in the stores, their histories lost and origins unknown.

As the curator of Asian collections at Liverpool Museum, the author became fascinated by these bronzes, and selected them for display in the Buddhism section of the World Cultures gallery. In 2005, quite by chance, the discovery of a lithograph of the figures on prominent display in the Great Exhibition enabled the remarkable lives of these statues to be reconstructed.

This is a study that focuses on the art and architecture of a group of Buddhist rock-cut monuments excavated on the western edge of the Deccan Plateau in India. It analyses the various cultural, historical and religious phenomena that shaped the caves at Aurangabad through the first seven centuries of the Common Era and it comments on the Buddhist tradition of the western Deccan as a whole. The result is a comprehensive work that does not address exclusively iconography and chronology, but looks beyond Aurangabad to the larger artistic and religious traditions of the Indian Subcontinent.

This book examines three overarching themes: Chinese modernity's (sometimes ambivalent) relationship to tradition at the start of the twentieth century, the processes of economic reform started in the 1980s and their importance to both the eradication and rescue of traditional practices, and the ideological issue of cosmopolitanism and how it frames the older academic generation's attitudes to globalisation. It is important to grasp the importance of these points as they have been an important part of the discourse surrounding contemporary Chinese visual culture. As readers progress through this book, it will become clear that the debates surrounding visual culture are not purely based on aesthetics--an understanding of the ideological issues surrounding the appearance of things as well as an understanding of the social circumstances that result in the making of traditional artifacts are as important as the way a traditional object may look. Contemporary Chinese Visual Culture is an important book for all collections dealing with Asian studies, art, popular culture, and interdisciplinary studies.

This volume deals with specific issues related to Tibetan art, ranging from the earliest Buddhist buildings in central, southern and eastern geocultural Tibet up to the artistic traditions flourishing in the 20th century. The papers are arranged following the chronology of the sites or the themes taken into consideration in the first part and logical criteria in the latter part. Illustrated with numerous black-and-white pictures and 32 pages of colour plates, its contents are of special interest to scholars and specialists, while a large part is accessible to non-specialists, too, which makes the book useful also to university students interested in the subject as well as amateurs of Tibetan art.

This book is the first in a major three-volume series that will survey China's immense wealth of art, architecture, and artifacts from prehistoric times to the twentieth century. The Arts of China to A.D. 900 investigates the beginnings of the traditions on which much of the art rests, moving from Neolithic and Bronze Age China to the era of the Tang Dynasty around A.D. 900. William Watson discusses in lively detail a wide range of art forms and techniques: porcelain and pottery, lacquer, religious and secular painting and sculpture, mural painting, monumental sculpture and architecture. He explains the materials and techniques of bronze casting, jade carving, pottery manufacture, and other arts, and he describes the most important sites, the artifacts that were produced at each one, and the historical interactions between different areas. He discusses the iconography, the technique and the function of every art form. Written by one of the most distinguished scholars in the field of Chinese art and archaeology, this lavishly illustrated book will be a valuable resource for both experts and beginners in the field.

Hokusai: the blue, foam-crested wave rearing above Mount Fuji; the celebrated volcano idealized and reinventedby the artist in every nuance of view, season and painting; extraordinary bridges, the waterfalls of Japan, the contortions, costumes, gestures – the very breath of men, women, peasants, townsmen, warriors, artisans, leaping horses, birds, insects, fish, almost live on the ground on which they are painted – the countless imaginative drawings or the lively sketches done on the spot for the Manga, Hokusai’s record of shapes and forms drawn from life or imagined over time. With a body of work comprising more than 30,000 drawings and paintings, Hokusai (1760–1849) was the most prolific, varied and indisputably the most creative artist of old Japan. A universal genius in everything that constituted drawing and painting in his time, he practised all genres of ukiyo-e, those ‘images of the floating world’, as his contemporaries liked to describe their pleasures and their daily life.

This book traces the career of this child from a working-class district of old Tokyo, then known as Edo, evoking the special atmosphere of this great city and of Japanese life, when Japan – closed to foreigners – developed in a vacuum a powerfully original culture. Hokusai became one of the great masters of the woodcut, this ‘brush gone wild’, as he called himself, being rediscovered by the Impressionists and aesthetes at the end of the 19th century. He remains one of the greatest and – thanks to his personality – one of the most attractive figures of world art.

The art history of South Asian covers a time span of roughly four and a half thousand years. During this period, a vast number of animal stone sculptures has been produced, ranging from the pre-historic period till today and covering a great variety of motifs and imagery in different regions and religious traditions. Even so, the number of studies devoted to these animal sculptures has remained extremely limited. The present book aims at filling this knowledge gap. With this richly illustrated book, the first of its kind, Van der Geer offers a comparative study of the ways in which various animals have been depicted and a lucid analysis of the sculptors' treatment of their "models": living animals. The art history of sculptured animals is contextualized with a description of the use of animals as can be read from ancient texts, archaeological evidence and contemporaneous culture. In doing so, parallels as well as differences in style or iconography are highlighted, elucidating the variety of animal depictions across regions, religious contexts and through time. The corpus of discussed material ranges from Indus seals, stupa panels and railings, monumental temples from North and South India, non-religious palace and fort architecture to loose sculptures in museum collections.

Volume 6, in Walter Spink's detailed analysis of the creation and development of the Ajanta caves, during the reign of the emperor Harisena (c.460-c.477) has had a profound and often upsetting impact on the understanding of Indian history in the so-called Golden Age. The author contends that through the discipline of Art History one can in fact change the established view of cultural developments in the crucial "Classic Age" (5th Century CE). One of his major aims is to prove that it was the Vakatakas, under the emperor Harisena, and not the Guptas, that brought Indian culture to its apogee in the late 470s and to show that by analyzing and organizing Ajanta's "defining feature" in revealing developmental sequences, one can support, with specifics, the revolutionary (but now increasingly accepted) "short chronology" for which the author is well known. These "defining features" range from the changing types of Buddha images and living arrangements for the monks, to the precise analysis of the evolution of pillars, doorways, and excavation techniques. The volume also includes, at the start, a discussion of the transforming effect of competition, and finally war, as a key to Ajanta's highly driven development, its florescence, and finally its sad demise.

This pack contains 200 high-quality large (6.75 inch) origami sheets printed with traditional Floating World prints. These vibrant origami papers were developed to enhance the creative work of origami artists and paper crafters. This paper pack contains 12 prints, and all of the papers have coordinating colors on the reverse side to provide aesthetically pleasing combinations in origami models that show both the front and back. "Floating World" refers to Japan's traditional Geisha districts and the art and literary worlds associated with them. This origami paper pack includes: 200 sheets of high-quality origami paper 12 unique designs Saturated colors Double-sided color 6.75 x 6.75 inch (17 cm) squares Step-by-step instructions for 6 easy-to-fold origami projects

The Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Ancient Kashmir and Its Influences is primarily based on the study of the largely unpublished corpus of sculpture, mostly of stone, in the Sri Pratap Singh Museum in Srinagar, and of other examples in situ elsewhere in the valley. The disparate nature and fragmentary condition of these sculptures as well as their artistic and iconographical influences have for long defied accurate analysis. The method used in the classification of these sculptures is based on close analysis of their style concentrating on recurring features such as facial and physical typology, modelling, dress and ornamentation. Comparisons are made with other examples of Kashmir bronze, ivory and stone sculpture in private and public collections both within India and abroad.

This commentary on the Chinese masterpiece, The Classic of Tea, offers a fascinating perspective on this ancient pastime and art. The Classic of Tea, the first known monograph on tea in the world, was written in the 8th century by Lu Yu who devoted his entire life to the study of tea and is respected as the Sage of Tea. Wu Juenong, an agronomist and economist specializing in agriculture, has studied tea all his life. This book is the culmination of lifelong research on Chinese tea culture and history, introducing the readers to modern findings of effects and properties of tea, types of tea preparations, the evolution of tea growing regions and tea drinking customs across China, in addition to extensive annotation. Both scholarly and informative, An Illustrated Modern Reader of 'The Classic of Tea' has been acclaimed as a New Classic of Tea. An Illustrated Modern Reader of 'The Classic of Tea' also includes vivid illustrations and pictures of tools and utensils for the making and drinking of tea, either hand-drawn or collected by him, which the original The Classic of Tea lacked. Selected Chinese traditional paintings in the book illuminate the elegant art of brewing and drinking tea, the social rituals associated with tea drinking, and the reformative and cultural significance of tea ceremonies.

In Mughal Occidentalism, Mika Natif elucidates the meaningful and complex ways in which Mughal artists engaged with European art and techniques from the 1580s-1630s. Using visual and textual sources, this book argues that artists repurposed Christian and Renaissance visual idioms to embody themes from classical Persian literature and represent Mughal policy, ideology and dynastic history. A reevaluation of illustrated manuscripts and album paintings incorporating landscape scenery, portraiture, and European objects demonstrates that the appropriation of European elements was highly motivated by Mughal concerns. This book aims to establish a better understanding of cross-cultural exchange from the Mughal perspective by emphasizing the agency of local artists active in the workshops of Emperors Akbar and Jahangir.

This study develops a theory of Indian art worlds that argues for the need to consider the different discursive formations and related strategic practices of an art world. In so doing, it develops the common notion of "art world" into a plurality of worlds. The author explores the art worlds of the Orisan patta paintings, an Indian art form that has seen a great revival since the early 1950s, due partly to increased national pride after independence and partly to the rise of mass tourism. Locally, the increasing popularity of these paintings has led to, and is reinforced by, a village in the district of Puri being designated a "crafts village" by the states government. Here the author examines the consequences of this increased popularity, paying particular attention to the encompassing local, regional and national discourses involved. In so doing, clashing Indian art worlds demonstrates that, while painters' local discourses are characterized by pragmatism, the discourses of regional and especially national elites are concerned with the exegesis of local paintings and their association with the great Sanskrit tradition. A central theme of the study focuses on the awards given for