Kategoria BISAC: Art >> Asian - General

The genre of Rajput painting flourished between the 16th and 19th centuries in the kingdoms that ruled what is now the Indian state of Rajasthan (place of rajas). Rajput paintings depicted the nobility and court spectacle as well as scenes from Krishna's life, the Hindu epics, and court poetry. Many Rajput kingdoms developed distinct styles, though they shared common conventions. This important book surveys the overall tradition of Indian Rajput painting, while developing new methods to ask unprecedented questions about meaning.

Through a series of in-depth studies, Aitken shows how...

Since ancient times, Hindus have expressed their love and devotion to their deities through beautiful ornamentation--dressing and decorating the deities with elaborate clothing, jewelry, and flowers. In this pioneering study of temples in Vrindaban and Jaipur, India, Cynthia Packert takes readers across temple thresholds and into the god Krishna's sacred domain. She describes what devotees see when they behold gorgeously attired representations of the god and why these images look the way they do. She discusses new media as well as global forms of devotion popular in India and abroad. The...

A remarkable group of seven bronze figures was unearthed in Kampong Cham province, Cambodia, in 2006. These sixth- and seventh-century Buddhist sculptures, two of which were Chinese, ultimately were acquired by the National Museum of Cambodia. There they became one of the first projects of the institution's Metal Conservation Laboratory, created with the assistance of the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.

Gods of Angkor celebrates not only the collaborative efforts of the Cambodian and U.S. museums to...

The tenth-century Chinese handscroll The Night Banquet of Han Xizai (attributed to tenth-century artist Gu Hongzheng), long famous for its depiction of a decadent party hosted by a government official, is used by De-nin Lee to explore how art objects are created and the many sociopolitical eras and individual hands through which they pass. By the tenth or eleventh century, and in earnest by the thirteenth, viewers of Chinese paintings lodged their responses to a work of art directly on the object itself, in the form of seals, inscriptions, and colophons. The scrawls and markings may...

Forty years after China's tumultuous Cultural Revolution, this book revisits the visual and performing arts of the period ? the paintings, propaganda posters, political cartoons, sculpture, folk arts, private sketchbooks, opera, and ballet ? and examines what these vibrant, militant, often gaudy images meant to artists, their patrons, and their audiences at the time, and what they mean now, both in their original forms and as revolutionary icons reworked for a new market-oriented age. Chapters by scholars of Chinese history and art and by artists whose careers were shaped by the Cultural...

With the advent of ukiyo-e woodblock prints, art became accessible to Japan's burgeoning merchant classes. Though a uniquely Japanese art form, the prints reveal interests in celebrity, fashion, entertainment, and travel that have a universal human appeal, regardless of time or place.

Dreams and Diversions celebrates Japanese woodblock prints with a collection of ten original essays by an international team of scholars. They draw attention to the unique and longstanding relationship between the port city of San Diego, its collectors, and the nation of Japan. The essays not...

Books on mural painting in Thailand have tended to focus on works commissioned by royalty or other elites from the centers of power. This volume is the first to examine a vibrant sub-school of painting from the rural heartland of the Northeastern Region, also known as Isan. It is a multifaceted and empathetic study of these lovely and lively paintings, and will appeal to anyone interested in the Mekong Region as well as to scholars of art history, Buddhism, and anthropology in Southeast Asia.

Carved into the mountains of northern China, the Buddhist cave temples of Xiangtangshan were the crowning cultural achievement of the sixth-century Northern Qi dynasty. Once home to a magnificent array of limestone sculptures, the caves were heavily damaged during the first half of the twentieth century, and much of the work housed there was lost to the international art market.

The exhibition" Echoes of the Past" co-organized by the University of Chicago s Smart Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution sArthur M. Sackler Gallery draws upon the findings of a multiyear research...

This book throws light on ideologies, practices and sociocultural developments currently shaping language use in Japan by departing from the more common investigation of language in private contexts and examining aspects of the language found in a range of significant public spaces, from the material (an international airport, the streets of Tokyo, the JSL classroom in Japan and courtrooms) to the electronic (television dramas, local government web pages and cyberspace).

Through its study of the language encountered in such settings, the volume provides a deeper understanding of...

The striking illustrated books, maps, and prints featured in China on Paper are some of the most notable among the printed works produced at the dawn of the era of global trade to present China to Europe and bring Western science, religion, and art to China. From a Chinese translation of the rosary to French editions of Confucian classics, from a monumental map of the world to magnificent engravings of the European pavilions built by Jesuits at the behest of the Qianlong emperor--these works on paper reveal a compelling and largely hidden history of mutual curiosity and fruitful...

Secrets of the Sacred illuminates the role of icons and relics in Buddhist writing and practice, with particular attention to the transformation of inanimate material images into potent icons animated by the divine. The earliest canonical scriptures indicate that images of the Buddha were created before the concept of transcendental identity was developed. Later writings reveal a connectedness between image and deity, and eventually art transformed into a means of creating a receptive environment for communication with the divine power and attaining wisdom. Icons became the...