Arts of the Sung and the Yuan: Ritual, Ethnicity, and Style in Painting

ISBN 10: 0943012309 / ISBN 13: 9780943012308

Published by Museum, 1999

About this Item

Very Good paperback with light shelfwear - NICE! Oversized.

Seller Inventory # mon0000281707

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Arts of the Sung and the Yuan: Ritual, Ethnicity, and Style in Painting
• Publisher: Museum
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0943012309
• ISBN 13: 9780943012308
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

"Chinese art scholarship is undergoing invigorating change, in tandem with the larger field of art history but with special characteristics of its own. The book under review illuminates the political and cultural significance of painting during the first two dynasties of China’s early modern period: the Sung (960-1279) and the Yuan (1279-1368). The original occasion for this volume’s seven papers was a symposium held in conjunction with the 1996 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art entitled Splendors of Imperial China: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taiwan. A welcome openness to a variety of approaches is nicely reflected in the book’s rather awkward title. The Foreword by Cary Y. Liu presents the symposium within a historical framework by referring to the two times earlier in the twentieth century when artworks from the NPM were shown in Western museums: the International Exhibition in London of 1935, and the Chinese Art Treasures exhibition of 1961-62. Both were landmark events for Chinese art in the West, and so we may read Liu’s mention of these precedents as an invitation to reflect on how greatly the discipline has changed since the early ’60’s. One noteworthy change is that increasing sophistication in sinological training and cultural context, combined perhaps with the recent discrediting of Marxism as a viable political model, has encouraged acknowledgment of political as well as social and cultural aspects of art."