ART, ARCHITECTURE AND SPECTACLES IN CLASSIC CHINA

Chinese artists’ involvement with the everyday has long been overshadowed by essentializing ideas about the ‘spiritual’ and ‘philosophical’ essence of ink painting and its presumed preference for lyrical atmospheres rendered in an abbreviated, abstract manner. The history of scholar-painters’ engagement with, and inspiration from, the realities of their times thus remain to be written, but these lectures offer an entryway into this alternative narrative of Chinese painting. These lectures survey representations of, and responses to, traumatic events like dynastic transitions, natural disasters, civil wars, military aggressions, and other forms of unrest (luan). By looking at this production, we will explore how scholars took an active role in events that shaped China’s troubled modern history, how painting became an effective medium for memorializing those events, and how they created a space for personal and collective mourning. Over the course of the semester, we will interrogate a wide range of textual and visual sources to try to find answers to a dilemma that have haunted artists for centuries: what form can horror take? And can trauma be retold and shared?

Becoming familiar with primary and secondary visual and textual sources; learning how to interrogate works of art and their supportive textual documentation; learning how to critically read artists’ inscriptions and colophons; learning how to link historical materials through a range of current methodological questions; learning how to think comparatively and transchronically.

Previous knowledge of Chinese history and art history of the late imperial and modern periods is required

Paintings and woodblock prints created during the Ming-Qing transition (ca. 1640s-1680s)
The recuperation of classical literary and poetic themes to express dissent, criticism, and mourning
Representations of floods, famines, and other ecological disasters during the Qianlong and Jiaqing reigns (1736-1820)
Visual documentation of the Qing’s imperialist expansion and the glorification of war (1740s-1790s)
Visual documentation related to millenarian rebellions, including the Taiping Tianguo and its aftermath (1850s-1860s)
Chinese and Euro-American representations of the Opium Wars (1840s-1850s)
Visual material created for fundraising and charity associations in the late imperial period (19th c.)
Paintings and visual propaganda created in response to the Xinhai Revolution and the Early Republic (1910s-1920s)
Artists’ responses to the civil war and displacement during the Second Japanese War (1937-1945)

Bibliography will be distributed before class begins. All required readings will be uploaded on Moodle

Detailed guidelines for each assignment will be posted at a later date.
1. Active participation in class discussion and activities (20%)
2. Critical response to one of the two essays [max 3 pages] (15%)
a. Susan Sontag, “Looking at War: Photography’s View of Devastation and Death”
b. Boris Groys, “The Fate of Art in the Age of Terror”
3. In-class group discussion leadership and presentation on a select primary source (15%)
4. Final oral examination, date TBD (50%)

Lectures will be delivered in person, and extensive discussion will follow each lecture. All presentations will be uploaded on Moodle.

English

The lectures will be held in English with discussion in Italian and English

written and oral