Persistence/Transformation: Text as Image in the Art of Xu Bing (Publications of the Tang Center for East Asian Art, Princeton University)

Jerome Silbergeld; Dora C. Y. Ching; Editors

ISBN 10: 0691125686 / ISBN 13: 9780691125688

Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2006

About this Item

PAPERBACK. Just a touch of edge and corner wear. Light toning at edges of text pages. Former owner's name with inscription at top of half-title page. Otherwise, clean, sound, copy. 131 pgs.

Seller Inventory # red1bPERSIST

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Persistence/Transformation: Text as Image in the Art of Xu Bing (Publications of the Tang Center for East Asian Art, Princeton University)
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691125686
• ISBN 13: 9780691125688
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Good
• Dimensions: 1.905W x 17.78H x 26.67D centimeters 1.905 centimeters width by 17.78 centimeters height by 26.67 centimeters depth
• Weight: 590 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Art Criticism
  • Asian Studies
  • Asian Art

About this title

Synopsis

The calligrapher and book artist Xu Bing has been called the most innovative Chinese artist of our time. As a citizen of both China and the United States and the first Asian-American artist to win the prestigious MacArthur Foundation "genius award," Xu Bing has fascinated and challenged audiences around the world with his imaginative textual art. From his 4,000 unreadable Chinese-looking characters, which unite Asian and Western audiences alike in an egalitarianism of induced illiteracy, to his invention of a "square words" language that makes "Chinese" readable by anyone at all, Xu Bing's use of language is at once artistically brilliant, highly entertaining, and profoundly subversive--a sharp-witted, masterly word-play that, in his own words, "strikes at the very essence of culture."


In exhibitions on four continents, Xu Bing's printed art, mixed-media installations, and performance pieces--from books and calligraphic sculptures to inscribed pigs--have fascinated specialists and general audiences alike and generated a growing body of literature. This volume presents the first multidisciplinary study of Xu Bing's art and its intellectual implications. Included is an illuminating account by Xu Bing of his own work, as well as essays by leading scholars in a number of different fields.


The essays address the place of this work within the long history of Chinese calligraphic practice, examine it in the context of Chinese intellectual dissidence, discuss Japanese avant-garde parallels, and judge it from a Western art-historical viewpoint.

About the Author

Jerome Silbergeld is P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Professor of Chinese Art History at Princeton University and Director of Princeton's Tang Center for East Asian Art. Dora C. Y. Ching is Associate Director of the Tang Center for East Asian Art.