Art in China by Craig Clunas

Product Details

Synopsis

China boasts a history of art stretching over 5,000 years and embracing a vast array of forms--objects of jade, lacquer and porcelain, painted scrolls and fans, sculptures in stone, bronze and wood, and murals. With more than 130 halftone illustrations, including almost eighty in full color, this new edition of Art in China presents the finest one-volume introduction to all forms of Chinese art. The book examines Chinese art in a variety of contexts--as it has been designed for tombs, commissioned by rulers, displayed in temples, created by the men and women of the educated elite, and bought and sold in the marketplace. Drawing on recent innovative scholarship--and newly accessible studies in China itself--Craig Clunas surveys the full spectrum of the visual arts. This updated edition contains expanded coverage of modern and contemporary art, from the fall of the empire in 1911 to the contemporary video art scene.

Library Journal

These two current overviews of Chinese art take very different approaches. Keeper of the Department of Eastern Art at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Tregear offers a chronologically organized work that covers its topic in brief survey form, using representative examples of bronzes, painting, laquerware, ceramics, jade, and stone carving. The book is so brief and the sweep is so broad that a reader not already familiar with the general outline of Chinese history and common Chinese terms may have trouble forming a coherent picture, particularly in regard to the earliest centuries covered. Significantly, Tregear leaves out the important find of a cache of figures at Shanxingdui in 1986, which has been of enormous importance in broadening the known range of cultures in ancient China. On the other hand, she provides an excellent section on 20th-century Chinese art, an area neglected by many of the standard histories. Clunas's (history of art, Univ. of Sussex) approach, by contrast, involves a more critical, theoretical inquiry into Western notions of Chinese art. He eschews a chronological arrangement in favor of thematic chapters on art at court, in the tomb, in the temple, in the life of the elite, and in the marketplace. He makes a point of including objects that have been considered masterpieces intermixed with other less well-known works. He is concerned throughout his text with issues of the historical place of art in Chinese society and with how that society evaluated various objects. The finds at Shanxingdui are mentioned, and some attention is paid to 20th-century work, though not as much in Tregear's survey. Both of these titles have merits as overviews of Chinese art and both could be used by students as well as interested lay readers. If your library can afford only one work, Clunas's is the more up-to-date, both in approach to its material and in selection of works to discuss.Kathryn Wekselman, Univ. of Cincinnati Lib., Ohio

Biography

Craig Clunas was appointed Professor of the History of Art, University of Oxford in 2007, where he is the first holder of the chair to specialize in art from Asia. He has also has worked as a curator of Chinese art at the Victoria and Albert Museum.