Visual Culture in Shanghai, 1850s-1930s is a study of formal and informal meanings of Haipai ("Shanghai School" or "Shanghai Style"), as seen through the paintings of the Shanghai school as well as other media of visual representation. The book provides us a point of entry into the nexus of relationships that structured the encounter between China and the West as experienced by the treaty-port Chinese in their everyday life. Exploring such relationships gives us a better sense of the ultimate significance of Shanghai's rise as China's dominant metropolitan center. This book will appeal not...

The aims of this volume are to reflect on the fundamental issues in the theory and practice of connoisseurship of Chinese painting in particular and those of connoisseurship of art in general. One of the most important challenges facing art historians and museum professionals today is that graduate schools have produced art historians with serious weakness, particularly a lack of direct firsthand experience with works of art in the original. If we base our construction of art history on works of calligraphy and painting and on the inscriptions, colophons, and seal impressions that accompany...

This volume addresses questions of canon, value, historiographical interest, and large-scale historical structures as they apply to Chinese art history in the context of post-colonial studies. As the field of Chinese art history moves into postcolonial studies, institutional critique, and economic and social contextualization, it is especially important that questions of canon, value, historiographical interest, and large-scale historical structures not be left behind. The aim of this book is to examine critically the historiography of the field of Chinese painting, to assess what...

The present volume focuses on the uses of theory originating in non-Chinese places in the creation, curating, and criticism of contemporary Chinese visual culture. In the past two decades, contemporary Chinese art and film have attracted a great deal of media and academic attention in the West, and scholars have adopted a variety of approaches in Chinese film and visual studies. The present volume focuses on the uses and status of theory originating in non-Chinese places in the creation, curating, narration, and criticism of contemporary Chinese visual culture (broadly defined to include...