AH 371 Home Page | Course Description


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Assignments Examinations Holidays

Art History 371
Chinese Painting
Spring 2012

Course Outline and Reading Assignments


Weeks 1-2. Introduction

Lectures:
  • 1/24 Overview of course
  • 1/26 Meet in Chazen Museum's Asian gallery to look at the display of Chinese paintings, in two successive groups [people with surnames from A-L come at 1:00; surnames M-Z come at 1:30]. The Asian gallery is on the second floor of the new building, toward the north side. If you have a backpack, you will need to check it downstairs in a locker, for which you'll need a quarter (but you get it back when you retrieve your items.).
  • 1/31 Materials and formats of Chinese painting
  • 2/1 Some cultural concepts and linguistic issues
Reading:
  • "Some notes on the Chinese language and how to pronounce Chinese words". Links to charts for converting between the two spelling systems, pinyin and Wade-Giles, here and here.
  • 3000 Years of Chinese Painting, pp. 1-12. [spelling system used: pinyin]
  • Silbergeld, Chinese Painting Style, pp. 5-30 (also look at the relevant plates at end). [spelling system used: Wade-Giles.]
  • Sullivan, The Three Perfections, pp. 11-70. (Assigned pages also available in Learn@UW)
  • Cahill, The Painter's Practice, 1-31. [spelling system used: Wade-Giles.] (Assigned pages also available in Learn@UW)

Week 3. Early representations of figures and landscape

Lectures:
  • 2/7 Origins of painting and pictorial design
  • 2/9 Funerary and Confucian functions of early painting
Reading:
  • 3000 Years of Chinese Painting, pp. 15-58.
  • Murray, "The Admonitions Scroll and Didactic Image of Women in Early China," Orientations v. 32 no. 6 (June 2001): 35-40. (Assigned pages also available in Learn@UW)
  • Silbergeld, Chinese Painting Style, pp. 31-39 (and relevant plates).

Week 4. Religion and esthetics

Lectures:
  • 2/14 Daoism and esthetic theory
  • 2/15 Buddhism and new roles for painting
Reading:
  • McCausland, First Masterpiece of Chinese Painting, pp. 10-31. (Assigned pages also available in Learn@UW)
  • Early Chinese Texts on Painting, pp. 18-22 (to end of paragraph, 23-28 (to mid-page), 36 ("Tsung Ping") -38 (to end of section). [uses Wade-Giles spelling] (Assigned pages also available in Learn@UW)
  • De Bary and Bloom, "The Introduction of Buddhism," in Sources of Chinese Civilization, pp. 415-421. (Assigned pages also available in Learn@UW)
  • Silbergeld, Chinese Painting Style, pp. 40-60.
  • Murray, Mirror of Morality, 37-44 (to section head), 46-49. (Assigned pages also available in Learn@UW)

Week 5. Review and First Exam

Lectures:
  • 2/21 Review
  • 2/23 First exam

Week 6. Political unification and classic modes of painting

Lectures:
  • 2/28 Figure painting in the Early and High Tang
  • 3/1 Late Tang painting and art-historical consciousness
Reading:
  • 3000 Years of Chinese Painting, pp. 59-85.
  • Murray, Mirror of Morality, 50-54 (to end of paragraph), 57 (from section head)-59. (on Learn@UW)
  • Early Chinese Texts on Painting, pp. 50 ("Chang Yen-yuan") - 52 (to end of paragraph) and 60-62 ("Brushwork"). (on Learn@UW)
  • Whitfield & Farrer, Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, browse cat. nos. 1-63.
Look at these painted Buddhist banners from Dunhuang on the British Museum website:

Week 7. Regional division and emerging forms

Lectures:
  • 3/6 Figure painting in the 10th century
  • 3/8 Landscape painting in the 10th and 11th centuries
Reading:
  • 3000 Years of Chinese Painting, pp. 87-119 (to section head).
  • Fong, Beyond Representation, pp. 34-39 (to section head). [uses Wade-Giles spelling] (on Learn@UW)
  • Fong, "Riverbank: From Connoisseurship to Art History," in Issues of Authenticity in Chinese Painting, pp. 259-290. (on Learn@UW)

Week 8. Painting at the Northern Song court

Lectures:
  • 3/13 Song emperor Huizong and the Painting Academy
  • 3/15 No class (Association for Asian Studies conference)
Reading:
  • 3000 Years of Chinese Painting, pp. 119-126 (to section head).
  • Bickford, "Emperor Huizong and the Aesthetics of Agency," Archives of Asian Art v. 53 (2002-2003): 71-104. (on Learn@UW)
  • Early Chinese Texts on Painting, pp. 134-138 (to section head). (on Learn@UW)

Week 9. Painting in Southern Song Hangzhou

Lectures:
  • 3/20 Song emperor Gaozong and political painting
  • 3/22 Poetic themes at the late Southern Song court
Reading:
  • 3000 Years of Chinese Painting, pp. 126-137.
  • Murray, Mirror of Morality, pp. 78 (from section head)-84. (on Learn@UW)
  • Lee, Exquisite Moments, pp. 19 (to last paragraph), 44-54, 68-69. 82-83, and 104-105. (on Learn@UW)
  • Cahill, The Lyric Journey, pp. 23 (from header)-32 (to end of page). [uses Wade-Giles spelling] (on Learn@UW)

Week 10. Scholar-amateur painting in the 11th through 13th centuries

Lectures:
  • 3/27 The rise of scholar-amateur (literati) painting
  • 3/29 Second exam
Reading:
  • Harrist, Painting and Private Life in Eleventh-century China, pp. 3-33 (to section head). (on Learn@UW)
  • Hearn, How to Read Chinese Paintings, pp. 38-39 (on Learn@UW); view Li Gonglin's entire scroll at the Metropolitan Museum website
  • Murck, Poetry and Painting in Song China, pp. 1-5, and 51-52 (to section head). (on Learn@UW)

***SPRING BREAK***


Weeks 11-12. The Yuan Dynasty - China under Mongol rule

Lectures:
  • 4/10 Song loyalist painters in the early Yuan
  • 4/12 Scholar-artists in official service
  • 4/17 "Four Masters" of the Late Yuan
Reading:
  • 3000 Years of Chinese Painting, 138-195.
  • McCausland, Zhao Mengfu: Calligraphy and Painting for Khubilai's China, pp. 1-3, 6-9, 113-121. (on Learn@UW)
  • Weitz, "Art and Politics at the Mongol Court of China," Artibus Asiae v. 64 no. 2 (2004), pp. 243-246 (to section head). (on Learn@UW)
  • Cahill, "Some Thoughts on the History and Post-History of Chinese Painting," Archives of Asian Art v. 55 (2005), pp. 17-28 (to end of paragraph). (on Learn@UW)
  • Harrist, "A Response to Professor Cahill's 'Some Thoughts on the History and Post-History of Chinese Painting," Archives of Asian Art v. 55 (2005), pp. 35-37. (on Learn@UW)
  • Silbergeld, "The Yuan 'Revolutionary' Picnic," Ars Orientalis v. 37 (2007): 9-25. (on Learn@UW)

Weeks 12-14. The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)

Lectures:
  • 4/19 Introduction to Ming painting

    Reading:
    • 3000 Years of Chinese Painting, 197-226 (to header); 232 (from header)-235 (to end of paragraph). [Note: this chapter is particularly difficult because so many artists are included, many with little comment. Focus your efforts on those whose works are shown in class.]
  • 4/24 Female painters in the late imperial period

    Reading:
    • 3000 Years of Chinese Painting, 246-249.
    • Laing, "Women Painters in Traditional China,” in Flowering in the Shadows, pp. 81-95 [Note: this book uses Wade-Giles spelling. Skim the names.]
  • 4/26 The "Wu School" of Suzhou and paintings of famous sites and gardens

    Reading:
    • Clunas, Elegant Debts: The Social Art of Wen Zhengming, pp. 7-10 (to end of paragraph) , 93-96 (to last paragraph), and 180-181.
  • 5/1 Figure-painting and portraiture

    Reading:
    • 3000 Years of Chinese Painting, 236 (from header)-246 (to header).
  • 5/3 Dong Qichang and the canon of "Chinese painting"

    Reading:
    • The Century of Tung Ch'i-ch'ang, pp. 16 ("The Artist") -19 (to end of paragraph); and browse through plates 1-103 (on pp. 135-326). [Note: this book uses Wade-Giles spelling.]

Week 15.

Lectures:
  • 5/8 Third exam
  • 5/10 No class meeting

*** There is no final, cumulative examination in this course. ***