Between Two Cultures: Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Chinese Painting from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection - Hardcover

Fong, Wen C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300088507 ISBN 13: 9780300088502

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001

Synopsis

During a crucial period from the 1860s to about 1980, Chinese painting was transformed into a modern expression of its classical heritage. This book draws on a selection of modern Chinese paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in order to explore this period, discussing issues of modernity and creativity in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Chinese painting.

Wen C. Fong deals with both traditionalist and modernizing Chinese masters from the comparative perspective of East and West, traditional and modern. He begins by examining the last traditional "revival," the epigraphic school of painting, and the rise of a populist art in the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai. Next he focuses on painters who absorbed the lessons of Western realism, in particular one artist who followed the Ecole des Beaux Arts and one who adapted the model of the Japanese Nihonga painters, and on three great traditionalist masters, two of whom were professional populist painters. Finally he explores Chinese painting from about 1950 to 1980 by the second generation of artists and teachers in the national academies who, having been trained by traditionalist and Western-style teachers, developed their own schools of influence in their search for a new synthesis of Chinese and Western methods.

About this title

About the Author:

Wen C. Fong is Douglas Dillon Curator Emeritus of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and former Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. He is also the author of Beyond Representation, published by Yale University Press.

From Library Journal:

The study of Chinese painting often begins and ends with the classics, considering anything after the middle of the 19th century too contaminated by Western ideas of content and perspective. This book dispels such notions, examining both traditional and modern Chinese painters from the 1860s to the 1980s. Fong (Douglas Dillon Curator Emeritus of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) presents the work and influences of such masters as Qi Baishi, painter of shrimp; Zhang Daqian, whose skill and two years living in the ancient caves of Mogao enabled him to forge perfect likenesses of Tang dynasty works; and Xu Beihong, whose Paris training unwittingly set the stage for the socialist realism that prospered under Mao. The book covers many other 20th-century paintings, all held at the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and chapters on Japanese influence and art under Mao give a comprehensive frame to contemporary Chinese art. Recommended. David McClelland, Philadelphia
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0300088507
• ISBN 13: 9780300088502
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300