Chinese ways of seeing and open-air painting / Yi Gu.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gu, Yi, author.

Series:

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 430.

Harvard East Asian monographs ; 430

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Landscape painting, Chinese--20th century.

Landscape painting, Chinese.

Landscape painting, Chinese--Technique.

Physical Description:

xv, 317 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 26 cm.

Distribution:

Cambridge (Massachusetts) ; London : Distributed by Harvard University Press.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge (Massachusetts) : Harvard University Asia Center, 2020.

Summary:

"How did modern Chinese painters see landscape? Did they depict nature in the same way as premodern Chinese painters? What does the artistic perception of modern Chinese painters reveal about the relationship between artists and the nation-state? Could an understanding of modern Chinese landscape painting tell us something previously unknown about art, political change, and the epistemological and sensory regime of twentieth-century China? Yi Gu tackles these questions by focusing on the rise of open-air painting in modern China. Chinese artists almost never painted outdoors until the late 1910s, when the New Culture Movement prompted them to embrace direct observation, linear perspective, and a conception of vision based on Cartesian optics. The new landscape practice brought with it unprecedented emphasis on perception and redefined artistic expertise. Central to the pursuit of open-air painting from the late 1910s right through to the early 1960s was a reinvigorated and ever-growing urgency to see suitably as a Chinese and to see the Chinese homeland correctly. Examining this long-overlooked ocular turn, Gu not only provides an innovative perspective from which to reflect on complicated interactions of the global and local in China, but also calls for rethinking the nature of visual modernity."-- Front flap of dust jacket.

Contents:

1 Open-Air Painting and the Modern Chinese Painter p. 16

"Sketching from Life" and Western-Style Painting p. 17

Scientizing Vision in China p. 21

The Rise of Open-Air Painting p. 28

Sketching the Homeland p. 35

2 Optical Vision and New Modes of Depiction p. 41

Qujing: View-Taking p. 43

Goutu: Composition p. 47

Toushi: Perspective p. 53

Shidian (Viewpoint) and Dipingxian (Horizon) p. 57

Guohua through the Optical Eye p. 60

Seeing Monumental Landscape at Mount Huang p. 65

Western-Style Painting and West Lake p. 71

3 Inventing Tradition through Open-Air Painting p. 80

Hu Peiheng and "Open-Air Painting in the Traditional Way" p. 82

Yu Jianhua and "Open-Air Painting in the Guohua Way" p. 85

Linear Perspective and "Sight" in Guohua Painting p. 89

Cun Models and the Prioritization of Perception p. 99

4 Open-Air Painting during the War p. 115

Guan Shanyue's Early Paintings and the Pursuit of Immediacy p. 117

The 1940 Guilin Exhibition and Debates on Wartime Art p. 126

Ten Thousand Miles of the Li River and Masculine Majesty p. 132

Heroism and the Northwestern Borderland p. 140

The Land of Production p. 150

5 Views of the Party-State p. 165

Open-Air Painting in the New China p. 167

Industrial Construction as Socialist Landscape p. 174

The Poetic Turn p. 182

New Look of Mountains and Streams p. 193

Beyond the State's View p. 207.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674244443

0674244443

9780674244450

0674244451

OCLC:

1120093852