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Musô Soseki (1275-1351), one of the most important Zen patriarchs of the early fourteenth century in Japan, devoted his life to spreading Buddhist wisdom in his writings. As a member of the Gozan movement, he belonged to the literary elite and had a profound knowledge of Chinese und Japanese poetry. He left behind numerous calligraphies, among them those now housed in the temples Engakuji and Zuizenji in Kamakura and in Tenryûji and Saihôji in Kyoto. Musô signed many of his calligraphies with his pseudonym Bokutotsusô, which means «the wooden stutterer». Most of Musô's calligraphies are composed in cursive script and deal with themes of particular interest to him, such as nature and ...
As the Opium War unfolded in Guangdong Province, the painter Su Renshan exploded onto the art scene with a bold, paradigm-turning new voice. Yeewan Koon’s new book, A Defiant Brush, takes a fresh look at this underappreciated artist in the context of a nascent Chinese modernism. In 1839, Guangzhou had shifted from a cosmopolitan trading center with a diverse art world into a place of violence. During the following decade, one voice of discontent and defiance rang out above all others: Su Renshan. His provocative, uncompromising and sometimes ugly paintings berate Confucius for his hypocrisy. He turns his brush trace into graphic lines that mimic the printed page, and he depicts women as alternative exemplars of a moral intelligentsia. It is believed that his outspokenness prompted his father to place him in prison for filial impiety, where he probably painted his last artwork. During this turbulent period of incipient modernity, close readings of Su Renshan’s paintings within the rich contextual history of art in Guangdong Province reveal how the trauma of war prompted a reevaluation of social and political values, and indeed the moral responsibility of a scholar-artist.
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"This is an outstanding piece of work: timely, essential, authoritative, and original. Cahill throws light on obscure artists, emerging styles and regional traditions, unexplored aspects of cultural life, enigmatic iconographies, and questions of authorship and authenticity, leaving the reader richly informed and full of new ideas."--Susan Nelson, Indiana University "Cahill brings the vast body of 'vernacular' painting into the legitimate venue of art historical criticism, giving connoisseurs, viewers, and readers a more capacious and accurate grasp of the world of Chinese pictorial art."--Susan Mann, author of The Talented Women of the Zhang Family
This book reviews the competing claims that works of art belong either to a particular people and place, or to humankind.
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