The Great Image Has No Form, or On the Nonobject through Painting - Hardcover

Jullien, François

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226415309 ISBN 13: 9780226415307

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2009

Synopsis

In premodern China, elite painters used imagery not to mirror the world around them, but to evoke unfathomable experience. Considering their art alongside the philosophical traditions that inform it, The Great Image Has No Form explores the “nonobject”—a notion exemplified by paintings that do not seek to represent observable surroundings.

François Jullien argues that this nonobjectifying approach stems from the painters’ deeply held belief in a continuum of existence, in which art is not distinct from reality. Contrasting this perspective with the Western notion of art as separate from the world it represents, Jullien investigates the theoretical conditions that allow us to apprehend, isolate, and abstract objects. His comparative method lays bare the assumptions of Chinese and European thought, revitalizing the questions of what painting is, where it comes from, and what it does. Provocative and intellectually vigorous, this sweeping inquiry introduces new ways of thinking about the relationship of art to the ideas in which it is rooted.

About this title

About the Author

François Jullien is professor of Chinese philosophy and literature at the University of Paris VII and director of the Institut Marcel Granet. Jane Marie Todd is a full-time translator and copy editor who has translated some forty books in the fields of art criticism, philosophy, history, biography/autobiography, literary criticism, and women's studies. 

Review

“This is one of those rare, precious, and necessary books that, once you have completed a first reading, you realize you have only just begun.” (Magazine Littéraire)

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0226415309
• ISBN 13: 9780226415307
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288