Path of Beauty: A Study of Chinese Aesthetics - Hardcover

Li Zehou

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 7505400401 ISBN 13: 9787505400405

Publisher: China Books & Periodicals, 1988

Synopsis

Since it was first published in Chinese in 1981, The Path of Beauty has been read widely and translated into several languages, becoming a classic in the study of Chinese aesthetics. The author, a noted philosopher and aesthetician, draws on examples of sculpture, painting, calligraphy, and poetry, among other sources, from throughout China's history to build a cogent and engaging argument concerning the nature of Chinese artistic values. While providing an historical overview of Chinese art from antiquity to modern times, he examines as well the evolution of the sociological, psychological, philosophical, and spiritual underpinnings of Chinese culture.

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Chinese

From Publishers Weekly:

Even students of Chinese art will be amazed at the treasures in this album, drawn from libraries and museums all over China. From 3000-year-old engravings of mysterious, man-like creatures carved by nomadic tribes to murals on cave ceilings that rival the Sistine Chapel; from a terracotta army of horses and soldiers unearthed from an emperor's tomb to Song porcelain that glows as if alive, this magnificently illustrated survey will delight, astonish and inform. Li Zehou, a scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, provides a text notably free of academic jargon in this smooth translation. His discussions of esthetics are eye-opening, as when he contrasts Chinese nature painters' "imaginative realism"the portrayal of images evoked by a scenewith the more matter-of-fact Western realism. Yet he grounds each school or trend in a historical context, so we see, for instance, how the new humanism of Wei and Jin (220-420 A.D.) poetry, sculpture and calligraphy reflected a post-slave society awakening from fatalism and superstition. A revelatory volume, full of surprises.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: China Books & Periodicals
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 7505400401
• ISBN 13: 9787505400405
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 270