Author: lesun

Yuzhe Cao, The Transcendent Landscape

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We cordially invite you to join us next Friday, Nov 8, at 4:45-6:45pm CT, CWAC 152 for our second VMPEA workshop this fall. This workshop features:

 

Yuzhe Cao

MAPH 2nd Year, UChicago

Who will be presenting the paper titled:

“The Transcendent Landscape: Xu Daoning’s Fisherman and the Scholar-Official Viewers in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty” 

Discussant: Wei-Cheng Lin

Associate Professor of Art History and the College, UChicago

This workshop will take place in hybrid format. For those who would like to join online, please register here.

Please see the abstract and bios for this workshop below.

 

We hope to see many of you there!

 

 

Xu Daoning, Fisherman, handscroll, ink and slight color on silk, 48.26 × 225.4 cm. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

 

Abstract:

Xu Daoning 許道寧 (ca. 970-1052), a landscape artist active in the mid-Northern Song era, received considerable respect from both art critics and scholar-officials in his day. Nonetheless, the existing scholarship has often discussed Xu’s works from the perspective of the Li-Guo landscape lineage. Despite this recognition of his connection to Li Cheng 李成 (ca. 919-967), Xu Daoning remains a less studied figure in the history of landscape painting in current works, particularly in comparison to Li and Guo Xi 郭熙 (ca. 1000–1090). However, a close examination of his most celebrated work, Fisherman’s Evening Song 漁舟唱晚圖 (hereafter Fisherman), painted around 1050, reveals that it transcends mere imitation of Li Cheng’s artistic styles. Its unique chronotope reflects the distinct social and cultural milieu of its time.

This paper explores the interplay between Xu Daoning’s Fisherman and its special intended audience in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty, namely the scholar-officials/literati. I argue Fisherman resonates deeply with the cultural landscape of the contemporary scholar-officials. Following a short biography of the artist himself, the paper will analyze three aspects of the painting: the progressively-viewed handscroll, the sacred mountain, and the prominent figures. In the last section, I will examine how the culture of landscape poetry and mental reclusion fostered under the reign of Emperor Renzong 宋仁宗 (r. 1022-1063) might have contributed to the unique illustration of the landscape within Fisherman. Ultimately, this analysis aims to illuminate how the painting reflects the literary and philosophical trends embraced by scholar-officials during the mid-Northern Song era.

Bio:

Yuzhe Cao is a second-year MAPH student at the University of Chicago, studying medieval and pre-modern Chinese art, with a focus on tomb art and landscape paintings. He received his BA in history from the Ohio State University. He is interested in exploring the narrativity across different art mediums and how difference in materiality would affect the selection of various visual motifs.

 

Wei-Cheng Lin specializes in the history of Chinese art and architecture with a focus on medieval periods. His primary research interests concern issues of visual and material culture 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 (University of Washington Press, 2014). He has additionally published on a variety of topics, including collecting history, photography and architecture, the historiography of Chinese architectural history, and contemporary Chinese art. Lin is currently working on two book projects: Performative Architecture of China explores architecture’s performative potential through history and the meanings enacted through such architectural performance. Necessarily Incomplete: Fragments of Chinese Artifacts investigates fragments of Chinese artifacts, as well as the cultural practices they solicited and engaged, to locate their agentic power in generating the multivalent significance of those artifacts, otherwise undetectable or overlooked. Lin is also the Faculty Director for the Dispersed Chinese Art Digitalization Project (DCADP), a digital humanities initiative supported by the Cyrus Tang Foundation.

PETER DENG, THE BORDERLESS CIRCLE: YOSHIHARA JIRŌ’S ENSO

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We cordially invite you to join us on Friday, October 25, at 4:45-6:45pm CT, CWAC 152 for our first VMPEA workshop this fall. This workshop features:

 

Peter Yuheng Deng

MAPH 2nd Year, UChicago

 

Who will be presenting the paper titled:

“The Borderless Circle: Yoshihara Jirō’s Enso” 

 

This workshop will take place in hybrid format. For those who would like to join online, please register here.

Please see the abstract and bio for this workshop below.

We hope to see many of you there!

 

Image: Jiro Yoshihara (1950-1972), White Circle on Black. 1965. Acrylics on canvas. 182.0 × 227.5cm. National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

 

Abstract:

This paper examines a lesser-explored aspect of Yoshihara Jirō’s work, focusing on his Enso paintings, and situates these works within the context of the internationalization of “dentō” or tradition in the Japanese postwar avant-garde movement. The Enso paintings, created in oil and acrylic, represent Yoshihara’s response to combat the systematic marginalization of non-Western art in a predominantly Euro-American art world. By leveraging the Zen symbol of Enso, Yoshihara aimed to establish a more equitable form of artistic exchange that transcends cultural boundaries, promoting a “borderless” dialogue.

The Enso, a symbol of enlightenment in Zen Buddhism, signifies the non-dualistic nature of reality, challenging distinctions between representation and abstraction, as well as between writing and picturing. Yoshihara’s choice of this symbol was not a superficial nod to Japanese tradition but a deeply considered effort to integrate Japan’s cultural heritage into the global abstract expressionist movement. His work sought to counteract the perception of Japanese art as marginal and derivative, highlighting its intrinsic value within the global art narrative.

This paper explores how Yoshihara’s abstract renderings of Enso, through their imperfect and eccentric forms, embody the principles of Zen and engage with the aesthetics of abstract expressionism. It examines the significance of the Enso in Zen practice, where it serves as both an artistic and spiritual exercise, and how Yoshihara recontextualized this tradition within his modernist framework.

Yoshihara’s Enso paintings are analyzed in the context of their historical reception, particularly the challenges faced during the First Japanese Art Festival in Chicago in 1966 and the earlier skepticism from Western critics. By drawing parallels between traditional Zen calligraphy and modern abstract art, the paper argues that Yoshihara’s work represents a crucial intersection between Eastern and Western art forms, contributing to a more inclusive and multifaceted understanding of postwar global art as transnational history.

Yoshihara Jirō’s Enso paintings reflect a synthesis of East Asian and Western artistic traditions, advancing a vision of art that transcends cultural and geographical boundaries. His work exemplifies a deliberate effort to reframe Japanese art within a global context, overcoming representation and eliding the differences between writing and picturing, ethnicity and universality.

 

Bio:

Peter Yuheng Deng is a master’s student in Art History at the University of Chicago, specializing in Japanese 19th-20th century Japanese art. He holds a bachelor’s degree in East Asian Studies from Haverford College. His current research explores the role of tradition in early post-war Japanese contemporary art and how material culture challenges the dichotomies between East and West, local and universal.

Beyond his academic pursuits, Yuheng is also a passionate performance artist and painter. His creative practice seeks to blend diverse artistic forms, particularly through theater and performance painting. By merging his artistic practice with his theoretical research, Yuheng aims to address canonical issues in contemporary East Asian art and foster new dialogues between traditional and modern expressions.

VMPEA Fall 2024 Schedule

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The Visual and Material Perspectives on East Asia (VMPEA) workshop is pleased to announce the Fall 2024 schedule. All the in-person events will meet on selected Fridays from 4:45 to 6:45 pm CT at CWAC (Cochrane-Woods Art Center) 152 unless otherwise noted. If a presenter opts for a hybrid format with online audience, we will send out a registration link prior to these events. You are welcome to subscribe to our listserv to receive event notifications.

 

Fall 2024 Schedule

October 25

Peter Deng, MAPH 2nd Year, UChicago

“The Borderless Circle: Yoshihara Jirō’s Enso”

November 8

Yuzhe Cao, MAPH 2nd Year, UChicago

“Transcendent Landscape: Fisherman and the Scholar-official Viewers in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty”

November 15*

Seonghee Ha, PhD Student, Art History, UChicago

“The Brush and the Blade: Yi Jaegwan’s Figures and the Rise of Chivalrous Courtesans in Nineteenth-Century Joseon”

*Please note the new date

December 3*

Meng-Hsuan Lee, PhD Candidate, Columbia University (Art History) | Lecturer in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

“Japanese Aryanism for the Tropics: Ide Kaoru’s Round-Arch Style in Colonial Taiwan”

*Please note the new date

December 13

You Wang, Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows | Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences, UChicago

“Dike Dynamics: Farmers, Scholars, and Polder Design in Jiangnan, 1400–1810”

Please feel free to contact Taylor (chisato@uchicago.edu) and Lucien (lesun@uchicago.edu) with any questions you might have, and we look forward to seeing you soon!

 

All the best,

Taylor Stewart & Lucien Sun

VMPEA Coordinators, 2024–25

Susan Huang, “The Fodingxin Dharani Scripture and its Audience”

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We are delighted to announce that in addition to the Smart Lecture, Professor Shih-shan Susan Huang will be at the VMPEA workshop on May 12 (Friday) from 4:45–6:45pm CT at CWAC 152 to discuss an article derived from her latest book project. We also invite you to come and ask any remaining questions you may have after the Smart Lecture.

 

Shih-shan Susan Huang

Associate Professor of Transnational Asian Studies, Rice University

Who will be presenting and discussing the paper

“The Fodingxin Dharani Scripture and its Audience: Healing, Talisman Culture, and Women in Popular Buddhist Print Culture”

Friday, May 12, 2023

4:45–6:45 pm CT, CWAC 152

*A light reception will follow at the department lounge.

 

Fodingxin Dharani Scripture. 1102 CE. Northern Song. National Library, Beijing.

 

Abstract

This study examines the book art contained within the Fodingxin Dharani Scripture (Fodingxin tuoluoni jing 佛頂心陀羅尼經; hereafter also called the dharani text), with the broader concerns of how popular Buddhist print culture addresses healing, talisman culture, and women. The primary sources it investigates include a ninth-to-tenth century Dunhuang manuscript and other illustrated printed counterparts dated from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. The Fodingxin Dharani Scripture, an indigenous Chinese Buddhist text traceable to medieval Dunhuang manuscript culture, synthesizes miscellaneous beliefs, turning a Buddhist scripture into a form of magical medicine. The twelfth century marks fresh illustrative and talismanic traditions in the print age. The printed text is accompanied by a frontispiece at the beginning, and three talismanic scripts at the end. The book art of the Fodingxin Dharani Scripture reached its peak in the first half of the fifteenth century. In addition to the frontispiece and talismanic scripts, the text is fully illustrated throughout, with its new illustrated repertoire highlighting the healing power of the scripture and the dharani charms, as well as the challenges women faced in childbirth. Numerous extant specimens offer valuable documentations of its donors, most of whom were residents in Ming (1368–1644) Beijing. Accompanied by lively narrative pictures and containing Daoist-inspired talismanic writs that promise to save women from birth complications, it was often printed on demand. Women and their families, preoccupied with childbirth complications or ardently desiring a baby boy, were its main donors.

 

Shih-shan Susan Huang (PhD, History of Art, Yale) is an Associate Professor at Rice University’s newly-founded Department of Transnational Asian Studies. Her book, Picturing the True Form: Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional China (Harvard Asian Center, 2012), translated into Chinese by Dr. Zhu Yiwen, was published by Zhejiang University Press in 2022. She co-edited Visual and Material Cultures of the Middle Period China with Patricia Ebrey (Brill, 2017). Her recent articles explore Song-to-Ming book art of the Lotus Sutra and Diamond Sutra, Buddhist printing under Tangut Xi Xia rule, and painting and printing connections. Huang’s new monograph, The Dynamic Spread of Buddhist Print Culture: Mapping Buddhist Book Roads in China and its Neighbors, forthcoming in the Brill series Crossroads – History of Interaction across the Silk Routes, examines printed images and texts as objects “on the move”, as they were transmitted along networks and book roads in a transnational context. For more information, visit https://shihshansusanhuang.com/

Alice Casalini, “The Malleable Space of Gandhāran Art”

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We cordially invite you to join us next Wednesday, May 10, from 4:45-6:45 pm CT for a VMPEA & RAVE joint workshop, featuring:

 

Alice Casalini

PhD Candidate, Art History, UChicago

Who will be presenting the paper

“The Malleable Space of Gandhāran Art”

Discussant: Andrew Ollett

Neubauer Family Assistant Professor, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, UChicago

Wednesday, May 10, 2023

4:45–6:45 pm CT, CWAC 152

*You can also use this link to join the talk on Zoom. No registration is required. The password is “malleable”.

A light reception will follow at the department lounge.

 

“Three architectural elements from Gandhāra,” digital collage, 2023.

 

Abstract

The monasteries of Gandhāra were teeming with an incredible array of images that adorned virtually every available surface. From carved panels that covered the walls, to icons and stelae that were installed in chapels and encroached the space of corridors and passageways, every monument was adorned with stone and stucco reliefs, while statues were meticulously gilded and painted. These objects, along with the perishable materials that did not survive in the archaeological record, came together to create an aesthetic of visual abundance.

The talk seeks to explore the role of this aesthetic in the context of the early Buddhist schools of Gandhāra. While textual sources are often used to shed light on these debates, the visual program in the monasteries  played a significant role in shaping the Buddhist path to liberation in its own right and in a parallel fashion to the textual sources.

 

Alice Casalini received her BA and MA in Languages and Civilizations of Asia and Mediterranean Africa from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and studied Buddhist archaeology at the School of Archaeology and Museology of Peking University. She has conducted archaeological work in Italy, China, and Pakistan. Her research focuses on early Buddhist art and architecture of Northern India, Central Asia and Western China. Her dissertation, tentatively titled “Paradigms of Beholding: the architecture of religious experience in Gandhāra,” explores the ways in which sacred spaces and religious objects create avenues for spiritual transformation. Alice is also a visual artist and illustrator.

 

Andrew Ollett is Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations. He studies the literary and intellectual traditions of South Asia, including works composed in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, and Kannada, mostly falling within the first millennium of the common era. His research has focused on the “question of language”: the availability and choice of certain languages for certain purposes, and the role of language in cultural production and change.  He is the author of Language of the Snakes: Prakrit, Sanskrit, and the Language Order of Premodern India (2017). His current projects include an edition and translation of the Prakrit romance Lilavai a book on the beginnings of manuscript literacy in South Asia, a book on context-dependency in South Asian philosophies of language and, with Sarah Pierce Taylor, an edition and translation of The Way of the Poet-King, a ninth-century manual of poetics in Kannada.

Eugene Wang, “What is psychocosmic painting and how it came into being?”

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We are pleased to invite you to a special VMPEA lecture next Monday, May 8, at 4:45 pm CT presented by Professor Eugene Wang from Harvard University. In his talk, Professor Wang will delve into the fascinating concept of psychocosmic painting and its origins in the work of the Taiwan-based Chinese artist Liu Guosong. This event is followed by a reception at the CWAC lounge.

Eugene Wang

The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art, Harvard University

Presenting:

“What is psychocosmic painting and how it came into being?”

4:45-6:45 pm CT, May 8, 2023

Cochrane Woods Art Center, 152

Please use this link if you plan to join this event virtually. No registration is required. Password: “eclipse”

*Reception to follow in Cochrane Woods Art Center lounge

Liu Guosong. Eclipse, 1971. Detail. Private Collection, Hong Kong. Photo by Eugene Wang.

 

Abstract 

History of art often comes down to the perennial struggle to conceive terms to capture new art forms and experiences. In the 1960s, the Taiwan-based Chinese artist Liu Guosong (1932-) produced a type of sublime paintings never seen in the history of Chinese art. No readymade term applies. He called it “abstract painting.” The term stuck. Over time, it also shows its strains, as it hardly captures the scope of his evolving long career, nor his prodigious output, ranging from astral bodies to planetary earth. Six decades later, we still search for a proper descriptive language to come to terms with his paintings. In hindsight, “psychocosmic painting” may be closer to capturing the dynamics of his oeuvre, alternatively called “metaphysical painting.” Its central impulse is to integrate mind and cosmos through the medium of painting. How so? Why him? Professor Wang’s lecture will unpack these questions.

 

Eugene Y. Wang is the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at Harvard University. He holds positions in History of Art and Architecture, Archaeology, Study of Religion, Theater, Dance, and Medium, and Inner Asia and Altaic Studies. A Guggenheim Fellow (2005), he is the art history editor of the Encyclopedia of Buddhism (2004). His extensive publications range from early Chinese art and archeology to modern and contemporary Chinese art and cinema. His book, Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China (2005), explores Buddhist worldmaking; it received the Sakamoto Nichijin Academic Award from Japan. His current research focuses on cognitive study of art and mind. He is also the founding director of Harvard CAMLab that explores expanded scenography through digital media.

Yun-chen Lu, “A Left-Turn to Artistic Eccentricity: Gao Fenghan (1683–1749) and Disability Art in Eighteenth-century Yangzhou”

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Please join us on Wednesday, May 3, from 4:45-6:45 pm CT at CWAC 152 for the fifth VMPEA Workshop this Spring, featuring:

 

Yun-chen Lu

Assistant Professor, Department of History of Art and Architecture, DePaul University

Who will be presenting:

“A Left-Turn to Artistic Eccentricity: Gao Fenghan (1683–1749) and Disability Art in Eighteenth-century Yangzhou”

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

4:45-6:45 pm CT

*Please use this link if you plan to join virtually. No registration is required. Password: “left.”

Gao Fenghan and Li Tianbiao, the first leaf of the Album of Painting and Calligraphy in Collaboration with Li Tianbiao, 1737. Album leaves mounted as a handscroll, ink on paper. Each leaf 31.5 × 35.4 cm. Chien-lu Collection.

 

Abstract

This talk focuses on Gao Fenghan (1683–1749) and the development of his disability art and aesthetics in premodern China. Scholars have categorized Gao as one of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, a group of artists who were active in southern China during the early Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) and gained renown for rejecting the Beijing court’s orthodox painting style in favor of their own aesthetic choices. Among these artists, Gao earned fame because of his left-handed style, which he developed after the paralysis of his right hand. I argue that this disability enabled him to move beyond his early practice in the dominant literati style and generate his own artistic idiosyncrasy, which was popular in the Yangzhou art market that favored nontraditional art. While scholarly discussion of disability in art history has focused on the evolution of modern aesthetics in Euro-American art, my project focuses on disability art in premodern China, not only challenging the dating of disability art studies but also expanding its geographical scope. More specifically, my research offers a new understanding of disability aesthetics rooted in Chinese culture, history, and philosophy.

 

Yun-chen Lu (Ph.D., UCSB) is an Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture at DePaul University. She specializes in East Asian art history, particularly Chinese painting and calligraphy, material culture, literati culture, artists with disabilities, disability aesthetics, and East Asian interregional art history. She teaches courses on Asian art history, Chinese art history, and Buddhist art history. Her current research project investigates the relationship between artists with disabilities and the trend of artistic eccentricity in eighteenth-century Yangzhou, and the development of disability art and aesthetics in Chinese art.

Wu Hung, “Outdoor Exhibitions in Beijing, 1979”

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Professor Wu Hung will be at the VMPEA & APEA joint workshop on April 28th (Friday) from 4pm-6pm CT at CWAC 152 to share his latest research titled “Outdoor Exhibitions in Beijing, 1979,” and Professor Paola Iovene will offer a response. Please note that there is a pre-circulated paper for this workshop, available here under the password “outdoor.” If you would like to join us for the reception from 6pm-8pm CT, please kindly RSVP by April 25 (Tuesday).

 

Wu Hung

presenting:

“Outdoor Exhibitions in Beijing, 1979,”

with a response from Paola Iovene

 

April 28th (Friday), 4pm-6pm CT, 2023

Cochrane-Woods Art Center, 152

*This workshop will be livestreamed on Zoom, please use this link if you plan to attend virtually. No registration is required. Pw: outdoor.

An outdoor art exhibition in Beijing, 1979.

 

Abstract

In most writing about contemporary Chinese art, the primary significance of the Stars Art Exhibition (1979) is believed to lie in its choice of venue: held in the small street park outside of the National Art Gallery of China, it moved the site of art exhibition from indoors to outdoors and from museums to public space, displaying works of young “outsider” artists to street crowds. This emphasis on location is undoubtedly correct, but because many studies discuss this exhibition as a singular event, they ignore its relationship to other artistic activities at the time. As a result, the interpretation is frequently skewed, either overemphasizing its uniqueness or overlooking its specificity. An important artistic phenomenon in Beijing in 1979 was the occurrence of multiple outdoor art exhibitions, which have not yet received sufficient scholarly attention. This study attempts to assemble the available materials to provide a general introduction to these exhibitions, to reflect on their shared historical context and characteristics, and to reexamine the Stars Art Exhibition within this context.

 

Wu Hung holds the Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professorship at the Department of Art History and the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, and is also the director of the Center for the Art of East Asia at the same university. An elected member of the American Academy of Art and Science and the American Philosophic Society, he sits on multiple domestic and international committees. He has received many awards for his publications and academic services, including the Distinguished Teaching Award (2008) and Distinguished Scholar Award (2018) from the College of Art Association (CAA), an Honorary Degree in Arts from Harvard University (2019), and the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art from CAA (2022). Wu Hung’s research interests include both traditional and contemporary Chinese art, and he has published many books and curated many exhibitions in these two fields. His interdisciplinary interest has led him to experiment with different ways to tell stories about Chinese art, as exemplified by his Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture (1995), The Double Screen: Medium and Representation of Chinese Pictorial Art (1996), Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square: the Creation of a Political Space (2005), The Art of the Yellow Springs: Understanding Chinese Tombs (2010), A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture (2012), Zooming In: Histories of Photography in China (2016), and Space in Art History (2018). His three newest books from 2022 and 2023 include Chinese and Dynastic time (Princeton University Press), Spatial Dunhuang: Experiencing the Mogao Caves (Washington University Press), and The Full Length Mirror: A Global Visual History (Reaktion Books).

 

Paola Iovene is an associate professor of modern Chinese literature in the department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Tales of Futures Past: Anticipation and the Ends of Literature in Contemporary China (2014) and the editor of Cultures of Labor in Contemporary China (Special issue of positions: asia critique, May 2023).