This richly illustrated book provides an anthology and summation
of the work of one of the world's leading historians of Chinese
painting and calligraphy. Wen Fong helped create the field of East
Asian art history during a distinguished five-decade career at
Princeton University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Few if any
other writers in English have such a broad knowledge of the history
and practice of calligraphy and Chinese painting. In this
collection of some of his most recent essays, Fong gives a sweeping
tour through the history of Chinese painting and calligraphy as he
offers new and revised views on a broad range of important
subjects.
The topics addressed include "art as history," in which each art
object preserves a moment in art's own significant history; the
museum as a place of serious study and education; the close
historical relationship between calligraphy and painting and their
primacy among Chinese fine arts; the parallel development of
representational painting and sculpture in early painting history;
the greater significance of brushwork, seen abstractly as a means
of personal expression by the artist, in later painting history;
the paradigmatic importance of the master-to-follower lineage--of
genealogy as a social force--in shaping the continuity and
directing the subtle changes in Chinese painting history; the role
of collectors; and the critical necessity of authenticated works
for establishing an accurate art history.
Throughout the book, Fong skillfully combines close analysis and
detailed contextualization of individual works to reveal how the
study of Chinese painting and calligraphy yields deep insights
about Chinese culture and history.
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