Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art(Bollingen Series)

About the Book

Chinese workers in the third century B.C. created seven thousand life-sized terracotta soldiers to guard the tomb of the First Emperor. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, China exported more than a hundred million pieces of porcelain to the West. The Chinese throughout history have produced works art in astonishing quantities - and have done so without sacrificing quality, affordability, or speed of manufacture. Lothar Ledderose takes us on a remarkable tour of Chinese art and culture to explain how artists used complex systems of mass production to assemble extraordinary objects from standardized parts or modules. These systems have deep roots in Chinese thought - in the idea that the universe consists of ten thousand categories of things, for example - and reflect characteristically Chinese modes of social organization. Originally presented as a series of Mellon lectures at the National Gallery of Art, Ten Thousand Things combines keen aesthetic and cultural insights with a rich variety of illustrations to make a profound new statement about Chinese art and society.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments vi Introduction 1 1 The System of Script 9 2 Casting Bronze the Complicated Way 25 3 A Magic Army for the Emperor 51 4 Factory Art 75 5 Building Blocks, Brackets, and Beams 103 6 The Word in Print 139 7 The Bureaucracy of Hell 163 8 Freedom of the Brush? 187 Notes 215 Bibliography 229 Glossary of Chinese Terms 252 Index 256 Picture Sources 264

About the Author :
Lothar Ledderose holds the chair of East Asian Art at the University of Heidelberg. He is an internationally renowned scholar of Chinese art and calligraphy. He has curated numerous exhibitions on Asian art including Treasures from the Forbidden City (Berlin, Vienna, 1985), The Terracotta Army (Dortmund 1991), Japan and Europe (Berlin 1993), and an exhibition of Chinese painting of the Ming and Qing dynasties (Baden-Baden 1985). His books include Mt Fu and the Classical Tradition of Chinese Colligraphy (Princeton) and Felsen and Orchideen.

Review :
Winner of the 2002 Joseph Levenson Book Prize for pre-1999 China "A truly unique book to clarify the mind about what Chinese art is now and what it was."--Choice "[A] stimulating and provocative overview of the theme of creativity in Chinese art ... This may be a book with a large and ambitious thesis, but it is also one very firmly grounded in specifics ... illustrated with a richness and aptness which is rarely seen today ... The clarity of exposition and the liveliness of the language makes each of the eight linked essays a pleasure to read on its own ... The work deserves a wide readership, drawn from anyone who thinks that creativity matters."--Craig Clunas, Burlington Magazine "While the idea that traditional China can be defined by its production processes is not entirely new, only with Lothar Ledderose's Ten Thousand Things has that argument been made comprehensively, and in terms that fully engage the social and art historian ... [A]n excellent resource for the social and art history of China."--James A. Flath, Pacific Affairs "Ledderose's book, although written to be accessible to a nonspecialist reader, should have an equally impressive impact on scholars... After reading it, one cannot but be excited about the future direction and possibilities of Chinese art history."--Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt, Journal of Asian Studies