October – 2021 – Visual and Material Perspectives on East Asia

Speaker: Lucien Sun (Ph.D. Student, Department of Art History)

“Flipping Over and Stretching Out: Reading an Accordion-Fold Painting“

Discussant: Shiqiu Liu (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Melbourne)

Wednesday, October 27th, 2021

5:45 – 7:45 pm CT, Remotely via Zoom

*Please use this link to register for the zoom meeting.

Abstract:

A new binding format—a long sheet of paper folded back and forth to formulate the shape of an accordion—emerged in China during the Tang–Song transition. Historians of book usually refer to it as jingzhe zhuang 經折裝. Few have considered, however, the specificity of this accordion-fold binding style as art medium, despite that many sutras contain a multi-page frontispiece illustration. This special format allows the viewer to flip over pages of picture like reading an illustrated bound book and meanwhile stretch out several consecutive pages, fold them, and proceed as if rolling a handscroll. In this paper, I will study a twelfth-century Buddhist painting attributed to the artist Zhang Shengwen 張勝溫 of the Dali Kingdom. My analysis of this painting concentrates on the complicated relations between the accordion-fold medium and the images it bears, a path that hardly anyone has taken before. The first six pages of the painting that depict the procession of the Dali emperor Zhixing and his entourage provide us with a starting point to formulate some structural principles that the artist followed when working on an accordion fold. Several symmetrical scenes of different scale in this painting further demonstrate how the artist reconciled the conflict between the desired iconic composition and the material circumstances of this format. Through a close reading of this painting, I intend to come up with a preliminary set of features that characterize the incredible flexibility of this popular East Asian art medium in relation to the artist, the viewer and the images it bears.

Zhang Shengwen. Dali Emperor Duan Zhixing and his entourage worshipping the Buddha. Pages 1–6. 1173–1176 CE. Each page H. 30.4 cm x W. 12 cm. Color on paper. National Palace Museum, Taipei.

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Lucien Sun is a PhD student in in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Fudan University, Shanghai. He also spent a year at the University of Tokyo studying Japanese collections of Chinese and East Asian art. He is currently interested in how picture in its broad sense moved across space, borders, and visual media in north China between the eleventh to the fourteenth century.

Shiqiu Liu is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne and holds a MA from the University of St Andrews. Her current research is on art works produced under the cultural exchanges stimulated by the Mongol rule of Eurasia in the fourteenth century, focusing especially on works made by professional artisans for those ethnically non-Chinese in Yuan China. She is interested in pre-modern artistic exchanges through cultural communications between China and areas around East and Central Asia.

Speaker: Sylvia Fan Wu (Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Art History)

“Inscribing Piety: Monumental Inscriptions from Quanzhou”

Discussant: Wei-cheng Lin (Associate Professor of Art History and the College, Department of Art History)

Wednesday, October 13th, 2021

4:45 – 6:45 pm CST, Hybrid (In-person in CWAC 152 + Zoom)

*If you would like to attend in-person, please use this form to sign-up; If you would like to attend remotely, you may register here to receive the zoom link.

*Based on the university policy on COVID, we will only be able to allow maximum 25 people inside the venue, and mask will be required throughout the event.

Abstract:

Quanzhou’s Ashab Mosque has often been discussed for its foreign-looking architectural forms and the material choice of stone. Few have contemplated the Quranic verses that were carved onto both the interior and exterior walls of the mosque complex. These monumental inscriptions constitute the majority of the sober decorative program in this Muslim sanctuary and are imbued with iconographic meanings that speak to piety. This paper examines the inscriptions found in the Ashab Mosque and around the city of Quanzhou and explores the pious messaging behind their formal, iconographic and material qualities.

The Ashab Mosque, qibla wall, 14th or 16th century, Quanzhou, China (Credit: Cherie Wendelken)

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Sylvia Wu is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. She studies the architecture and material culture of medieval Indian Ocean with a particular focus on China’s coastal areas. Her dissertation, Mosques of Elsewhere, examines how knowledge of legendary monuments of the Islamic world had informed the blueprints of mosque building in China’s southeastern ports, or rather distracted us from recognizing the mosques’ local attributions.

Wei-Cheng Lin is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. He specializes in the history of Chinese art and architecture with a focus on medieval periods. His primary interests of research are visual and material cultural issues in Buddhist art and architecture and China’s funerary practice through history. He is the author of Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China’s Mount Wutai, published by the University of Washington Press in 2014. He has additionally published on a variety of topics, including collecting history, photography and architecture, historiography of Chinese architectural history, and contemporary Chinese art.

Dear VMPEA community,

The Visual and Material Perspectives on East Asia (VMPEA) workshop is pleased to announce the Autumn 2021 schedule. All the in-person events will meet on selected Wednesdays from 4:45 to 6:45 pm in CWAC 152 unless noted. For the online events or those who would like to join us remotely, we will send out the registration links prior to the events.

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October 13

Sylvia Wu, PhD Candidate, Department of Art History, UChicago

“Inscribing Piety: Monumental Inscriptions from Quanzhou”

Discussant: Wei-Cheng Lin, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, UChicago

October 27

Lucien Sun, PhD Student, Department of Art History

“Flipping Over and Stretching Out: Reading an Accordion-Fold Painting”

Discussant: Shiqiu Liu, PhD candidate, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne.

[This is an online event]

November 10

Stephanie Lee, PhD Candidate, Department of Art History, Northwestern University

“The Social Lives of Colonial Picture Postcards (1906-1933)”

Discussant: Kaeun Park, PhD student, Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Michigan

[This is an online event]

December 1

Zhengqian Li, MAPH Student, UChicago

“Whiskey and Tobacco: The Imperialist Symbols in Mu Shiying’s “Shanghai Fox-trot” and Shi Zhecun’s “Si Xizi’s Business””

Discussant: TBA

December 3

Toby Wu, MAPH Student, UChicago

“Reconstituting the Japanese Housewife: Idemitsu Mako’s Televisual Charged Field in Kiyoko’s Situation (1989)”

Discussant: TBA

[This is an online event co-hosted with the APEA workshop, and will meet from 3:00 to 5:00 pm]

*Disclaimer on in-person events:

These convenings are open to all invitees who are compliant with UChicago vaccination requirements and, because of ongoing health risks, particularly to the unvaccinated, participants are expected to adopt the risk mitigation measures (masking and social distancing, etc.) appropriate to their vaccination status as advised by public health officials or to their individual vulnerabilities as advised by a medical professional. Public convening may not be safe for all and carries a risk for contracting COVID-19, particularly for those unvaccinated. Participants will not know the vaccination status of others and should follow appropriate risk mitigation measures.

Month: October 2021

Lucien Sun, October 27th

Sylvia Fan Wu, October 13

Autumn 2021 Schedule