Chinese Painting and Its Audiences

by Craig Clunas

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691253022
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/17/2023
Series:	The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts , #35
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	302
File size:	65 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Craig Clunas is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Oxford. His books include Screen of Kings: Royal Art and Power in Ming China, Empire of Great Brightness: Visual and Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China, and Art in China.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 Beginning and Ending 5

2 The Gentleman 37

3 The Emperor 85

4 The Merchant 117

5 The Nation 155 6

The People 193

Conclusion 229

Notes 237

Bibliography 263

Index 277

Photography and Copyright Credits 287

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"With an elegant, welcoming conversational style and clear arguments, this book probes the ramifications of the modern English term 'Chinese painting.' Clunas brings to this work his unique combination of deep scholarship and deep knowledge of objects, the history of the art market, and the collection of Chinese art."—Patricia Berger, University of California, Berkeley

"Looking at a wide variety of media across a wide swath of time, Chinese Painting and Its Audiences repeatedly exposes unexpected ironies that undermine facile assumptions about the Chinese and European art traditions. With this innovative work, Clunas sets a new bar for the global history of art."—Martin Powers, University of Michigan

Editorial Reviews

"Honorable Mention for the 2019 Joseph Levenson Pre-1900 Book Prize, China and Inner Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies"

One of the Evening Standard Best Art Books of 2017 (chosen by David Ekserdijian)

One ofThe New York Times Best Art Books of 2017, chosen by Jason Farago

From the Publisher

"This well-illustrated study offers shrewd analyses of Chinese paintings from the past five centuries, beginning in the mid-Ming dynasty of the 15th century. . . . This is a brilliant examination of one particular genre of Chinese painting. The author provides a richer understanding than would result from a more standard analysis of form and iconography."

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