Visual and material cultures in Middle Period China

Uittreksel

Eight studies examine key features of Chinese visual and material cultures, ranging from tomb design, metalware, ceramic pillows, and bronze mirrors, to printed illustrations, calligraphic rubbings, colophons, and paintings on Buddhist, landscape, and narrative themes. Questions addressed include how artists and artisans made their works, the ways both popular literature and market forces could shape ways of looking, and how practices and imagery spread across regions. The authors connect visual materials to funeral and religious practices, drama, poetry, literati life, travel, and trade, showing ways visual images and practices reflected, adapted to, and reproduced the culture and society around them. Readers will gain a stronger appreciation of the richness of the visual and material cultures of Middle Period China.

Inhoud

Introduction / Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Shih-shan Susan Huang -- Part I. Making art in funeral and ritual contexts -- Modular design of tombs in Song and Jin North China / Fei Deng -- Visualizing ritual in Southern Song Buddhist painting / Phillip E. Bloom -- Part II. Setting a scene -- Dreams, spirits, and romantic encounters in Jin and Yuan theatrical pictures / Fan Jeremy Zhang -- The ten views of West Lake / Xiaolin Duan -- Part III. Appreciating the written word -- A forgery and the pursuit of the authentic Wang Xizhi / Hui-Wen Lu -- Zhu Xi's colophons on handwritten documents / Patricia Buckley Ebrey -- Part IV. Cross-cultural transfers -- Paintings of birds by Basins / Jie Liu -- Chinese objects recovered from sutra mounds in Japan, 1000-1300 / Yiwen Li.