Chinese Painting and Visual Culture

In this course we will explore the history of painting and visuality in China. Themes include the tension between tradition and innovation in painting and aesthetic theory, the practice and politics of painting, the democratization of culture through printing, and art as medium for identity. We will treat paintings as primary documents that speak both to their content and to the social environment of their creation. We will also consider them as material objects with lives and afterlives of their own. Readings will be taken from primary sources, including colophons, theoretical writings, personal essays and artists’ biographies, as well as secondary literature. This course counts as elective credit towards the History of Art & Architecture major.