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.

The first comprehensive assemblage in the West of paintings on this subject, the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection comprises works in the classical Chinese medium of ink on paper and in the traditional formats of scrolls, album leaves, and fans."--BOOK JACKET.

The book presents a range of articles and discussions that offer critical insights into the development of contemporary Chinese art, both within China and internationally. It brings together selected writings, both published and unpublished, by Paul Gladston, one of the foremost international scholars on contemporary Chinese art. The articles are based on extensive first-hand research, much of which was carried out during an extended residence in China between 2005 and 2010. In contrast to many other writers on contemporary Chinese art, Gladston analyses his subject with specific reference to the concerns of critical theory. In his writings he consistently argues for a “polylogic” (multi-voiced) approach to research and analysis grounded in painstaking attention to local, regional and international conditions of artistic production, reception and display.

Chinese Art & Culture is a refreshingly clear look at the oldest and most productive continuous artistic tradition on earth. From 7,000-year-old Neolithic potmaking and jade-carving cultures to contemporary artists installation, video, and performance pieces, this engrossing survey embraces the richness and complexity of Chinese art. In all the right ways, this is a different kind of book on Chinese art. Departing from the predictable narration of dynasties and styles, Robert L. Thorp and Richard Ellis Vinograd present art as a cultural expression of societal expectations, politics, material culture, belief systems, and wider fields of culture. They emphasize works of ancient art and architecture found in their original archaeological settings. Where that is not feasible, they reconstruct interconnections among individual pieces and with their contexts of production. To the broad cultural picture, they add considerations of the material of which an object is made and the distinctive techniques used to make it. Thus an early Ming vase is shown as the product of a new advance in firing technology that enabled control of copper red glazes and as a reflection -- in its shape -- of the lingering taste of the Early Ming emperors for things Tibetan. Chinese art is one of the most active and mutable areas of cultural scholarship today. Thorp and Vinograd are leaders in a generation of scholars who are reexamining long-held conceptions about Chinese art -- for example, the notion that Chinese art has essential and permanent characteristics and the idea that Chinese art and culture were untouched by outside influences. Just as important, the authors give popular, religious, and craft arts their just due. Richly illustrated -- some of the objects have almost never been pictured before -- and enhanced with special-topic sidebars, this long-awaited book answers the needs of students, collectors, and lovers of Chinese art for a work that is current in approach and scholarship and is at the same time reader-friendly. Book jacket.

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.

This book contains analysis of different domains of contemporary art in China seen through the lens of the epistemological changes described in China Pluperfect I: Epistemology of Past and Outside in Chinese Art. It first looks at the concept of “ink art,” describing how it meant different things to different people in the former colony and how these different meanings came to determine certain institutional choices made at the beginning of the 21st century. The following chapters are dedicated to issues related to the urban and rural contexts for art creation in Mainland China and Hong Kong. One chapter observes the ups and downs of the representations of cities in the history of the People’s Republic of China and how they have defined a certain idea of culture. Another looks at how Chinese cities have been exceptional centers of art creations over the last thirty to forty years through the example of Shenzhen where a vibrant art scene, albeit closely connected to Hong Kong which has become a major art hub in the last two decades, has developed. The following is dedicated to the changing fortunes of art making in the countryside, observing how institutions in the Mainland and in Hong Kong have supported these practices very differently. Frank Vigneron finally considers how the different speeds of globalization, slow in the past and fast today, have determined some of the issues of past and outside in the present, particularly in the context of socially engaged art in both the Mainland and Hong Kong.

Initially based on a comparative study of Chinese and Euro-American art theory in the 18th and 19th centuries, this book examines how both cultures looked at their own past and their outside, i.e. what was construed as not belonging to their own cultural sphere, and how they devised new ways of adapting them into evolving cultural constructs. While the 17th century was still a time when the epistemological backgrounds of both civilizations were so profoundly different that nearly no dialogue was possible, the 18th century saw the emergence in both places of profound changes that would get them close enough to create the conditions for the beginning of a conversation. First quite superficial and taking shape mostly in the decorative arts, this process of rapprochement, while remaining chaotic and unpredictable, led to wider and more profound zones of contact throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries. Through the reinterpretations of each other’s cultural creations, these zones of contact grew wider as the conditions for globalization became more and more prevalent. Frank Vigneron observes and explores these changes through texts and the visual arts to reveal how these two civilizations, while keeping their own characteristics, managed to develop fruitful dialogues and create deeply intertwined cultures. As an example, the final chapter looks at contemporary Chinese calligraphy as an art that, even though it has no equivalent in Euro-America, successfully integrated cross-cultural theoretical elements, thus exemplifying how past and outside can combine into new artistic constructs.