{"title":"Vernacular Painting and Transitional Beijing","authors":"","doi":"10.1215/00666637-9302506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-9302506","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Created around 1915, Chen Shizeng's Beijing Fengsu album represents a pictorial experiment that led to his subsequent well-known theoretical recasting of Chinese literati painting as a progressive and universally comprehensible visual language. Through an examination of the stylistic and technical innovations of the paintings, the essay demonstrates that the album's function as a visual record of Beijing folk customs is in part a historical byproduct of a then urgent attempt to establish the pictorial expression of a new subjectivity by a leading member of China's last generation of literati. Through the aid of drawing from direct observation, emulation of visual effects from Western-style drawing using Chinese ink and pigments, incorporation of antiquarian motifs, and unconventional compositional schemes, the album managed to reinvent vernacular painting (fengsu hua) and establish the popular pictorial genre manhua in modern China.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43303055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Time Machines of Eighteenth-Century Mewar","authors":"Nachiket Chanchani","doi":"10.1215/00666637-9302517","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-9302517","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:The focus of this essay is a spectacular scroll in the British Museum's collections that has been neither exhibited nor published since its acquisition. Perhaps that is because several fundamental questions about it remain unanswered: Where and when was it made? Who made it, and for whom? What purpose and meaning did it have for the first people who saw it and those who subsequently came into contact with it? In this essay, I begin to address these elementary questions. I establish that this eleven-foot-long scroll was created in Mewar in western India in 1769, and that since then it has cleaved many realms. Those realms include art and devotion, text and textile, astral science and genealogy, classical epics and vernacular histories, and cyclical time and linear time. I then postulate that understanding this short scroll's ability to nimbly separate and join those realms can help us critically appreciate the forms, layouts, and functions of two other contemporaneous cloth scrolls from the same region that are considerably longer and also have received sparse scholarly attention. Ultimately, I show how micro studies of scrolls and scrolling practices can allow us to understand forms of knowledge in Mewar on the eve of British colonialism, and to participate in challenging certain perceptions of the region's past that remain inflected by James Tod's writings nearly two hundred years after their publication.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"71 1","pages":"219 - 241"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45381754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Envisioning Paradise","authors":"April D. Hughes","doi":"10.1215/0066637-9302495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/0066637-9302495","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The majority of the murals at Dunhuang that depict Maitreya are dominated by his three assemblies, thereby emphasizing the salvific power of the future Buddha after he has descended to earth. This article examines scenes from the Maitreya murals, highlighting details appearing across the murals that allow us to understand how adherents imagined life in an earthly paradise. Most scenes in the murals accentuate the magnificence of life in Maitreya's terrestrial Buddhaland, characterized by manageable yet rewarding labor and a long life that never ends suddenly, all in a clean urban environment. Hence, in this realm some labor is still required and social hierarchies are maintained. Unlike the celestial realm of Amitābha Buddha, Maitreya's land is ruled by an ideal leader, the Wheel-Turning King Saṅkha. The article concludes by examining the tension between the power of the religious leader and the political ruler, evident even though the paintings do not include representations of Saṅkha himself. Rather, they depict his regalia, his gift, and his family in prominent positions, near Maitreya, thus suggesting that the future Buddha absorbed Saṅkha's political power, which parallels contemporaneous political and religious developments.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45929487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Word for Shen Yuan","authors":"R. Whitfield","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8866698","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8866698","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This paper discusses the roles of Shen Yuan, an artist at the Yongzheng court, who produced the monochrome cartoon of Qingming shanghe tu, and of the five court artists who produced the final version in colors on silk. Their respective contributions show that Shen Yuan used details from Zhang Zeduan's Songdynasty original and later versions to create an entirely new composition. The five court artists adhered closely to Shen Yuan's cartoon, while adding some embellishments. The unusual honor accorded to the cartoon, bearing seals of Prince Bao, and mounted with the same brocade as Qiu Ying's version, highlight Shen Yuan's seminal role, despite his name not appearing in the finished painting.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"71 1","pages":"123 - 129"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46886798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Newly Discovered Śaiva-Ascetic Icons from West Bengal","authors":"Ranjusri Ghosh","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8866689","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8866689","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Koṭivarṣa, a sacred place and an administrative unit that is mentioned in early medieval Indian religious and epigraphic sources from 700 to 1200 ce, is the area of focus of this essay. As an administrative unit, it was almost coterminous with the old Dinajpur district of Bengal, which is now divided into the present Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh. At one point in time, its headquarters came to be known as Devīkoṭa, underscoring its rise as a prime place for Devī, the Mother goddess. Sculptural arrays of the Mother goddess from this place point to the domineering presence of her fearsome principles; they parallel textual descriptions about the sacred importance of a wrathful form of the Mother, normally referred to as Cāmuṇḍā. The religious texts, however, do not speak of the ascetics who might have performed the rituals to propitiate the Mother. We do not yet know if any new dimension was added to the corpus of rituals, and the ŚivaŚakti power equation after the Saiddhāntika Śaiva preceptors affiliated with Golagī great monastery of Durvāsas lineage entered Devīkoṭa at the end of the tenth century. This essay searches for answers in the visual elements on the lower registers of stone steles, such as the devotees/donors, other individuals in the service of the Mother Goddess, potfuls of offerings, and the environment of cremation grounds in which worship took place. The main deity and associated figures occupying the larger space in the middle of the steles have tantric content. Icons of Śaiva ascetics from West Bengal, including the three newly discovered examples, are important subjects for this essay, which concludes with the transformation of Devīkoṭa to Bangarh, where Śiva emerged as the chief god par excellence. The Devī had lost her koṭa, her bastion, forever.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"71 1","pages":"122 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43052735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Iconographic Volatility in the Fuxi-Nüwa Triads of the Han Dynasty","authors":"Yanlong Guo","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8866680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8866680","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Over the span of some two hundred years, from the late Western Han to the late Eastern Han, triad images featuring a prominent central being flanked by two smaller, snake-bodied figures, occurred on murals and carved stones in Henan, Shandong, and adjacent areas. The iconographic schema of the flanking figures, Nüwa and Fuxi, appears mature and stable, with their identities consistently determined by their half-human, half-serpent, and gendered bodies as well as by the divine objects they hold—sun and moon, compass and T square, numinous mushrooms. The iconography of the third being, however, appears far less consistent and somewhat elusive, yielding many different identifications by scholars. The seemingly anomalous pictorial program speaks to the issue of iconographic volatility in Han art. Looking across the corpus of triad images, this essay identifies the volatile third being as the Grand One, and proposes that its figural metamorphoses were predicated on the amorphousness of the supreme deity of Daoist cosmogony. Distilling the three most important formal aspects of the Grand One—a therianthropic being, a forceful facilitator, and a regal icon—this essay argues that the triad images embodied a coherent program depicting the cosmogonic origin of the world that began with the Grand One conjugating yin and yang, associated with Nüwa and Fuxi respectively. The emergence of this triad imagery coincided with evolving Daoist thought during the Han dynasty.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"71 1","pages":"63 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45967303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Imprisoned Queen","authors":"Anne N. Feng","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8866662","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8866662","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper reconsiders how and why the representation of landscape became an increasingly central component of Pure Land art in the Tang dynasty. Focusing on the seventh-century Cave 209, I examine the first set of mountain panels at Dunhuang, arguing that those polychrome landscapes represent Vulture Peak, the sacred abode of Śākyamuni Buddha. Cave 209 shows how Lady Vaidehī—the protagonist of the Meditation Sutra—emerges as the first female viewer of landscape in Chinese art. Departing from the Meditation Sutra, painters at Dunhuang resituate Lady Vaidehī, the formerly imprisoned royal consort and model Pure Land adept, within mountain ranges where she converses with the Buddha. I argue that Lady Vaidehī's encounter with the Buddha is mapped onto the space of a Dunhuang cave to enable the viewer to assume her position when facing the icon of Śākyamuni surrounded by Vulture Peak. By grappling with Vaidehī's imprisonment, painters use landscape to develop a new spatial imagery of salvation. I maintain that the striking innovations in landscape representation at Dunhuang—achievements that have been seen to anticipate later Tang “blue and green” landscapes—are in actuality based on an effort to visualize Buddhist soteriology in the early seventh century.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"71 1","pages":"1-36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46777444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Literary and Legendary Lives of the Onoe Bell: A Korean Celebrity in Japan","authors":"S. Fowler","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8866671","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8866671","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a large eleventh-century bronze bell made in Korea became a grand attraction on the grounds of Onoe Shrine in Kakogawa, Japan. Although such bells are made of expensive material that require signif cant fnancial investment and technical skill, most are overlooked as common fxtures inside bell towers at Buddhist temples across Asia. Yet the bell at Onoe Shrine has a particularly complex and fascinating story to tell. Using object biography as an approach to study this unusual monument enables us to see how this bell became the popular subject of legends, travel-diary accounts, gazetteer entries, popular woodblock prints, and souvenirs made in a variety of materials. The bell's legendary life story accorded it the ability to solve human problems and use its voice to demand where it should be located, which fueled people's desire to see it with their own eyes and to make physical contact with it. This examination of the bell's intertwining life tales reveals how, after initially serving as a ritual object at a Korean Buddhist temple, it experienced dramatic transformations into a high-value export (or trafficked) commodity, Japanese poetic trope, shrine treasure, and tourist draw.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"71 1","pages":"37 - 61"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44798935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Imagined Selves","authors":"Yurika Wakamatsu","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8620348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8620348","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Beauty by Plum and Window, a hanging scroll produced in 1907 by the Japanese artist Okuhara Seiko, calls into question fundamental presumptions about literati art, a mode of art-making often seen as a means of self-representation. Instead of creating a singular subject that indexes the artist's self, this work deploys diverse pictorial and literary tropes to construct multiple personae, enabling the viewer (including the artist) to shift among them. The scroll effects the viewer's movement from one subject position to another, undermining the binary of spectator and spectacle, heterosexual relationship and homosocial bond, and subject and object. Engaging with Bruno Latour's actor-network theory, this article argues that if we do not assume a direct alignment between the subject of representation and the represented subject, a literati artwork can become a mediator of multiple shifting “selves” rather than an extension of a singular, unified “I.” Literati art thus functions not merely as a repository of self-expression but also as a generative mediator of identities and social relations. In staging multivalent modes of engagement, Seiko's scroll ultimately offers an alternative perspective on the role of subjectivity in the interpretation of literati art.","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"70 1","pages":"119-149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42722990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hidden in Plain Sight","authors":"Rob H Linrothe","doi":"10.1215/00666637-8620384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-8620384","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This is a review article of Janet Gyatso's 2015 award-winning book, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet. The art-historical aspects of the book—mainly confined to the first chapter, “Reading Paintings, Painting the Medical, Medicalizing the State” and based on a perceptive art-historical reading of a set of medical paintings and its copies—had yet to be reviewed by an academically-trained art historian. This review underscores the fine art-historical insights deserving the attention of art historians working in parallel contexts of the often tense relationship between religious and empirical epistemologies. At the same time, the evaluation of certain readings of the visual record lead to suggested revisions in the support they provide to Gyatso's primary argument. In addition, other precedents of depictions “from life” in Tibetan art history are offered to help contextualize claims of originality or uniqueness. Finally, an analysis is presented of less formal, freehand painting versus more formalized, iconometric execution, calibrated with vernacular subject matter versus iconographically predetermined themes. Both of the painting modes and subject types are combined in the painting set analyzed by Gyatso supporting her assessment of the innovation of the artists selected by the patron, Desi Sangyé Gyatso (1653–1705).","PeriodicalId":41400,"journal":{"name":"ARCHIVES OF ASIAN ART","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43048854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}