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Feb 11, Ankeney Weitz

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Ankeney Weitz
Associate Professor, Art and East Asian Studies
Colby College, Maine

Friday, February 11,  4-6 pm
CWAC 156

A Social History of Painted Fans in the Song Dynasty

Abstract:

Across the Song empire, people of all ages, genders, and ranks carried fans emblazoned with decorative designs appropriate to their status and expressive of their individual style. Much art-historical writing on round Song “album leaves” treats these objects primarily as paintings; however, this paper views the painted fan as an item of daily use. By studying the fans’ production, decoration, use, and exchange, we can better appreciate the gender and class meanings encoded in the pictorial decoration. The paper begins with a figurative removal of the paintings’ current mounts in an attempt to imagine the painting floating in the hand.

Jan 21, Andrew Shih-ming Pai

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Andrew Shih-ming Pai
Associate Professor, National Taiwan Normal University
Friday, January 21, 4- 6 pm
CWAC 156
Modernity in Agony: Contemporaneity and the Representation of Modern Life in Colonial Taiwanese Art

Abstract:

Since the Japanese took power in Taiwan, the colonial government initiated “modernization” programs systematically and carried out political, economic, cultural and educational reforms through modern Western institutions. Taiwan, as a result, gradually departed from traditional folk society and became a modern civil society. Amidst such epochal transformation, with the implementation of modern urban planning, a “new landscape” was formed: like fresh shoots budding after rain, public facilities such as Western buildings, roads, parks, railways, bridges, harbors, airports and telecommunications steadily emerged. The traditional scenery of the Ming and Qing comprising of “local” characteristics metamorphosed, while “public” characteristics of the urban living space were constructed, expressing the diverse and modern lifestyles of the populace.

The government-sponsored Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibitions in 1927 and, later, the Taiwan Governor-General Arts Exhibition exerted unequivocal influence on the formation of New Art as part of the modernization process in Taiwan. The artists, however, in their so-called pursuit and construction of Taiwan’s “local color” also committed themselves to exploring the various possibilities of representing Taiwan. Interestingly, in doing so, they produced a number of exhilarating works of art based on the theme of “contemporary scenery”. These works of art not only became quintessential renderings of landscapes imbued with contemporary significance, they also clearly revealed the colonial government’s motive to build a new urban vista and public space through their policy of modernization.

These images reflecting and representing the “new landscape” that resulted from processes of modernization are the most important visual materials to our investigation of the substance and meaning of Taiwan’s modern, urban, scientific and civilized way of life and public cultural development. Many modern artists in Taiwan participated in urban public life and experienced shifts in their observations of landscapes and in their perspectives in literary expression as a result of having adopted a modernized civic identity. They thereby provided possible models for viewing contemporary landscapes and facilitated the completion of the conceptual construction of Taiwan’s modern urban landscapes. It is within this context that this paper, by focusing on how modern artists in Taiwan explored and illustrated ways of the reading, thinking and writing the modern Taiwanese landscape, seeks to rethink the meanings and problems of modernization as seen in the “landscape compositions” created under Japanese colonial rule.

Jan 14, Kao Chien-Hui

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Kao Chien-Hui

Independent curator and art critic

Friday, January 14, 2- 4 pm
CWAC 156

The Transformation of Line and Form
–The Linking Context of the Chinese Figure/Narrative Painting and the Comic World

Abstract:

The special subject exhibition of the 7th International Ink Art Biennale of Shenzhen, ‘Com(ic)media on Line’, re-interprets the lines of comics and Chinese painting to form a broader aesthetic of lines across art media. This exhibition brings together Eastern and Western in order to investigate the similarities of this mass-oriented art form, examining the communication and transmission of simple brush and line drawings, while demonstrating the humor of these fascinating visualizations which metaphorically recreate the real world and the various vicissitudes of human life.

From historical and contemporary coordinates, the linearity of comics has converged with classical literature and the world of images, as well as the contemporary cartoons and animation development. In the 20th century, reading modern Chinese comics has become the populous’ version of art viewing, a sort of pictorial vernacular for popularizing classical literature and art, paralleled by illustrated novels, graphic novels, children’s picture books, prints, current affairs caricatures, etc. Many modern ink painters also gain inspiration by taking various ingredients from cartoons and graphic novels. In the context of contemporary culture, this influence has also entered into printing, newsletters, painting books, cartoons, and even the young subculture’s comics, animation and costume play, as well as digital technology’s linear display vocabulary and its new creative concepts.

“Com(ic)media on Line”takes its name from the concept of the line, the expression of lines, the interest in lines, and the re-presentation of the world that is enclosed by or the différance of the linear zone. In the perspective of religion, the human/space refers to a place in-between the physical and spiritual. Being a state of transition that exists beyond physical body, the zone becomes a temporary practice space for spirit and soul. Just like the Dante’s La Divina Commedia which describes the author’s travels through hell, purgatory, and heaven, this religious-like world mentally connects to human behavior and the process of art creation. The différance of lines has been the spindle of it, and the audience would be able to access to the virtual world projected by lines, shadows and figures by following the strolling of line, or being on-line, online or off-line. It would also concern the artistic and cultural domain of the aesthetics of line, and the studies of the interdisciplinary interchange of psychology, mythology and semiotics.

The exhibition includes works in the forms of ink on paper and silk, woodblock prints, illustrations, cartoons, animation, video, sculpture, graffiti, etc. In addition to the recent or new works by invited foreign and domestic artists, there is also a loan collection of more than a hundred prints from Tianjin Yang Qingliu, Suzhou Tao Huawu, Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, etc, from several collectors and organizations, as well as more than then sixteen hundred contemporary comic illustrations.

2011 Winter Schedule

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The Visual and Material Perspectives on East Asia Workshop is pleased to announce the winter schedule of 2011.

Jan 14: Ms. Kao Chien-hui, independent curator and art critic
Talk: The Transformation of Line and Form: The Linking Context of the Chinese Figure/ Narrative Painting and the Comic World at Shenzhen International Ink Art Biennale 2010

Jan 21: Prof. Pai Shiming, National Taiwan Normal University
Talk: Urbanization, Modern Life and the Contemporary Writing of Taiwanese Art During the Japanese Colonial Period

Feb 11: Prof. Ankeney Weitz, Colby College
Talk: A Social History of Painted Fans in the Song Dynasty

Feb 25: Prof. Jamese Elkins, Art Institute of Chicago
Talk: Five Forms of Misunderstanding Regarding Contemporary Art Criticism and Theory

Mar 11: Shi Jie, Ph. D. candidate, Art History Department, University of Chicago
Talk: The Body Beyond Flesh and Bone: Unpacking the Body Construction in Western Han Princely Tombs

Dec 3, Seunghye Lee

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Seunghye Lee

Ph.D. candidate, Art History
University of Chicago

Friday, December 3, 4- 6 pm
CWAC 156


Wholeness in the Face of Fragmentation: A Study of Wuyue Buddhist Relic Deposits

Abstract:

In recent years, a growing body of scholarship has examined the significance of the Buddhist relics from a variety of perspectives. Yet, it is often unclear what precisely the term “relics” refers to in the Chinese Buddhist context. In Chinese Buddhist texts, the term relics or sheli is often modified by other terms, implying the particular nature of the body of the Buddha present in the relic. This paper will investigate one of such terms, the “whole-body relics” or quanshen sheli, as conceptualized and materialized in the relic deposits of the Wuyue kingdom (907-978). I will offer two case studies in which the Yiqie rulaixin mimi quanshen sheli tuoluoni jing, a dharani-stura that involves the notion of the whole-body relics, played an important role. The first case is the printing of this dharani-stura and production of the miniature stupas, commissioned by Qian Hongchu (929-988), in the years between 955 and 965 AD. The second case is the relic deposits at Leifeng Pagoda for which the same sutras and miniature stupas were made but used in a different way in 970s.

Nov 19, Maki Fukuoka

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Maki Fukuoka

Assistant Professor, Asian Languages and Cultures
University of Michigan

Friday, November 19, 4- 6 pm
CWAC 156

Site of transformation: Asakusa, Photographic Studios, and Media in Modern Japan

Abstract:

In the early days of Japan’s photographic history, the area known as Asakusa in the capital Tokyo became the hotspot for photographic studios. There, famous photographers such as Uchida Kyuichi, Kitaniwa Tsukuba, and Ezaki Reiji all opened their studios, and by the early 1880s, nearly forty studios congregated in this small area surrounding the landmark Asakusa Senso-ji Temple. Studios took portraits of the customers and also sold portraits of famous actors and courtesans who used these images to compete against one another. The photographic portraits taken at the studios in Asakusa and other photographic products convey the transformative aspects of portrait photography from this period.

But Asakusa had also been a unique area just a few decades before the studios were set up: the area was filled with street performances, spectacle shows, and noisy crowds. Did this play a role in attracting photographers to Asakusa? What made Asakusa a suitable place for this new enterprise, and what made it possible to sustain such an abundance of studios?

This paper explores the historical interconnection between the area of Asakusa and the practices of the photographic studios from the late nineteenth century Tokyo. It analyses the photographic studios in Asakusa as one thread in an intricate fabric that comprised the dynamic, lively, sometimes eccentric, and always innovative area of Asakusa. This paper proposes photographic studios as a burgeoning business practice that responded to, and was shaped by, the particular transformative sense that defined Asakusa. Incorporating newspaper articles, advertisements, and accounts by Asakusa residents, this project aims to explore how the photographic studios aligned themselves within the spaces of transformation, and how the strong presence of photographic studios themselves might have challenged the neighborhood of Asakusa.

Nov 12, Sun-ah Choi

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Sun-ah Choi
Ph.D. Candidate, Art History
University of Chicago

Friday, November 12, 4- 6 pm
CWAC 156

From the True Visage to a Miraculous Image: Medieval Chinese Reception of the Buddha Image at the Mahabodhi Temple of Bodhgaya, India

Abstract

This talk examines ways in which medieval Chinese received the famous Buddha image of the Mahabodhi temple at Bodhgaya, India, through the examination of two different modes of reception, the verbal description and the act of replication. Witnessed by seventh-century Chinese pilgrims like Xuanzang and Yijing, the Buddha statue enshrined at the Mahabodhi temple was, on one hand, referred to as the “true visage (zhenrong),” an unusual term whose implication requires further investigation. On the other hand, the Indian effigy, because of its great regard, became the model for many replications in seventh- and eighth-century China, and some of them are labeled as the “Miraculous Image of Bodhi Tree (puti ruixiang).” Focusing on these two seemingly related, but remarkably different notions—zhenrong and ruixiang, I will discuss why medieval Chinese copies of the famous Indian icon look the way they do, (as well as why they look different from those made in other Buddhist countries like Korea, Nepal, Indonesia, and Tibet), a question that has been shunned by many art historians for the sake of their conventional methods and interests.

Oct 22, Dorothy Wong

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Dorothy Wong
Associate Professor, East Asian Art
University of Virginia

Friday, October 22, 4- 6 pm
CWAC 156

Divergent Paths: Early Representations of Amoghapasa in East, South and Southeast Asia

Amoghapāśa Avalokiteśvara (Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva with the Unfailing Rope; Chi. Bukongjuansuo Guanyi, J. Fukūkenjaku Kannon) is one of the manifestations of Avalokiteśvara, with widespread worship in India, the Himalayas, East and Southeast Asia from around the latter part of the seventh century. However, the beginnings of this bodhisattva in East Asia in the seventh and eighth centuries remain unclear, with only a small number of examples dating from this early period. And yet, the earliest extant representation of Amoghapāśa in Tōdaiji (dated around 748), Nara, attests to the significance attached to the cult of this bodhisattva. Through analysis of textual materials and selected examples, the paper aims to explore the paths of transmission of Amoghapāśa and the various factors shaping the representations of this bodhisattva in diverse regions in Asia. The study demonstrates that images of Amoghapāśa of relatively close dates but from disparate geographical regions have very little in common, and that they probably develop from different textual, stylistic and iconographic traditions. For instance, early representations of Amoghapāśa in East Asia seems to have been based on texts translated into Chinese at the time and developed within the local artistic traditions rather than on image types introduced from India.

2010 Autumn Schedule

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Visual and Material Perspectives on East Asia workshop is pleased to announce its autumn schedule 2010. In general, the workshop is scheduled for every other Friday from 4 to 6 pm at CWAC 156. Please note that the schedule is subject to change.

Oct. 15
Xiao Tie, Ph.D. candidate, East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Talk: Picturing Crowds in 1930s China

Oct. 22
Prof. Dorothy Wong (University of Virginia)
Talk: Divergent Paths: Early Representations of Amoghapasa in East, South and Southeast Asia.

Nov. 12
Sun-ah Choi, Ph.D. candidate, Art History
Talk: From the True Visage to a Miraculous Image: Medieval Chinese Reception of the Vajrasana Buddha of the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, India

Nov. 19
Prof. Maki Fukuoka (University of Michigan)
Talk: Site of Transformation: Asakusa, Photographic Studios, and Media in Modern Japan

Dec. 3
Seunghye Lee, Ph.D. candidate, Art History

Oct 15 Xiao Tie

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Xiao Tie
Ph.D. candidate, East Asian Languages and Civilizations
University of Chicago

Friday, October 15, 4- 6 pm
CWAC 156

Abstract

Picturing Crowds in 1930s China

This chapter explores the 1930s woodcut prints by such radical artists as Jiang Feng, Wen Tao, Tang Yingwei, and Luo Qingzhen, which provided striking visual representations of the notion of popular will and depicted ruly and unruly crowds as the new protagonists of modern public life. I investigate how visual artists tackled the slippery relationship between the toiling crowd as a social reality and the “great masses” as a political ideal in visual representations that responded to foreign visual forms and images by such artist as Käthe Kollwitz and Frans Masereel.