Visual and Material Cultures in Middle Period China: (137 Sinica Leidensia)

Eight studies examine key features of Chinese visual and material cultures, ranging from tomb design, metalware, ceramic pillows, and bronze mirrors, to printed illustrations, calligraphic rubbings, colophons, and paintings on Buddhist, landscape, and narrative themes. Questions addressed include how artists and artisans made their works, the ways both popular literature and market forces could shape ways of looking, and how practices and imagery spread across regions. The authors connect visual materials to funeral and religious practices, drama, poetry, literati life, travel, and trade, showing ways visual images and practices reflected, adapted to, and reproduced the culture and society around them. Readers will gain a stronger appreciation of the richness of the visual and material cultures of Middle Period China.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments vii List of Illustrations viii List of Contributors xiv Introduction Patricia Buckley Ebrey and Shih-shan Susan Huang Part 1: Making Art in Funeral and Ritual Contexts 1 Modular Design of Tombs in Song and Jin North China - Fei Deng 2 Visualizing Ritual in Southern Song Buddhist Painting - Phillip E. Bloom Part 2: Setting a Scene 3 Dreams, Spirits, and Romantic Encounters in Jin and Yuan Theatrical Pictures - Fan Jeremy Zhang 4 The Ten Views of West Lake - Xiaolin Duan Part 3: Appreciating the Written Word 5 A Forgery and the Pursuit of the Authentic Wang Xizhi - Hui-Wen Lu 6 Zhu Xi’s Colophons on Handwritten Documents - Patricia Buckley Ebrey Part 4: Cross-Cultural Transfers 7 Paintings of Birds by Basins - Jie Liu 8 Chinese Objects Recovered from Sutra Mounds in Japan, 1000-1300 - Yiwen Li Index 319

About the Author :
Patricia Buckley Ebrey is Professor of History at the University of Washington. A specialist in Song history, her forays into Song visual and material culture include Accumulating Culture: The Collections of Emperor Huizong (2008) and Emperor Huizong (2014). Shih-shan Susan Huang is Associate Professor Art History at Rice University (PhD., Yale University). An art historian specializing in Daoist and Buddhist visual cultures, she is the author of Picturing the True Form: Daoist Visual Culture in Traditional China (2012).

Review :
"Most contributions are of striking vivacity and originality and accompanied by splendid illustrations." Barbara Hendrischke, University of Sydney, Religious Studies Review 45 (2019) 'this volume is a timely addition to the existing scholarship about visual and material cultures of China from 800 to 1400, extending our understanding of the cultural and economic dynamism during the period. Full with intriguing observations and thought-provoking syntheses, it is bound to an indispensable book which will definitely inspire future researchers on the perennial topic in Chinese and Asian history. - Hang Lin, Hangzhou Normal University, China, The Newsletter 86 (2020).