Author: tingtingxu

Roberta Wue, Associate Professor

Art History and Visual Studies Department, University of California-Irvine

Xugu Abstractions

Among its innovations, late Qing Shanghai painting may count intriguing experimentation in the rendering of space and the multi-dimensional.  The work of the monk painter Xugu (1823-1896) can be said to exemplify a period curiosity about the nature and construction of pictorial space. In his paintings, especially his landscapes and still-life subjects, the representation of space becomes an important theme, often challenging conventional concepts of positioning, orientation and order.  Though couched in the terms and genres of “traditional” ink painting, Xugu’s works often appear to acknowledge western notions of geometry and perspective but not in blind imitation — his works as a whole can be understood to acknowledge, disrupt and reorder indigenous and imported notions of depicted space. Space, of course, is also a term for positioning and the inter-relationship of persons, things and places; thus, Xugu’s treatment of visual space can be seen not only as a topical, intercultural and intermedial investigation into pictorial technologies and genres, but also a meditation on cultural, social and personal placement and order.

All sessions will take place in the Cochrane-Woods Art Center (CWAC)
Room 156 4:30-6:30pm

Persons with concerns regarding accessibility please contact tingtingxu@uchicago.edu

* This talk has been rescheduled to Fall 2015:

Jun Hu, Assistant Professor

The Department of Art History, Northwestern University

Chinese Painting Circa 1603: Some Comments on the Conditions for “Art Historical” Art

Wang Yue (fl. first half of 17th c.)

Landscape in the Manner of Huang Gongwang

Album Leaf, Dated 1627

Private Collection

 Landscape painting in China is often conditioned by a sense of self-reference. Artists study earlier styles not only as motifs and pictorial content, but also as means. Centuries of conscious emulation and oblique reference makes it possible for a trained eye to see “Wang Wei” in a “Zhao Mengfu,” and “Zhao Mengfu,” in a “Dong Qichang.” But it is only in the seventeenth century, it would seem, that a panoptic vision of the past begins to take form: in this vision “styles” become legible patterns that can be mapped onto history, and it is possible now to (rather like in a modern day art history book) pin a name to a picture. In painted and printed pictorial albums, past styles become the primary subject matter. This talk will explore the formats, mediums, and other conditions in which this “carnival” of pictorial styles took place in seventeenth-century China, as well as its discontents.

Persons with concerns regarding accessibility please contact tingtingxu@uchicago.edu

Shengyu Wang, Ph.D. Candidate

The Department of Comparative Literature, University of Chicago

Chinese Classical Tales in Picture Books: A Study of Wang Tao (1828-1897)’s Songyin tales in Relation to the Tongwen Press’ Illustrated Editions of Pu Songling (1640-1715)’s Liaozhai zhiyi

Originally a European invention, lithographical printing revolutionized the mechanical reproduction of images in China after it first became widely used for commercial publishing in Shanghai during the 1870s. This paper examines some outstanding examples of late-19^th century lithography-printed Chinese classical tales as emblems of a new entertainment-oriented print culture and discusses their fundamental differences, in terms of medium, format, readership, and interpretative framework, from woodblock-printed collections of classical tales produced in an earlier period. Based on my research at the Shanghai library, this paper explores for the first time the correlation between the emergence of a visual tradition associated with the Liaozhai zhiyi and a growing body of texts that were (mis)identified as the Hou Liaozhai (Tales after the Liaozhai), with the aim of proposing a new approach to the study of the last flurry of Liaozhai imitations at the end of the Chinese empire.

All sessions will take place in the Cochrane-Woods Art Center (CWAC) Room 156

Friday 4:30-6:30pm

Persons with concerns regarding accessibility please contact tingtingxu@uchicago.edu

March 27^th Shana J. Brown, Associate Professor

Department of History, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa

The Gender of Antiquity: Female Chinese Collectors and Antiquarians at the Turn of the Century

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Hedda Morrison (1908-1991), Girl watching female artist painting, Beijing, c. 1933-1946.

This talk explores varieties of women’s participation in the traditionally male-dominated intellectual field of antiquarian collecting and scholarship in China. Longstanding cultural tropes generally encouraged antiquarian women to view their role as helpmeets to their husbands, themselves often prominent collectors. Nonetheless, some women of the era were able to deploy expertise in this well-respected field to develop significant and often boundary-pushing expertise in ancient artifacts and calligraphy. For example, late 19th century female collectors encouraged their male counterparts to pay attention to Buddhist statues as antiquarian artifacts, which significantly altered the direction of modern art historical research. As greater numbers of women entered artistic and literary fields in the 20th century, they remained interested in ancient materials, continuing to emulate the ideal of the female antiquarian.

Persons with concerns regarding accessibility please contact tingtingxu@uchicago.edu

Quincy Ngan

Ph.D. Candidate, University of Chicago, Department of Art History

Qiu Ying and the Significance of Pigments in Chinese Painting

Chinese painting has long been regarded as a tradition that rejects the use of color but treasures ink and brushwork. Complicating this conventional wisdom, this dissertation argues that, in this tradition, there are painters who utilize the socio-economic and art-historical meanings of pigments to augment their painting techniques and to enhance the meaning of pictorial motifs and subject matter. To make this argument, this dissertation takes the use of azurite blue and malachite green in the paintings by the sixteenth century painter Qiu Ying (ca. 1498-1552) as a case study; then, it situates his use of the two pigments in the long and understudied history of color in Chinese painting.

During this talk, I will conduct close reading of several paintings with three goals in mind: The first goal is to illustrate the major argument in this dissertation. The second is to discuss my methodological approach in studying pigments and its significance. The third is to invite a dialogue between traditional Chinese painting and recent scholarship on the materiality of color in Euro-American and Latin-American arts.

Friday, Feb 6th, 4:30-6:30pm, CWAC 157

Persons with disability who may need assistance, please contact Tingting Xu: tingtingxu@uchicago.edu