What do you think?
Rate this book
Chinese Painting and Its Audiences
A history of the reception of Chinese painting from the sixteenth century to the present
What is Chinese painting? When did it begin? And what are the different associations of this term in China and the West? In Chinese Painting and Its Audiences, which is based on the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts given at the National Gallery of Art, leading art historian Craig Clunas draws from a wealth of artistic masterpieces and lesser-known pictures, some of them discussed here in English for the first time, to show how Chinese painting has been understood by a range of audiences over five centuries, from the Ming Dynasty to today. Richly illustrated, Chinese Painting and Its Audiences demonstrates that viewers in China and beyond have irrevocably shaped this great artistic tradition.
Arguing that audiences within China were crucially important to the evolution of Chinese painting, Clunas considers how Chinese artists have imagined the reception of their own work. By examining paintings that depict people looking at paintings, he introduces readers to ideal types of viewers: the scholar, the gentleman, the merchant, the nation, and the people. In discussing the changing audiences for Chinese art, Clunas emphasizes that the diversity and quantity of images in Chinese culture make it impossible to generalize definitively about what constitutes Chinese painting.
Exploring the complex relationships between works of art and those who look at them, Chinese Painting and Its Audiences sheds new light on how the concept of Chinese painting has been formed and reformed over hundreds of years.
Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
What is Chinese painting? When did it begin? And what are the different associations of this term in China and the West? In Chinese Painting and Its Audiences, which is based on the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts given at the National Gallery of Art, leading art historian Craig Clunas draws from a wealth of artistic masterpieces and lesser-known pictures, some of them discussed here in English for the first time, to show how Chinese painting has been understood by a range of audiences over five centuries, from the Ming Dynasty to today. Richly illustrated, Chinese Painting and Its Audiences demonstrates that viewers in China and beyond have irrevocably shaped this great artistic tradition.
Arguing that audiences within China were crucially important to the evolution of Chinese painting, Clunas considers how Chinese artists have imagined the reception of their own work. By examining paintings that depict people looking at paintings, he introduces readers to ideal types of viewers: the scholar, the gentleman, the merchant, the nation, and the people. In discussing the changing audiences for Chinese art, Clunas emphasizes that the diversity and quantity of images in Chinese culture make it impossible to generalize definitively about what constitutes Chinese painting.
Exploring the complex relationships between works of art and those who look at them, Chinese Painting and Its Audiences sheds new light on how the concept of Chinese painting has been formed and reformed over hundreds of years.
Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
302 pages, Hardcover
Published February 28, 2017
1 person is currently reading
77 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 27, 2019
This is not a book for those new to Chinese painting as it's not a survey, but a series of arguments that Clunas makes for how we look and have looked at Chinese paintings and how Chinese audiences might have seen them differently. After all, as he points out, what are Chinese paintings? To the Chinese, they are only paintings; what makes them Chinese? Which then begs the questions that Clunas continues asking: "Are portraits of Chinese, Chinese paintings? Are religious (Buddhist, Daoist) paintings 'Chinese' paintings? It is these sort of questions that make this one of those books one truly enjoys reading and re-reading given the reader's background. Two examples:
Chapters are devoted to such thoughtful questions as to the nature of that 'fourth' gentlemanly activity of the qin-qi-shu-hua chain -- (hua)painting. Clunas says, "Look at the paintings. Are the literati in them doing the painting, or looking at paintings--as you are now looking at a painting of a literati looking at a painting." His point is that while three of the 'Four Arts of the Scholar' are actively engaged in an activity (playing a musical instrument, playing chess, writing [calligraphy]), the reference to painting does not involve actively painting. Painting should be left to professional artisans; it is not how a true gentleman (a junzi) spends his time; he appreciates art and to do it correctly, he does it with colleagues, in a social setting.
Chapter three focuses on the emperor and how and when he appears in paintings, in which garb or settings, as well as how an emperor's taste set court standards. Most paintings for the emperor are what are known as xingletu or "pictures of enjoying pleasures". Such paintings show not only power, but also ownership. As Clunas quotes (p. 94) "There is but one Man here; and that is the Emperor. All Pleasures are made for him alone." How lucky for us that Clunas shares his pleasureful thoughts with us!
I'll stop here or I'll have to mark this review as containing 'spoilers', but I must share one of the more amusing discoveries Clunas shares with us--the five literati don’ts of displaying calligraphy or painting: “don’t show it under a light, on a rainy day, after drinking, in the presence of a vulgar person, or in the presence of a woman” (p. 76)
Chapters are devoted to such thoughtful questions as to the nature of that 'fourth' gentlemanly activity of the qin-qi-shu-hua chain -- (hua)painting. Clunas says, "Look at the paintings. Are the literati in them doing the painting, or looking at paintings--as you are now looking at a painting of a literati looking at a painting." His point is that while three of the 'Four Arts of the Scholar' are actively engaged in an activity (playing a musical instrument, playing chess, writing [calligraphy]), the reference to painting does not involve actively painting. Painting should be left to professional artisans; it is not how a true gentleman (a junzi) spends his time; he appreciates art and to do it correctly, he does it with colleagues, in a social setting.
Chapter three focuses on the emperor and how and when he appears in paintings, in which garb or settings, as well as how an emperor's taste set court standards. Most paintings for the emperor are what are known as xingletu or "pictures of enjoying pleasures". Such paintings show not only power, but also ownership. As Clunas quotes (p. 94) "There is but one Man here; and that is the Emperor. All Pleasures are made for him alone." How lucky for us that Clunas shares his pleasureful thoughts with us!
I'll stop here or I'll have to mark this review as containing 'spoilers', but I must share one of the more amusing discoveries Clunas shares with us--the five literati don’ts of displaying calligraphy or painting: “don’t show it under a light, on a rainy day, after drinking, in the presence of a vulgar person, or in the presence of a woman” (p. 76)
Displaying 1 of 1 review