Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture / Hung Wu, Katherine R. Tsiang.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Tsiang, Katherine R., editor.

Wu Hung, 1945- editor.

Series:

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 239.

Harvard University Asia Center E-Book Collection ISBN: 9789004407077.

Harvard East Asian Monographs ; 239

Harvard University Asia Center E-Book Collection

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Art, Chinese.

Face in art.

Human figure in art.

Human body--Symbolic aspects.

Human body.

National characteristics in art.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Place of Publication:

Leiden; Boston : BRILL, 2005.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Traditionally the "Chinese body" was understood as a totality and explained by sweeping comparisons of the differences that distinguished Chinese examples from their western counterparts. Recently, scholars have argued that we must look at particular examples of Chinese images of the body and explore their intrinsic conceptual complexity and historical specificity.

By charting multiple, specific bodies and faces, the twelve contributors to this volume seek to explain a general Chinese body and face conditioned by indigenous traditions and dynamics of social interaction. All the chapters are historical case studies and investigate particular images, such as Han dynasty tomb figurines; Buddhist texts and illustrations; pictures of deprivation, illness, deformity, and ghosts; clothing; formal portraiture; and modern photographs and films. All of them are based on close examination of textual, visual, and archaeological evidence. But the authors use their findings to illuminate broader changes in representations of the body and face in various religious, political, and cultural contexts. From the diversity of art forms and historical periods studied, as well as the differences in research methods and analytical approaches, there emerges a more complex picture of ways that the visual culture of the body and face in China has served to depict the living, memorialize the dead, and present the unrepresentable in art.

Contents:

Preliminary Material / Wu Hung and Katherine R. Tsiang

Introduction / Wu Hung and Katherine R. Tsiang

On Tomb Figurines / Wu Hung

Embodiments of Buddhist Texts in Early Medieval Chinese Visual Culture / Katherine R. Tsiang

Of the True Body / Eugene Y. Wang

Fleshly Desires and Bodily Deprivations / Kathleen M. Ryor

Illness, Disability, and Deformity in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Art / Qianshen Bai

Clothes Make the Man / Robert E. Harrist

The Face in Life and Death / Jan Stuart

The Life and Death of the Image / Judith T. Zeitlin

Essentially Chinese / Roberta Wue

The Piping of Man / Susan E. Nelson

The Kangxi Emperor's Brush-Traces / Jonathan Hay

Phantom Theater, Disfigurement, and History in 'Song at Midnight' / Zhang Zhen

Notes / Wu Hung and Katherine R. Tsiang

Index / Wu Hung and Katherine R. Tsiang

Harvard East Asian Monographs / Wu Hung and Katherine R. Tsiang.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture,

ISBN:

9781684174034

9780674016576

OCLC:

1001548957

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9781684174034 DOI

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.