Author: quincyngan

VISUAL AND MATERIAL PERSPECTIVES ON EAST ASIA

Jan 11 (Fri), 2013, 4:00-6:00, CWAC 156

Jie Shi

PhD Candidate, the University of Chicago

“The Encompassing Eyes in Han China: Female Frontal Views in the Wu Family Shrines”

The so-called pavilion scene in the bas-reliefs from the renowned Wu family shrines at Jiaxiang in the Shandong province in eastern China, dating from mid-2nd century CE, contains one of the earliest renditions of female frontal view in Chinese art. On second floor of the central pavilion the central female figure sits (or stands) in full frontal view and appears totally indifferent to their attendants on both sides. Previously scholars who mistook this lady for a deity took the frontal view for granted without asking the question why she was never rendered in other views. This paper argues that this elevated female figure, who is in fact the hostess of the shrine, commands an encompassing view into the space not only within the pavilion scene but also beyond it in a lost architectural and ritual context. In doing so, this paper scrutinizes the basic composition of the pavilion scene in the light of old and new archaeological discoveries and contemporaneous textual evidence of similar viewing motifs, to reveal the concealed Han eyes that escaped our attention for so long.

Persons with a disability who believe they need assistance are requested to contact quincyngan@uchicago.edu in advance.

VISUAL AND MATERIAL PERSPECTIVES ON EAST ASIA

Sponsored by Committee on Japanese Studies and the Council on Advanced Studies

Dec 7 (Friday), 4:00-6:00, CWAC 156

Professor David Waterhouse

Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, St. George

“Eight Views, The Foxes’ Wedding, Automata and Other Themes in Early Nishiki-e”

The commercial development in 1765 of Japanese colour prints in many colours (nishiki-e: literally “brocade picture”) saw the introduction of new artistic styles and subjects. This development was due above all to the Edo artist Suzuki Harunobu (1725?-70) and a handful of other artists, many of whom were his pupils; and to the initial sponsorship of private patrons in samurai and literati circles. Harunobu was by far the most prolific early artist of nishiki-e; and he is justly renowned for his portrayals of feminine beauty. However, his subject-matter ranged far and wide, and many of his prints incorporate witty allusions to classical literature, Nō drama, and Chinese and Japanese folklore. Still other prints reflect topical events and passing fashions. Very often the prints quote poems, in classical Japanese or Chinese; but with or without these it can be difficult for us today to recognise his allusions.

Over many years I have worked at intervals on a catalogue of 721 single-sheet woodcuts by Harunobu and his immediate followers in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A completely revised version of my English text will finally appear early in 2013, from Hotei Publishing in Leiden. It will comprise separate volumes of text and colour plates, in a slip-case.

In the course of this work I have been able to identify for the first time many of Harunobu’s allusions; and the catalogue will provide ample documentation. For this talk at the Smart Museum I have chosen to discuss a handful of recurrent themes in prints of Harunobu and his contemporaries, including prints which belong to series or sets: especially the Eight Views (hakkei), and the wedding ceremonies of foxes and humans. Still other prints turn out on investigation to depict automata (karakuri). If time permits I will also discuss Harunobu’s allusions to Nō plays, with which he evidently had considerable familiarity.

The talk will be illustrated with images from the Boston collection and other sources.

Persons with a disability who believe they need assistance are requested to contact quincyngan@uchicago.edu in advance.

VISUAL AND MATERIAL PERSPECTIVES ON EAST ASIA

NOV 29 (Thursday), 4:30-6:30, CWAC 152

Nancy Lin

Ph.D. Candidate, University of Chicago

“The Colonial Korean Landscape and the Sketch Tour”

This paper will focus on the landscapes of colonial Korea by Japanese artists who participated in the “sketch tour” during the first decade of the colonial occupation (1910-1945).  After the annexation of Korea in 1910, Japanese artists such as Maeda Seison (1885-1977), Tsuji Kakō (1871-1931), and Ishii Hakutei (1882-1958), traversed across the recently formed colonial empire as they collectively took part in the utopian project of modernism. Working in both oil painting and the more traditional nihonga style, these artists documented their travels in paintings that were exhibited in official art venues in Japan but also published their thoughts and impressions in art journals, newspapers, and lavishly illustrated sketch travel books. They traveled through city centers and visited famous natural wonders such as the Diamond Mountains, producing a variety of sketches, prints, and writings that were published upon their return to Japan. These images and texts will be examined to in order discuss how artists functioned as crucial cultural agents as they moved across expanded boundaries and their influence went far beyond the aesthetic realm, helping to shape the image of the Other. This paper will ask the following questions: What socio-cultural frameworks impinged upon their thoughts and works? Was there a practice of strategic essentialism, defining their respective identities to their audiences? Was there a question of authenticity in the roles as cultural translators? By this, I mean to ask how their affiliation to their homeland were readily apparent in their depictions of the other landscape and the foreign environs in which they were surrounded.  These questions will be addressed in order to examine how the modern artist negotiated the concepts of the Self and Other within the visual culture of the colonial empire.

Persons with a disability who believe they need assistance are requested to contact quincyngan@uchicago.edu in advance.

VISUAL AND MATERIAL PERSPECTIVES ON EAST ASIA

NOV 16 (Friday), 4:00-6:00, CWAC 156

Seunghye Lee

Ph.D. Candidate, University of Chicago

“The Pure Land in an Underground Space: The Digong Hall from the Southern Song Pagoda Crypt in Ningbo”

This presentation is derived from the third chapter of my Ph.D. dissertation, entitled “Art of the Enshrinement: Buddhist Reliquary Shrines in China and Korea from the tenth to fourteenth century.” This chapter focuses on an intricate reliquary self-reflexively labeled as the “Digong Hall of Tianfeng Pagoda” (Tianfengta digongdian 天封塔地宮殿) from the underground relic crypt of the Tianfeng Pagoda in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. Dated to 1144, the Digong Hall yielded a complex material assemblage centered on a miniature pagoda that seems to have held relics and bronze images of the three Pure Land deities. The intrinsic relationship between the structure and deposit contents of the Digong Hall renders the reliquary into a framework through which we can reconstruct the perception of relics and afterlife prevalent in the Southern Song. Several questions will be addressed throughout this presentation: why make a reliquary in the shape of a worship hall standing over ground? What were the intended functions and meanings of the artifacts in the carefully designed interior of the Digong Hall? What was the underlying logic in making the Digong Hall and furnishing it with specific artifacts? How should we interpret the doubling of iconographical focus – i.e. relic installments and the Pure Land icons – in the Digong Hall? This paper attempts to answer these questions by unpacking the material assemblage of the Digong Hall and situating it in historical, cultural, and religious contexts of Southern Song Ningbo. By closely reading deposit contents against inscriptional evidence, this talk attempts to reconstruct the social and religious functions of reliquary practice in the twelfth century – a period that has been largely neglected in previous studies on Chinese relic veneration.

 Persons with a disability who believe they need assistance are requested to contact quincyngan@uchicago.edu in advance.

VISUAL AND MATERIAL PERSPECTIVES ON EAST ASIA

Nov 9 (Friday), 4:00-6:00, CWAC 156

Professor Judith T. Zeitlin

East Asian Languages and Civilizations, the University of Chicago

“A Ming pipa in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Toward a reconstruction of its literary, historical, and cultural context”

One of the treasures of the musical instrument collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a richly decorated late Ming pipa made of wood, ivory, and bone. Slender and tear-shaped, the back of the instrument is honeycombed with some 120 ivory plaques carved with auspicious pictorial motifs, such as immortals, animals, and flowers. The pegbox terminates in a carved wooden bat or butterfly. On the front of the instrument is inset a small ivory spider, below which an ivory bird is carved in a rondel; an ivory-plated string holder with a four-character inscription and figural scene is glued to the wooden belly; another ivory plaque between the body and neck pictures a boy and a man holding a fish. The wooden belly is worn and has scratches around the string holder, suggesting that despite its lavish ornamentation, the pipa had been played in the past and was not merely for display.

What was this instrument? Where might it have been fashioned and who could have played it? What does its decorative program mean and why was it ornamented so lavishly? And above all what can this sort of highly wrought luxury object tell us about the representation and social practice of music in early modern China?

Nothing is known of this pipa’s provenance except that was a bequest of the American philanthropist and art collector Mary Stillman Harkness in 1950, and there has been no serious study of this instrument.

My paper attempts to situate this instrument within the literary, historical, and cultural context of early modern music, performance, and decorative objects. To interpret the cultural meanings of this enigmatic object, I will take two approaches: intrinsic and extrinsic. By intrinsic, I mean studying the decorative program, material, and design of the object itself; by extrinsic, I mean studying how such an instrument might have been treated and given meaning by others in the early modern period. In this latter pursuit, I will focus on one particular figure, Kong Shangren, the famous early Qing playwright of Peach Blossom Fan, who was a keen collector of rare antique musical instruments. My overall aim is to use this case study of the Met pipa as a way of integrating the material evidence of extant musical instruments from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century with analysis of the multi-dimensional representation of the musical instrument in the literary work of late Ming and early Qing playwrights and poets.

Persons with a disability who believe they need assistance are requested to contact quincyngan@uchicago.edu in advance.

VISUAL AND MATERIAL PERSPECTIVES ON EAST ASIA and
MUSIC HISTORY/THEORY
Oct 26th (Friday), 4:00-6:00, CWAC 156

Xu Peng
Ph.D. Candidate (the University of Chicago)

“The Courtesan Singer: Problems of Acoustics and Aesthetic Bifurcation”
This paper (in the abridged form of my dissertation chapter) addresses the courtesan’s vocal art in late Ming China (1547-1644). I contextualize aesthetic problems in a sequence of historical performances and fictional presentations of singing. Concerning the sources for styles at the courtesan’s disposal, I propose two extreme models of performance: the typical late-Ming courtesan’s solo was what I call “the midnight vocal chamber music,” rendered in a pleasing-sounding and soft voice, with no string accompaniment but the mechanical beats of clappers. Contrariwise to this courtesan tradition of singing, there was also the mountain hiker’s solo (similarly, lacking stringed instrumental accompaniment), performed and listened to in natural landscapes with rich ambient noise, especially the sound of rapid streams and waterfalls. The division of singing style, I argue, had both gendered and auditory implications. Evidence of the two styles will be assembled from the written and painted materials of the time.

Persons with a disability who believe they need assistance are requested to contact quincyngan@uchicago.edu in advance.

VISUAL AND MATERIAL PERSPECTIVES ON EAST AISA

Oct 18^th (Thursday), 4:00-6:00, CWAC 156

Professor Robert M Oppenheim  (Associate Professor, Director of Center for East Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin)

“Sokkuram’s Interior Landscapes: Visualizing Korea from Chicago, Circa 1911”

The focus of this paper is on some hidden histories of a single and quite famous Korean monument, the Buddhist cave-temple Sokkuram, centering on a moment between its arrival at wide public notice around 1907 and its first reconstruction beginning in 1913—a moment that also coincides with the beginning of formal colonial rule in Korea.  Using unpublished sources, visualizations produced by or through the University of Chicago anthropologist Frederick Starr, I examine two appropriations of Sokkuram’s materiality that coincide with two enactments of writing in relation to it.  In one, Sokkuram’s painted surfaces (long since bleached away) and their spatial enclosure within the grotto formatted a genealogy of heterogeneous consideration of Korean racial and religious pasts.  In the other, more literal inscriptive practices of writing on the temple—the signatures of school groups and other visitors—can be read as politically significant “words in the world” through close consideration of their timing and placement, notwithstanding the paucity of content of the texts themselves.  Overall, this paper argues for a need to understand the historical process of landscape not merely as the mapping and remapping of meanings onto lieux de memoire and historiographically-significant sites, as such processes are commonly read in Korean studies, but also in terms of stronger forms of heterology.  Sokkuram at the instance of its modern reemergence was more than a site to which meanings were attached; it was a wonder that captivated and gathered a swirl of meanings to itself.  Thus, its post-1913 colonial reappropriation, whatever else may be said about it, also had the local, contingent quality of a production of disenchantment.

Persons with a disability who believe they need assistance are requested to contact quincyngan@uchicago.edu  in advance.

VISUAL AND MATERIAL PERSPECTIVES ON EAST AISA
OCT 5th, 3:30-5:30pm, CWAC 156

Kris Imants Ercums
Curator of Global Contemporary and Asian Art
Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas
Ph.D. candidate
Department of Art History
University of Chicago

“The Battle for Art: Modeling the National Exhibition in Republican-era China, 1910-1937”
Efforts to strengthen and promote the idea of a contemporary “Chinese art world” (Zhongguo yishu jie) in the first half of the twentieth century were manifest prominently in the organization of large-scale “national art exhibition” (guanquo meishu zhanlanhui). However, the question remained: “who’s art world was it?” This paper examines the development of the national exhibition model through four key art events: The Nanyang Industrial Exposition (1910); The First Pegasus Society Exhibition (1919); The First National Exhibition of Art (1929) and the NOVA exhibition (Xin Yishu Zhan) organized by the Chinese Independent Association of Artists (1935). These exhibitions demonstrate the competitive atmosphere that emerged between “official” government-sponsored exhibitions and alternate “unofficial” artist-lead exhibitions. Through an analysis of the contextual development of these and other exhibitive models; curatorial and display strategies; this paper further illuminates the complex and varied discourse of modern art that existed in China prior to the advent of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937.