If you can find it used for cheap like I did, the Oxford History of Art's Art in China is easy to recommend as a solid beginner's survey. Craig Clunas includes an enormous further reading section, useful maps and tables, and, of course, full-color reproductions that tie the package together. Clunas' approach, generally speaking, is an analysis of art as material culture, and the book's arrangement into chapters on spheres of artistic production and consumption (the temple, the court, the market-place, etc.) is effective and demonstrates, among other things, how an aesthetic appreciation of art objects emerged in China as well as theories of representation and subject matter. Architecture is excluded entirely, which is understandable but unfortunate. I feel, though, that intro art books like this can show and teach the reader a lot but articulate very little about what makes art powerful even when you're looking at little pictures of the most astonishing creations that one of the world's great civilizations has to offer.
The surviving [calligraphic] pieces attributed to Wang Xizhi include the small change of elite social intercourse: comments on the weather, and a note dashed off to accompany a gift of oranges, as well as longer Daoist religious texts and prose pieces commemorating social gatherings. But their very personal nature was felt in later centuries to bring the viewer and the writer closer, and it was this ideal of 'communion of spirit' with a past figure which lay at the heart of calligraphic practice.
Read this to jog my memory about the Chinese art historical timeline. I appreciate Clunas' way of dividing the book into sections that revolve around the arts' purpose of creation. For a survey class, I think this book is very effective in helping students understand the environment that stimulated various forms of art and craft, as opposed to a long, wieldy chronological timeline based on dynasties. For the complete novice or student that's taking a Chinese art history course simply to fulfill a GE, sometimes the syntax in this book comes off as overly erudite, which can make for a more difficult read.
A survey of Chinese art, mostly pictorial, extending up to the early 2000s, it has decent illustrations and serves as a good introduction to the topic.
An interesting and broad study of Chinese art from the Stone Age to the Contemporary . My one criticism would be while great in detail, its limited number pages made me long for more .
A detailed and interesting overview of Chines art from prehistory to the modern day. Highly accessible for all types of readers, and written in a lively manner.