Sussex University
Course Outline
THE ECONOMY OF IMAGES: VISUAL CULTURE IN CHINA 1400 –
1700
Course description
In China in the Ming dynasty
(1368-1644) many new arenas for picture-making were provided by a growing
consumer culture, including book-making and printing, maps and topographical
illustration, as well as luxury manufactures like ceramics, lacquer, textiles,
metalwork and carving. These joined
long established traditions of painting to form a rich visual culture. The course will examine the full range of
types of picture making in China at this period, and study the validity of
drawing parallels with the situation in other parts of the world at the same
time.
No prior knowledge of Chinese
history or art is assumed
TOPICS AND READINGS
Each session will look at the
biographies of two figures from the Ming period, usually from L. Carrington
Goodrich and Chaoying Fang eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography, 2 vols, 1976
[DMB], A.W. Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, 1970 [ECCP] or The
MacMillan Dictionary of Art [MDA], reference books which never leave the
library. It is essential that everyone
come to class having as a bare minimum read these two biographies. Further reading is given below. Make full and imaginative use of the
library’s resources - remember that the general books may well have extensive
sections on individual artists. Use the
indexes of books. Try following up the
footnotes in what you read to find more material.
SPRING TERM
Week 1
Introduction to the course
Craig Clunas, Art in China
(Oxford, 1997)
Craig Clunas, Pictures and
Visuality in Early Modern China (London, 1997)
Timothy Brook, The Confusions
of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley, 1998)
Week 2
Art and Society in Ming China
Ts'ao Chao (DMB) and Wang Lu
(Kathlyn Liscomb, Learning from Mt. Hua: a Chinese physician's illustrated
travel record and painting theory
(Cambridge, 1993)
Sir Percival David, Chinese
Connoisseurship, The Ko Ku Yao Lun, The Essential Criteria of Antiquities (New
York, 1971)
Craig Clunas, Superfluous
Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China, (Cambridge,
1991), pp.8-74
Week 3
Court art and court artists
Chu Chan-chi/the Hsuan-te
emperor (DMB) and Tai Chin/Dai Jin (DMB)
Richard Barnhart ed.,
Painters of the Great Ming: the Imperial Court and the Zhe School (Dallas,
1993), pp.89-125
Marsha Weidner ed., Latter
Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism 850-1850 (Lawrence, Kansas, 1994),
pp.51-62
James Cahill, Parting at the
Shore: Chinese Painting of the Early and Middle Ming Dynasty (New York and
Tokyo, 1978), pp. 3-53
J.Y.S. Jang, Issues of public
service in the themes of Chinese court painting (Ann Arbor 1996), pp.94-138
Jay A. Levenson ed., Circa
1492: Art in the Age of Exploration (Washington, 1991), pp.351-362 and 428-487
Week 4
Elites
Shen Chou (DMB) and Wang Zhen
(Kathlyn Liscomb, 'A Collection of Painting and Calligraphy Discovered in the
Inner Coffin of Wang Zhen (d.1495)', Archives of Asian Art, 47 (1994): 6-34)
Chu-tsing Li ed, Artists and
Patrons: Some Social and Economic Aspects of Chinese Painting (Seattle, 1989),
pp.7-20
James Cahill, Parting at the
Shore: Chinese Painting of the Early and Middle Ming Dynasty (New York and
Tokyo, 1978)
J.M. Ma, Shen Zhou's
topographical landscapes (Ann Arbor, 1994)
Richard Edwards, The field of
stones: a study of the art of Shen Chou (1427-1509) (Washington, 1962)
Week 5
Visit to the British Museum
Week 6
Gentlemen and professionals
Wen Cheng-ming (DMB) and Chou
Ch'en (DMB)
Anne De Coursey Clapp, Wen
Cheng-ming: The Ming Artist and Antiquity (Ascona, 1974)
Richard Edwards, The Art of
Wen Cheng-ming (1470-1559) (Ann Arbor, 1976)
Anne De Coursey Clapp, The
Painting of T’ang Yin (Chicago, 1991)
Mette Siggstedt, Zhou Chen:
the Life and paintings of Ming professional artist (Kungsbacka, 1983)
Week 7
Patrons and painters
Hsiang Yuan-pien (DMB) and
Ch'iu Ying (DMB)
Kwan S. Wong, ‘Hsiang
Yuan-pien and Suchou Artists’ in Chu-tsing Li ed., Artists and Patrons: Some
Social and Economic Aspects of Chinese Painting (Lawrence Kansas, 1989): 155-8
Eight Dynasties of Chinese
Painting (Cleveland, 1980), pp.201-212
Week 8
Courtesans and ladies
Ma Shouzhen (Marsha Weidner
et al. Views from Jade Terrace: Chinese
women artists 1300-1912 (Indianapolis, 1988) and Han Ximeng (Dorothy Ko,
Teachers of the inner chambers: Women and culture in 17th century China
(Stanford, 1994)
Ellen Johnston Laing, 'Women
Painters in Traditional China', in Marsha Weidner ed., Flowering in the Shadows:
Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting (Honolulu, 1990),
pp.81-102
Lori Hagman, 'Ladies of the
Jade Studio: Women Artists in China', in Karen Petersen and J.J. Wilson eds.,
Women Artists: Recognition and reappraisal from the Early middle Ages to the
Twentieth Century (New York, 1976)
Katherine Karlitz, 'The
social uses of female virtue in late Ming editions of the Lie nu zhuan', Late
Imperial China, 12.2 (1991): 117-152
Week 9
Craftsmen and brand names
Yang Hsuan (DMB) and Lu
Zigang (Craig Clunas, 'Jade Carvers and their Customers in Ming China',
Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society, 50 (1985-86), pp.69-85 [available
in the Barlow Collection] )
Craig Clunas, Superfluous
Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China, 1991,
pp.40-74
Craig Clunas, 'Human Figures
in the Decoration of Ming Lacquer', Oriental Art N.S. 32 (1986), 177-188.
Craig Clunas, 'The Idea of Gu
Yu (Archaic Jades) in Ming and Qing Texts', in Rosemary Scott ed, Chinese
Jades, Colloquies on Art & Archaeology in Asia No 18 (London, 1997): 205-14
Week 10
Canons and canon-formers
Tung Ch'i-chang (ECCP) and Gu
Bing (Craig Clunas, Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China (1997),
pp.134-148)
Wai-kam Ho, 'Tung
Ch'i-ch'ang's New Orthodoxy and the Southern School Theory', in Christian F.
Murck ed., Artists and Traditions (Princeton, 1976), pp.113-30
Wai-kam Ho ed., The Century
of Tung Ch'i-chang 1555-1636, 2 vols (Seattle and London, 1992)
Susan Bush, The Chinese
Literati on Painting. Su Shi to Tung Ch'i-chang (Cambridge, 1971)
James Cahill, 'Confucian
Elements in the Theory of Painting', in D. Nivison and A.F. Wright eds, The
Confucian Persuasion (Stanford, 1960), 115-40
SUMMER TERM
Week 1
Printers and foreigners
Ch'eng Ta-yueh (DMB) and
Matteo Ricci (DMB)
Joseph Needham, Science and
Civilisation in China, Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 1:
Paper and Printing, by Tsien Tsuen-hsuin (Cambridge, 1985) [sections on
printing and book illustration only]
Frances Wood, Chinese Illustration
(London, 1985)
James Cahill ed., Shadows of
Mt. Huang: Chinese Painting and Printing of the Anhui School (Berkeley, 1981),
pp.25-32
Soren Edgren, Chinese Rare
Books in American Collections (New York, 1984)
R.H. Van Gulik, Erotic Colour
Prints of the Ming Period (Tokyo, 1951)
Craig Clunas, Pictures and
Visuality in Early Modern China (London, 1997), pp.172-182
Week 2
Visit to the Percival David Foundation
Week 3
Representing the Ming self
Zeng Jing and Chen Hongshou
(Anne Burkus-Chasson, 'Elegant or Common?
Chen Hongshou's Birthday Presentation Pictures and His Professional
Status', Art Bulletin, 76.2 (1994): 279-300)
Liang Baiquan, Selected
Chinese Portrait Paintings from the Nanjing Museum (Hong Kong, 1983)
Richard Vinograd, Boundaries
of the Self: Chinese Portraits 1600-1900 (Oxford, 1990), pp.1-48
John Hay, 'The Body Invisible
in Chinese Art?', in Angela Zito and Tani Barlow eds, Body, Subject and Power
in China (Chicago, 1994), pp.42-77
James Cahill, The Restless
Landscape: Chinese Painting of the late
Ming Period (Berkeley, 1971)
Week 4
Transition or disaster?
Hung-jen (DMB) & Bada
Shanren (MDA)
James Cahill, The Compelling
Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting (Cambridge MA,
1982)
Wang Fangyu & Richard
Barnhart, Master of the Lotus Garden: The Life and Art of Bada Shanren (New
Haven, 1990)
Lynn Struve, Voices from the
Ming-Qing Cataclysm , 1993
Week 5
Revision
SOME GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND
READING:
General Reference Books on China
C. Blunden and M. Elvin,
Cultural Atlas of China, 1983
W.T. De Bary, W. Chan and B.
Watson eds, Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol II, 1960
M. Dillon, Dictionary of
Chinese History, 1979
A. Herrmann, An Historical
Atlas of China, 1966
The Times Atlas of World
History
General Books on Chinese History
K.C. Chang ed., Food in
Chinese Culture (New Haven and London, 1977) [Has excellent chapter on Ming
food]
M. Ch'ien, Traditional
Government in Imperial China, 1982
Mark Elvin, The Pattern of
the Chinese Past, 1973
J.K. Fairbank, E.O.
Reischauer and E.M. Craig, China: Tradition and Transformation, 1979
J. Gernet, History of Chinese
Civilisation, 1982
R. Huang, China: A
Macro-History, 1988
C.O. Hucker, China's Imperial
Past: An Introduction to Chinese History, 1975
David Johnson, Andrew J.
Nathan and Evelyn S, Rawski eds, Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, 1985
K.S. Latourette, The Chinese;
their history and culture, 1962
J.T. Meskill et al.
Introduction to Chinese Civilisation, 1973
D. Nivison and A.F. Wright
eds., Confucianism in Action, 1959
B. Smith and W. Weng, China:
A History in Art, 1973
Some Books Specifically About the Ming period
(1368-1644)
Chu-tsing Li and James C.Y.
Watt eds, The Chinese Scholar's Studio: Artistic Life in the Late Ming Period
(New York, 1978)
C. Chang & C.H. Chang
Crisis and Transformation in 17th-century China (Ann Arbor, 1992)
Urban Life in the Song, Yuan
and Ming Dynasties (Singapore, 1994)
C.O. Hucker, The Censorial
System of Ming China, 1966
C.O. Hucker, Chinese
government in Ming times: seven studies, 1969
R. Huang, 1587, A Year of No
Significance: the Ming Dynasty in Decline, 1981
F. W. Mote and D. Twitchett
eds, The Cambridge History of China, Volume 7: The Ming Dynasty 1368-1644, Part
1, 1988, Part 2, 1998 [The first volume is straight year by year history, the
second is essays on aspects of Ming society, e.g. religion but very poor
coverage of the arts]
John Dardess, A Ming Society:
T’ai-ho County, Kiangsi, fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, 1996
Books on Chinese Literature
David Tod Roy trans., The
Plum in the Golden Vase, (Chicago, 1993) [This is a brilliant translation of
the greatest of Ming novels, and gives a lot of insight into daily life in a
wealthy merchant household]
H.C. Chang, Chinese
Literature: Popular Fiction and Drama, 1973
W. Dolby, History of Chinese
Drama, 1976
W. Dolby, Eight Chinese Plays
from the 13th Century to the Present, 1978
C. Egerton trans, The Golden
Lotus, 1972
C. Hsia, The Classic Chinese
Novel, a Critical Introduction, 1968
F.W. Mote, The Poet Kao Ch'i,
1336-1374, 1962
W. R. Nienhauser ed., The
Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, 1986
G. Whincup, The Heart of
Chinese Poetry: an Anthology of Translations, 1987
The Columbia Anthology of
Traditional Chinese Literature
Books on Chinese Painting
Three Thousand Years of
Chinese Painting (New Haven, 1998)
James Cahill, The Painter’s
Practice (New York, 1994)
Wu Hung, The Double Screen
(London, 1996)
Wen Fong, Possessing the Past
(New York, 1996) [Catalogue of a major exhibition of material from the National
Palace Museum Taipei, includes many of the works we will be looking at]
Kao Mayching, Paintings of
the Ming Dynasty from the Palace Museum (Hong Kong, 1988)
Eight Dynasties of Chinese
Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and
the Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, 1980)
Susan Bush and Christian
Murck eds, Theories of the Arts in China (Princeton, 1983)
Jessica Rawson ed., The
British Museum Book of Chinese Art (London, 1992)
Rose Kerr ed., Chinese Art
and Design (London, 1991)
Anne Farrer, 'The Brush
Dances and the Ink Sings': Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy from the British
Museum (London, 1990)
R.H. Van Gulik, Chinese
Pictorial art as Viewed by the Connoisseur (New York, 1981)
Richard Barnhart, Peach
Blossom Spring: Gardens and Flowers in Chinese Art (New York, 1983)
J. B. Harley and D. Woodward
eds, The History of Cartography, Volume 2, Book 2: Cartography in the
Traditional East and Southeast Asian societies (Chicago, 1993)
Joseph Needham, Science and
Civilisation in China, Volume 5, Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens
and the Earth (Cambridge, 1959) [sections on cartography]
Kiyohiko Munakata, Sacred
Mountains in Chinese Art (Urbana, 1991)
Artistic Theory
Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih,
Early Chinese Texts on Painting (Cambridge, MA, 1985)
A. Murck and Wen Fong eds.,
Words and Images: Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy and Painting (Princeton, 1991)
Lin Yu-tang, The Chinese
Theory of Art, 1967
Osvald Siren, The Chinese on
the Art of Painting: translations and comments (New York, 1963)
Christian F. Murck ed.,
Artists and Traditions: Uses of the Past in Chinese Culture (Princeton, 1976)
Books on Ming arts other than painting
Craig Clunas, 'Books and
Things; Ming Literary Culture and Material Culture', in Frances Wood ed.,
Chinese Studies, British Library Occasional papers 10 (London, 1988),
pp.136-43.
Shelagh Vainker, Chinese
Pottery and Porcelain: from prehistory to the present day (London, 1991)
Michael Butler, Margaret
Medley and Stephen Little, Seventeenth-century Chinese Porcelain from the
Butler Family Collection (Alexandria, 1990)
Stephen Little, Chinese
Ceramics of the Transitional Period: 1620-1683 (New York, 1983)
Susanne Valenstein, A
handbook of Chinese Ceramics (New York, 1989)
Derek Clifford, Chinese
Carved Lacquer (London, 1992)
Regina Krahl & Brian
Morgan, From Image to Conformity: Chinese lacquer from the 13th to the 16th
century (London, 1989)
Hu Shih-chang, 2,000 Years of
Chinese Lacquer (Hong Kong, 1993)
National Palace Museum,
Exhibition of Tapestry (Taipei, 1989)
Rose Kerr, Later Chinese
Bronzes (London, 1990)
V.M Garrett ed., Heaven’s
Embroidered Cloths: one thousand years of Chinese textiles (Hong Kong, 1995)
Pronunciation hints for Chinese names written in the
pinyin system:
X, pronounce like an `s'
Q, pronounce like `ch'
Zh, pronounce like `j' as in
`jam'
SO:- Xiang, say `See-ang';
Qin, say `chin'; Zhou, say `joe'.