Art in China / Edition 2

by Craig Clunas

Overview

China boasts a history of art stretching over 5,000 years and embracing a vast array of forms—objects of jade, lacquer and porcelain, painted scrolls and fans, sculptures in stone, bronze and wood, and murals. With more than 130 halftone illustrations, including almost eighty in full color, this new edition of Art in China presents the finest one-volume introduction to all forms of Chinese art. The book examines Chinese art in a variety of contexts—as it has been designed for tombs, commissioned by rulers, displayed in temples, created by the men and women of the educated elite, and bought and sold in the marketplace. Drawing on recent innovative scholarship—and newly accessible studies in China itself—Craig Clunas surveys the full spectrum of the visual arts. This updated edition contains expanded coverage of modern and contemporary art, from the fall of the empire in 1911 to the contemporary video art scene.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199217342
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2009
Series:	Oxford History of Art
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 9.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Craig Clunas was appointed Professor of the History of Art, University of Oxford in 2007, where he is the first holder of the chair to specialize in art from Asia. He has also has worked as a curator of Chinese art at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: Art in the Tomb
Neolithic to Bronze Age: 2500-200 BCE
The First Empires: 221 BCE -220 CE
North and South: 220 CE-589 CE
Tomb Sculpture: 400-650 CE

Chapter 2: Art at Court
Tang to early Song: 618-960 CE
Northern Song Court Art: 960-1127 CE
Southern Song Court Art: 1127-1279 CE
Yuan Court Art: 1279-1368 CE
Ming Court Art: 1368-1644 CE
Early Qing Court Art: 1644-c.1735 CE
The Qinglong Reign: 1736-1795 CE
Late Qing Court Art: 1796-1911 CE

Chapter 3: Art in the Temple
Early Buddhist Art
Buddhist Art: c.450-c.580
Religious Art of the Sui (581-618) and Tang (618-906) Dynasties
Religous Art of the Northern Song Dynasty: 960-1127
-Southern Song Religious Act: 1127-1279
Buddhist Monks and the Élite in the Southern Song
Buddhist Art in the Yuan Dynasty: 1279-1398
Religious Painting of the Fourteenth-Fifteenth Centuries
Religious Art of the Ming Dynasty: 1368-1644
Religoius Art of the Qing Dynasty: 1644-1911

Chapter 4: Art in the Life of the Élite
Calligraphy as an Élite Art
Art and Theory in the Northern Song
The Southern Song (1127-1279) and Yuan (1279-1368)
The Ming Dynasty: 1368-1644
The Art and Theory of Dong Qichang: 1555-1636
The Seventeenth Century and the Ming-Qing Transition
The Qing Dynasty: 1644-1911
The Nineteenth Century

Chapter 5: Art in the Market-Place
The Song and Yuan Dynasties: 960-1368
The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644): Painting
The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644): Printing
The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644): Textiles and Crafts
The Amateur/Professional Problem in Late Ming Painting
The Qing Dynasty: 1644-1911
Prints and Perspective
Shanghai in the Nineteenth Century
The Republic of China
Art in the People's Republic of China
Art in China since the 1970s

Notes
List of Illustrations
Bibliographic Essay
Museums and Galleries
Websites
Timeline
Index

Editorial Reviews

"A completely fresh account of Chinese art ... lively and highly accessible."—Professor Dame Jessica Rawson, Merton College, Oxford

"Always lucid and sometime provocative ... incorporates not only the most recent archaeological discoveries, but also the insights of a prodigious amount of recent scholarship ... invalualbe."—Professor Julia K. Murray, University of Wisconsin

"A serious challenge to the conventional practice of art history ... written with lucidity, grace, and wit."—Professor Cao Yiqiang, The National Academy of Art, China

From the Publisher

These two current overviews of Chinese art take very different approaches. Keeper of the Department of Eastern Art at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Tregear offers a chronologically organized work that covers its topic in brief survey form, using representative examples of bronzes, painting, laquerware, ceramics, jade, and stone carving. The book is so brief and the sweep is so broad that a reader not already familiar with the general outline of Chinese history and common Chinese terms may have trouble forming a coherent picture, particularly in regard to the earliest centuries covered. Significantly, Tregear leaves out the important find of a cache of figures at Shanxingdui in 1986, which has been of enormous importance in broadening the known range of cultures in ancient China. On the other hand, she provides an excellent section on 20th-century Chinese art, an area neglected by many of the standard histories. Clunas's (history of art, Univ. of Sussex) approach, by contrast, involves a more critical, theoretical inquiry into Western notions of Chinese art. He eschews a chronological arrangement in favor of thematic chapters on art at court, in the tomb, in the temple, in the life of the elite, and in the marketplace. He makes a point of including objects that have been considered masterpieces intermixed with other less well-known works. He is concerned throughout his text with issues of the historical place of art in Chinese society and with how that society evaluated various objects. The finds at Shanxingdui are mentioned, and some attention is paid to 20th-century work, though not as much in Tregear's survey. Both of these titles have merits as overviews of Chinese art and both could be used by students as well as interested lay readers. If your library can afford only one work, Clunas's is the more up-to-date, both in approach to its material and in selection of works to discuss.Kathryn Wekselman, Univ. of Cincinnati Lib., Ohio

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