Author: campus

Catherine Stuer

PhD Candidate, University of Chicago

Friday, April 2, 4-6 pm
CWAC, Room 156

Dragon-Veins: Charting Underheaven in 19th century China

This paper focuses on the particular interest brought to bear on the global figure of the dragon-veins as it is addressed in various contexts in the 19th, and into the early 20th century. The point of departure is a pictorial album published in 1832, which deploys a layering of spatial patterns to structure the narrative sequence of the author’s travels through China. The final charting of Underheaven’s dragon-veins serves the album to integrate this spatial layering at a global level of representation. The use of this figure here, if unprecedented within pictorial traditions, appears to instantiate a broader pattern of renewed attention to this figure in 19th century publications.
If a figure of global, geophysical representation, historically it did not rank among normative global figures of Underheaven. To answer the question why it may have proved useful to this 19 century painter and his contemporaries, this paper investigates the generation of the dragon-vein figure since the Tang dynasty, towards a living, global model adaptable to the shifting of centers and peripheries, and an explanatory model for socio-political change as such. I suggest that its usefulness in 19th century global mapping practices, lies in its potential as a global structure that is nonetheless susceptible to adaptation and appropriation. And in the pictorial book that is the focus of this analysis, where images form the ‘text proper’ or ‘body’ of the work, the dragon-vein model is equally responsive to the ‘openness’ of the book’s scenic vision and narrative development, as it is to the self-representational intent of its author.

Dr. Katherine Tsiang

Associate Director of the Center for the Art of East Asia, University of Chicago

“Early Buddhist Cave-making in the Northern Wei and Interactions with Gansu and the Western Regions–Visual vs. Historical Evidence”

Friday, February 19, 4-6 pm
CWAC, Room 156

Abstract

This study reconsiders the beginnings of Buddhist cave temple making in the Northern Wei period from the perspective of both visual and textual evidence. Northern Wei cave-making is generally believed to have begun with the Tanyao Caves (Cave 16-20) on the basis of textual evidence from the Northern Wei history. This is the request by the monk Tanyao around 460 that Emperor Wencheng create five caves with large sculptures, colossal images that were unprecedented in Northern China. However, other historical records hint at much earlier activity at Yungang, but this is generally regarded as unreliable. Visual elements in early caves in Gansu, now believed to be from the late fourth and early fifth century are strikingly similar to those in other caves at Yungang that are considered later than 460 in date. In addition comparative examples from other sources beyond northwest China in a variety of materials offer intriguing evidence for and questions about sources of imagery at Yungang.

Professor Stanley Abe

Associate Professor of Chinese Art,Theory & Criticism

Duke University

“Déjà Vu All Over Again: Old Collections and New Discoveries from Shaanxi”

Wednesday, February 10, 4.30-6.30 pm

Abstract

The paper continues my discussion of a group of Northern Wei Buddhist and Daoist stone stele in the so-called “Fuxian style” said to be from Shaanxi province. I focus on the earliest evidence for the stele as well as related sculpture which has recently appeared in China and Japan. The broad question is which works are authentic Northern Wei sculpture, what are the rest, and how do we know? Participants are asked to familiarize themselves with my Freer Occasional Paper “A Freer stele reconsidered” (2002).

Professor LaoZhu (Zhu Qingsheng)

Director of the Center for Visual Studies, Peking University北京大學視覺與圖像研究中心

Director of the Institute of  Han Arts, Peking University 北京大學漢畫研究所

Friday, February 5, 4-6pm

Cochrane Woods Art Center, Room 156

Abstract

Professor  LaoZhu will talk about the two institutions he is directing, one of contemporary art, the other of ancient art, at Peking University. Focusing on concepts, missions, activities and plans associated with his current academic practice, he will communicate with the audience about his understanding of art and art history in a broad international scope.

Bonnie Cheng

Associate Professor of Art and East Asian Studies

Oberlin College

“Non/Functional Realism: Imagined Spaces for the Dead in Northern Dynasties China”

Friday, January 22, 4-6pm

Cochrane Woods Art Center, Room 156

Abstract

This talk examines the status of tomb art in the Northern Dynasties and its role in delimiting the space and boundaries of the dead. Revisiting ancient notions of grave goods (i.e. mingqi) in textual and visual traditions, I argue that these modes used to distinguish objects in Han and pre-Han tombs are inherently incompatible with innovative trends that characterize fifth and sixth century traditions. While Northern Dynasties funerary practices have clear antecedents in ancient China, this is largely visible by way of content. Instead of rendering tomb objects “useless” to define them against ritual objects of ancient China, formal means are stretched to render them more distinctly realistic.

Shi Jie

PhD Candidate, University of Chicago

“Crossing the Ground Boundary: Image, Ritual and Space in Chulan Tomb 2 (171 CE)”

Friday, January 15, 4-6pm

Cochrane Woods Art Center, Room 156

Abstract

Scholars of ancient Chinese funerary arts are often impressed by the shared pictorial motifs carved in the Eastern Han commemorative shrines and in the contemporary front burial chambers. Although both structures were located in the single graveyard, they differed from each other in a significant way: while the shrine stood above-ground and invited public viewers, the tomb chamber always stayed hidden beneath the tumulus. So why did they resemble each other while leaving such an impenetrable boundary between them? Did the similarity suggest a similar function? Or did the separation indicate something more profoundly different?

Triggered by these questions, this paper focuses on one individual shrine/tomb complex in East China dating to the late 2^nd century CE. Unlike most of the previous studies that treat shrines and tomb chambers as individual “meaning units,” this paper examines them as a whole ritual and pictorial program. The commemorative shrine and the antechamber, despite their separation in physical space, formed a continuous “supernatural space” connected by continuous and repetitive ritual practice and by related images. Here the shrine served as the liminal space, the very end of either the netherworld or the living world, where both the tomb occupant and the ritual participant would meet with each other. While the deceased rode his chariot travelling through the dark passage and finally entered the dim space of the shrine, he looked out, face to face with those alive who came from the opposite direction — the bright world — to make offerings. Once again, the two separated subjects were reunited across the great boundary (ground boundary) which was supposed to deprive the one of the other permanently.

Maki Kaneko

Assistant Professor, University of Kansas

“A War Artist’s Postwar Settlement: Mukai Junkichi’s Transformation from a War to Minka (Folk House) Painter”

Friday, December 4, 4-6pm

Cochrane Woods Art Center, Room 156

Susan Naquin

Professor, Princeton University

“Getting Material about Material Culture”

Friday, November 20

4-6pm Cochrane Woods Art Center,

Room 156

Julia Orell
(PhD candidate, University of Chicago)

"The Yangzi River as Handscroll: Landscape Painting, Topography, Cartography"

Friday, October 30, 4:00-6:00 p.m. 

CWAC 156

Alexandra Green
(Research Assistant Professor, University of Hong Kong)

“Prioritizing Enlightenment: Organizing Burmese and Thai
Murals in the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries”

Thursday, October 22, 4:30-6:30 p.m. (please note unusual date
and time)

CWAC 156