Download or read book The Odyssey of China s Imperial Art Treasures written by Jeannette Shambaugh Elliot and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2015-08-03 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Odyssey of China s Imperial Art Treasures written by Jeannette Shambaugh Elliot and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Odyssey of China's Imperial Art Treasures traces the three-thousand-year history of the emperor's imperial collection, from the Bronze Age to the present. The tortuous story of these treasures involves a succession of dynasties, invasion and conquest, and civil war, resulting in valiant attempts to rescue and preserve the collection. Throughout history, different Chinese regimes used the imperial collection to bolster their own political legitimacy, domestically and internationally. The narrative follows the gradual formation of the Peking Palace Museum in 1925, then its hasty fragmentation as large parts of the collection were moved perilously over long distances to escape wartime destruction, and finally its formal division into what are today two Palace Museums-one in Beijing, the other in Taipei. Enlivened by the personalities of those who cared for the collection, this textured account of the imperial treasures highlights magnificent artworks and their arduous transit through politics, war, and diplomatic reconciliations. Over the years, control of the collections has been fiercely contested, from early dynasties through Mongol and Japanese invaders to Nationalist and Communist rivals- a saga that continues today. This first book-length investigation of the imperial collections will be of great interest to China scholars, historians, and Chinese art specialists. Its tales of palace intrigue will fascinate a wide variety of readers.
Download or read book The Great Chinese Art Transfer written by Michael St. Clair and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of how and why millions of Chinese works of art got exported to collectors and institutions in the West, in particular to the United States. As China’s last dynasty was weakening and collapsing from 1860 into the early years of the twentieth century, China’s internal chaos allowed imperial and private Chinese collections to be scattered, looted and sold. A remarkable and varied group of Westerners entered the country, had their eyes opened to centuries of Chinese creativity and gathered up paintings, bronzes and ceramics, as well as sculptures, jades and bronzes. The migration to America and Europe of China’s art is one of the greatest outflows of a culture’s artistic heritage in human history. A good deal of the art procured by collectors and dealers, some famous and others little known but all remarkable in individual ways, eventually wound up in American and European museums. Today some of the art still in private hands is returning to China via international auctions and aggressive purchases by Chinese millionaires.
Download or read book China in Australasia written by James Beattie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-18 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on expertise in art history, exhibition studies and cultural studies as well as politics and international relations, China in Australasia presents significant new perspectives on the role of art in the cultural diplomacy of the People’s Republic of China. The book tells the forgotten story of the loan, exchange, and gifting of Chinese art, museum exhibitions—and the use of Chinese arts more broadly—in growing diplomatic relations with Australia and New Zealand, from 1949 to the present day. Its scope includes pre-modern, modern and contemporary sculpture, painting and peasant art, as well as ancient artefacts, performance arts and gardens. In considering the geopolitical connections opened by the arts, this book presents new insights into some of the ways in which China, often in conjunction with local supporters, sought to present itself to the people of Australia and New Zealand. It also considers how, for their part, New Zealanders and Australians worked to expand understandings of their powerful northern neighbour within changing political contexts. The first of its kind, this book-length interdisciplinary study of Chinese soft diplomacy in Australasia will be invaluable to students and scholars of Chinese studies, cultural diplomacy, museum studies and art history.
Download or read book The Reception of Chinese Art Across Cultures written by Michelle Ying Ling Huang and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-02 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reception of Chinese Art Across Cultures is a collection of essays examining the ways in which Chinese art has been circulated, collected, exhibited and perceived in Japan, Europe and America from the fourteenth century to the twenty-first. Scholars and curators from East Asia, Europe and North America jointly present cutting-edge research on cultural integration and aesthetic hybridisation in relation to the collecting, display, making and interpretation of Chinese art and material culture. Stimulating examples within this volume emphasise the Western understanding of Chinese pictorial art, while addressing issues concerning the consumption of Chinese art and Chinese-inspired artistic productions from early times to the contemporary period; the roles of collector, curator, museum and auction house in shaping the taste, meaning and conception of art; and the art and cultural identity of the Chinese diaspora in a global context. This book espouses a multiplicity of aesthetic, philosophical, socio-cultural, economic and political perspectives, and encourages academics, students, art and museum practitioners to re-think their encounters with the objects, practices, people and institutions surrounding the study of Chinese art and culture in the past and the present.
Download or read book Emperor Qianlong s Hidden Treasures written by Nicole T. C. Chiang and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-15 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this stunning reassessment, Nicole T. C. Chiang argues that the famous Qianlong art collection is really ‘the collection of the imperial household in the Qianlong reign’. The distinction is significant because it strips away the modern, Eurocentric preconceptions that have led scholars to misconstrue the size of the collection, the role of nationalism in its formation, the distinction between art and artifact, and the actual involvement of the emperor in assembling the collection. No one interested in Chinese art will be able to ignore the ramifications of this important study. Emperor Qianlong’s Hidden Treasures: Reconsidering the Collection of the Qing Imperial Household argues that the size of the collection was actually smaller than previously stated. Moreover, the idea that the collection put the whole of the empire on display (and thereby promoted political unity) does not square with the reality that most of the collection was hidden away. Instead, the collection was primarily for the emperor’s gaze alone. Chiang further explains that the collection was largely the product of work done by many specialists working at the Qianlong court, noting that the emperor often assumed a more supervisory role. Preliminary drawings, patterns, models, and prototypes of the items made in the imperial workshops also formed an important part of the collection, as they served to establish standardized models used to run the imperial household. The collection was thus both broader and narrower than previously stated. ‘Chiang has identified many misguided assumptions about the Qing imperial collection. In their place, she proposes a new definition of an imperial collection that does not give primacy to art objects. This bold revisionist thesis may be controversial, but it is important and deserves to be read widely for this exact reason.’ —Dorothy Ko, Barnard College, Columbia University ‘Chiang makes a new argument which will contribute to the literature on Qing imperial art. She shows that a distinction should be made between the Qianlong emperor’s activities in commissioning objects from the palace workshop and his activities in accumulating, assessing, and cataloguing objects that went into what she calls the “imperial household collection.” This work will attract wide attention from scholars in art history.’ —Evelyn S. Rawski, University of Pittsburgh
Download or read book Splendors of Imperial China written by 國立故!4d!JU!^z and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 1996 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The collection of the National Palace Museum is made up largely of the personal holdings of the Ch'ien-lung emperor (reigned 1736-95). Representing the artistic legacy of imperial China, it offers an unsurpassed view of Chinese civilization. The objects lavishly illustrated and described in this book, which include magnificent ritual bronzes, precious jades, monumental landscape paintings, and exquisite ceramics, are among the finest ever created." "Published to accompany the exhibition "Splendors of Imperial China: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei," the book takes the reader through the most significant periods of Chinese culture: its foundations in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, its flowering in the sophisticated world of the Sung dynasty, its exuberance during the Ming, and its technical brilliance under the Manchus. The author makes the unique beauty of this art accessible through comparisons of selected works and through discussion of their historical context."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book Collecting China written by Vimalin Rujivacharakul and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collecting China is a unique collection of essays that brings together theories of materiality and what collecting has meant to various peoples over time. Collecting China grew out of a simple question: how does a thing become Chinese? Fifteen essays explore this question from different angles, ranging from close examination of world-renowned private collections to critical reinterpretations of historical writings.
Download or read book Collecting and Displaying China s Summer Palace in the West written by Louise Tythacott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-25 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In October 1860, at the culmination of the Second Opium War, British and French troops looted and destroyed one of the most important palace complexes in imperial China—the Yuanmingyuan. Known in the West as the "Summer Palace," this site consisted of thousands of buildings housing a vast art collection. It is estimated that over a million objects may have been taken from the palaces in the Yuanmingyuan—and many of these are now scattered around the world, in private collections and public museums. With contributions from leading specialists, this is the first book to focus on the collecting and display of "Summer Palace" material over the past 150 years in museums in Britain and France. It examines the way museums placed their own cultural, political and aesthetic concerns upon Yuanmingyuan material, and how displays—especially those at the Royal Engineers Museum in Kent, the National Museum of Scotland and the Musée Chinois at the Château of Fontainebleau—tell us more about European representations and images of China, than they do about the Yuanmingyuan itself.
Download or read book China s Heritage through History written by Yujie Zhu and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-26 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China’s Heritage through History employs a longue durée approach to examine China’s heritage through history. From Imperial to contemporary China, it explores the role of practices and material forms of the past in shaping social transformation through knowledge production and transmission. The art of collecting, reproducing, and reinterpreting the past has been an enduring force shaping cultural identity and political legitimacy in China. Offering a unique, non-Western perspective on the history of heritage in China, Zhu considers who the key players have been in these ongoing processes of reconfigured pasts, what methods they have employed, and how these practices have shaped society at large. The book tackles these questions by delving into the transformation of practices related to heritage through examples such as the book collection at Tianyi Private Library, the reproduction of the Orchid Pavilion Preface calligraphy and its associated sites, and the dynamics of exchange within the Liulichang antique market. Zhu reveals how these practices, once reserved for elites, have become accessible to the broader public. These processes of transformation, embodied in various forms of reconfigured pasts, have given rise to modern approaches to preservation, digitisation, museums, and the burgeoning heritage tourism industry. China’s Heritage through History will be an invaluable resource for academics, students, and practitioners working in the fields of heritage, museum studies, and art history.
Download or read book The China Reader written by David L. Shambaugh and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Chronicles the diverse aspects of this transition since the late-1990s. It is comprehensive in scope and draws upon both primary Chinese sources and secondary Western analyses written by the world's leading experts on contemporary China ... covers the full range of China's internal and external developments."--From publisher description.
Download or read book Chinese Politics written by Peter Gries and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-01-28 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by a team of leading China scholars this text interrogates the dynamics of state power and legitimation in 21st Century China. Despite the continuing economic successes and rising international prestige of China there has been increasing social protests over corruption, land seizures, environmental concerns, and homeowner movements. Such political contestation presents an opportunity to explore the changes occurring in China today – what are the goals of political contestation, how are Chinese Communist Party leaders legitimizing their rule, who are the specific actors involved in contesting state legitimacy today and what are the implications of changing state-society relations for the future viability of the People’s Republic? Key subjects covered include: the legitimacy of the Communist Party internet censorship ethnic resistance rural and urban contention nationalism youth culture labour relations. Chinese Politics is an essential read for all students and scholars of contemporary China as well as those interested in the dynamics of political and social change.
Download or read book Chinese Painting and Its Audiences written by Craig Clunas and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-17 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the reception of Chinese painting from the sixteenth century to the present What is Chinese painting? When did it begin? And what are the different associations of this term in China and the West? In Chinese Painting and Its Audiences, which is based on the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts given at the National Gallery of Art, leading art historian Craig Clunas draws from a wealth of artistic masterpieces and lesser-known pictures, some of them discussed here in English for the first time, to show how Chinese painting has been understood by a range of audiences over five centuries, from the Ming Dynasty to today. Chinese Painting and Its Audiences demonstrates that viewers in China and beyond have irrevocably shaped this great artistic tradition. Arguing that audiences within China were crucially important to the evolution of Chinese painting, Clunas considers how Chinese artists have imagined the reception of their own work. By examining paintings that depict people looking at paintings, he introduces readers to ideal types of viewers: the scholar, the gentleman, the merchant, the nation, and the people. In discussing the changing audiences for Chinese art, Clunas emphasizes that the diversity and quantity of images in Chinese culture make it impossible to generalize definitively about what constitutes Chinese painting. Exploring the complex relationships between works of art and those who look at them, Chinese Painting and Its Audiences sheds new light on how the concept of Chinese painting has been formed and reformed over hundreds of years. Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Please note: All images in this ebook are presented in black and white and have been reduced in size.
Download or read book China s Leaders written by David Shambaugh and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-06-25 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China over 70 years ago, five paramount leaders have shaped the fates and fortunes of the nation and the ruling Chinese Communist Party: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping. Under their leaderships, China has undergone an extraordinary transformation from an undeveloped and insular country to a comprehensive world power. In this definitive study, renowned Sinologist David Shambaugh offers a refreshing account of China’s dramatic post-revolutionary history through the prism of those who ruled it. Exploring the persona, formative socialization, psychology, and professional experiences of each leader, Shambaugh shows how their differing leadership styles and tactics of rule shaped China domestically and internationally: Mao was a populist tyrant, Deng a pragmatic Leninist, Jiang a bureaucratic politician, Hu a technocratic apparatchik, and Xi a modern emperor. Covering the full scope of these leaders’ personalities and power, this is an illuminating guide to China’s modern history and understanding how China has become the superpower of today.
Download or read book China Goes Global written by David Shambaugh and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-18 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most global citizens are well aware of the explosive growth of the Chinese economy. Indeed, China has famously become the "workshop of the world." Yet, while China watchers have shed much light on the country's internal dynamics--China's politics, its vast social changes, and its economic development--few have focused on how this increasingly powerful nation has become more active and assertive throughout the world. In China Goes Global, eminent China scholar David Shambaugh delivers the book that many have been waiting for--a sweeping account of China's growing prominence on the international stage. Thirty years ago, China's role in global affairs beyond its immediate East Asian periphery was decidedly minor and it had little geostrategic power. Today however, China's expanding economic power has allowed it to extend its reach virtually everywhere--from mineral mines in Africa, to currency markets in the West, to oilfields in the Middle East, to agribusiness in Latin America, to the factories of East Asia. Shambaugh offers an enlightening look into the manifestations of China's global presence: its extensive commercial footprint, its growing military power, its increasing cultural influence or "soft power," its diplomatic activity, and its new prominence in global governance institutions. But Shambaugh is no alarmist. In this balanced and well-researched volume, he argues that China's global presence is more broad than deep and that China still lacks the influence befitting a major world power--what he terms a "partial power." He draws on his decades of China-watching and his deep knowledge of the subject, and exploits a wide variety of previously untapped sources, to shed valuable light on China's current and future roles in world affairs.
Download or read book The China Collectors written by Karl E. Meyer and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thanks to Salem sea captains, Gilded Age millionaires, curators on horseback and missionaries gone native, North American museums now possess the greatest collections of Chinese art outside of East Asia itself. How did it happen? The China Collectors is the first full account of a century-long treasure hunt in China from the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion to Mao Zedong's 1949 ascent. The principal gatherers are mostly little known and defy invention. They included "foreign devils" who braved desert sandstorms, bandits and local warlords in acquiring significant works. Adventurous curators like Langdon Warner, a forebear of Indiana Jones, argued that the caves of Dunhuang were already threatened by vandals, thereby justifying the removal of frescoes and sculptures. Other Americans include George Kates, an alumnus of Harvard, Oxford and Hollywood, who fell in love with Ming furniture. The Chinese were divided between dealers who profited from the artworks' removal, and scholars who sought to protect their country's patrimony. Duanfang, the greatest Chinese collector of his era, was beheaded in a coup and his splendid bronzes now adorn major museums. Others in this rich tapestry include Charles Lang Freer, an enlightened Detroit entrepreneur, two generations of Rockefellers, and Avery Brundage, the imperious Olympian, and Arthur Sackler, the grand acquisitor. No less important are two museum directors, Cleveland's Sherman Lee and Kansas City's Laurence Sickman, who challenged the East Coast's hegemony. Shareen Blair Brysac and Karl E. Meyer even-handedly consider whether ancient treasures were looted or salvaged, and whether it was morally acceptable to spirit hitherto inaccessible objects westward, where they could be studied and preserved by trained museum personnel. And how should the US and Canada and their museums respond now that China has the means and will to reclaim its missing patrimony?
Download or read book China written by David B. H. Denoon and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China’s dramatic transformation over the past fifteen years has drawn its share of attention and fear from the global community and world leaders. Far from the inward-looking days of the Cultural Revolution, modern China today is the world’s fourth largest economy, with a net product larger than that of France and the United Kingdom. And China’s dynamism is by no means limited to its economy: enrollments in secondary and higher education are rapidly expanding, and new means of communication are vastly increasing information available to the Chinese public. In two decades, the Chinese government has also transformed its foreign relations—Beijing is now consulted on virtually every key development within the region. However, the Communist Party of China still dominates all aspects of political life. The Politburo is still self-selecting, Beijing chooses province governors, censorship is widespread, and treatment of dissidents remains harsh. In China, leading experts provide an overview of the region, highlighting key issues as they developed in the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Edited with an introduction by David B. H. Denoon, an authority on China, this volume of articles covers recent events and key issues in understanding this growing superpower. Organized into three thematic sections—foreign policy and national security, economic policy and social issues, and domestic politics and governance—the essays cover salient topics such as China's military power, de-communization, growing economic strength, nationalism, and the possibility for democracy. The volume also contains current maps as well as a “Recent Chronology of Events” which provides a decade's worth of information on the region, organized by year and by country. Contributors: Liu Binyan, David B.H. Denoon, Bruce J. Dickson, June Teufel Dreyer, Michael Dutton, Elizabeth Economy, Barry Eichengreen, Edward Friedman, Dru C. Gladney, Paul H. B. Godwin, Merle Goldman, Richard Madsen, Barry Naughton, Lucian W. Pye, Tony Saich, David Shambaugh, Robert Sutter, Michael D. Swaine, and Tyrene White.
