Asian Art and Architecture Commons^™

From The Yellow Springs To The Land Of Immortality, Sam Arkin, Georgia E. Benz, Allie N. Beronilla, Hailey L. Dedrick, Sophia Gravenstein, Alyssa G. Gubernick, Elizabeth C. Hobbs, Jennifer R. Johnson, Emily Lashendock, Georgia P. Morgan, Amanda J. Oross, Deirdre Sullivan, Margaret G. Sullivan, Hannah C. Turner, Lyndsey J. Winick, Yan Sun

Schmucker Art Catalogs

The Yellow Springs is a vivid metaphorical reference to the final destination of a mortal being and the dwelling place of a departed one in ancient China. In the writings of philosophers, historians, and poets during the long period of Chinese history, the Yellow Springs is not only considered as an underground physical locus where a grave is situated, but also an emotionally charged space invoke grieving, longing, and memory for the departed loved ones. The subterranean dwelling at the Yellow Springs is both a destination for a departed mortal being and an intermediary place to an ideal and imaginative …

Tracing The Past, Drawing The Present, Sixue Yang

Graduate School of Art Theses

The group of work, Rising Water, Floating Islands is inspired by traditional Chinese scroll landscape paintings. Such landscape paintings combine meticulous technique, compositional complexity, and tension between representation and abstraction to reveal an alternative universe that waits discovery amid our mundane existence. In “Rising Water, Floating Islands,” I explore the political and social ramifications of the ongoing cultural conflict between traditional and emergent contemporary values. By combining traditional Chinese elements and techniques with my own markings and gestural adaptation in my painting, I give the audience the opportunity to contemplate the implications of our present digital condition through traditional esthetic …

Savoring The Moon: Japanese Prints Of The Floating World, Madison B. Dalton

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Guided by the Director of the Madison Art Collection and Lisanby Museum, Virginia Soenksen,I served as the Curatorial Assistant for the Lisanby Museum’s forthcoming exhibition Savoring the Moon: Japanese Prints of the Floating World. The exhibition will highlight the Madison ArtCollection’s impressive Japanese woodblock prints in the ukiyo-e style. Ukiyo-e translates to“pictures of the floating world.” This style proliferated in Japan during the Edo period (1603 - 1868) and Meiji period (1868 - 1912), with visual themes that ranged from flora and fauna, Japanese ceremonies, kabuki actors, mythology, courtesans, and cultural pastimes. The estate of Charles Alvin Lisanby gifted over …

The Modern Formulation Of Chinese Art History And The Building Of A Nation In Early Twentieth-Century China, Chennie Huang

Dissertations and Theses

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the Chinese formulation of art history underwent dramatic changes. It moved away from the traditional narratives that did not follow a strict chronology to adopt the Western linear model which emphasizes progress and national identity. Based on the premodern tradition, the modern formulations of Chinese art history began as a political strategy for nation building amid the political upheavals, including military attacks on China that led to the end of Qing imperial rule and the beginning of the Republican era (1912-1949).

In the early 1900s, while exiled in Japan, Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873-1929), …

Exhibit Review: Empress Dowager Cixi: Selections From The Summer Palace, Hannah Norton

History in the Making

No abstract provided.

"The Chinese Animation Industry: From The Mao Era To The Digital Age", Stephanie Jones

Master's Projects and Capstones

Since the 1950’s the Chinese Animation industry has been trying to create a unique national style for China. The national style of the 1950’s and early 1960’s was one of freedom, fantasy, and creativity. With the success of “Heroic Little Sisters of the Grassland”/草原英雄小姐妹(1965), the government administration, namely Jiang Qing of the “Gang of Four”, demanded that all animation should follow specific guidelines based on Social Realism guidelines. This in turn, ushered in a new national style of animation during the Cultural Revolution(1966-1976). During this ten-year period government policies imposed strict restrictions on animators and cause a drain of creative …

The Tale Of The Tokugawa Artifacts: Japanese Funerary Lanterns At The Penn Museum, Yoko Nishimura

East Asian Studies Faculty Publications

That previously stood at the back of the quiet inner courtyard of the Penn Museum waited many years for its significance to be rediscovered. It is one of the Tokugawa lanterns that long illuminated the shogunate family’s grand mausoleums during the Edo period (1603–1868 CE) in the Zōjōji temple in Tokyo, Japan. Photographs taken around 1930 show the lanterns flanking the Museum entrance in the Stoner Courtyard. The prominent placement of these objects suggests that, in those days, the Museum acknowledged the significance of the lanterns. One of the lanterns was subsequently moved to Museum storage after suffering damage from …

Japanese-English Translation: Kitaōji Rosanjin--A Few Words For Aspiring Potters, Or Concerning The Relation Of The Person To The Work Of Art, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Translation of 「陶芸家を志す者のために：芸術における人と作品の関係について」、北大路魯山人著—a speech delivered by Japanese potter, painter, lacquer artist, and restaurateur Kitaōji Rosanjin at Alfred State University, NY in April 1954. Part of a noncommissioned work in progress: Kitaōji Rosanjin: Reflections on Pottery, Travel, and Culinary Life All rights reserved, Christopher Southward (2019). Source, Aozora Bunko (a digital archive of Japanese-language literary work in the public domain): General website: https://www.aozora.gr.jp/ Current text: https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/001403/files/55081_54778.html

From Micro To Marco: Jade Snuff Bottles In Qianlong Era, Jinpeng Wang

MA Theses

Emperor Qianlong, whose original name is Aisin Gioro Hongli, was the sixth emperor of the Qing Dynasty. Qianlong was one of the most famous emperors in Chinese history. As the word “Qianlong” means in Manchu, he was truly blessed by the god: the Qing Empire was already very strong when Qianlong came into power; meanwhile, Qianlong had a relatively stable outside environment. It allows Qianlong to be able to focus on pushing his own governing policy. Qianlong’s policy of agricultural development and tax reduction was very effective, under sixty years of reign, the empire has expanded its territory, and the …

Masks: A New Face For The Theatre, Alexi Michael Siegel

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

This study seeks to reimagine and reinvigorate modern theatre’s relationship with mask work through text-based historical research and practice-based artistic research. It focuses on three ancient mask traditions: pre- and early Hellenistic Greek theatre, Japanese Noh theatre, and Nigerian Egungun masquerades. Research on these mask traditions and recent masked productions informed the development and staging of a masked performance of Charles Mee’s Life is a Dream. The production featured sections for each of the ancient masking styles and a final section that explored masks in a contemporary theatrical style. As a whole, this creative project pulls masks out of …

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.

Text Mining In Chinese Ancient Attires, Lu Wang

Western Research Forum

Starting from the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BCE) when writing system appeared in China, clothing was recorded as symbols to denote social statuses. The hierarchical signification of clothing remained in the following dynasties until the end of imperial China in 1911. The imperial period produced twenty-five official dynastic histories with rich corpuses on the subject of attire, documenting regulations and prohibitions of detailed dress code, a subject being scarcely studied and treated with assumptions today. This research will use text mining tools to identify descriptive words of clothing that reflect Chinese hierarchal ideology from the twenty-five histories. The method is to …

The Claremont Colleges Asian Studies Faculty Research Practices, Xiuying Zou, Carrie Marsh

Library Staff Publications and Research

A study on research practice and needs for library resource and service support of Asian studies faculty at The Claremont Colleges.

Invisible Invisibility, Eugina Song

Theses and Dissertations

White America assumes its culture is the default, and Asian culture as foreign and irrelevant. I address Asian invisibility by using canvas structure as a Western framing device of painting, and make this cultural barrier visible by breaking out of the frame. Deriving from Dansaekhwa, I challenge the Western painting structure with materiality.

Curating Contemporary Japanese Art: Exhibition Catalogue Production For Hidden Landscapes: Yasuaki Onishi And Invisible Space, Emily Lawhead

Master's Projects and Capstones

In the last decade, there has been a telling increase of attention given to contemporary Asian artists exhibited in the United States and Europe. Since 2008, artists from China, Japan, South Korea, and Central Asia have been featured in exhibitions from the Venice Biennale to the Whitney Biennale, and are becoming ever more present on the Western art stage. Meanwhile, curatorial practice, once focused on the care of objects, is shifting to encompass a wider range of creative activity. Curators are taking time to engage with living artists in a collaborative setting, rather than as impartial facilitators. This capstone seeks …

Chinese Wines And Foreign Urns: Making Objects Of Lyric, Ryan Matthew Hintzman

Student Work

A 2016-2017 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Ryan Matthew Hintzman (Silliman College '17) for his essay submitted to the Department of Comparative Literature, "Chinese Wines and Foreign Urns: Making Objects of Lyric.” (Edward Kamens, Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies, advisor.)

Ryan Hintzman’s essay, Chinese Wines and Foreign Urns: Making Objects of Lyric is a work of awe-inspiring erudition, vision, and ambition. Ranging far and wide among traditional and more recent theories of the lyric and moving boldly from 8th century poems in Japanese to 19th and 20th century poems in English, Hintzman …

From Beyond The Stars: Innovation And Inspiration In Meiji Japanese Art, 1868-1912, Charles Mason, Madeleine Zimmerman, Joe Earle, Tom Wagner

Kruizenga Art Museum Exhibition Catalogs

Design by Tom Wagner. Photography by the Kruizenga Art Museum, Tom Wagner, and Curatorial Assistance/WorldBridge Art, Inc. Produced by Storming the Castle Pictures (StCP) for the Kruizenga Art Museum as a catalogue for the exhibition, "From Beyond the Stars," August 29 - December 16, 2017.

Kruizenga Art Museum Online Collection - Exhibition Gallery

Walking In The City: Koji Nakano’S Reimagining And Re-Sounding Of The Tale Of Genji, Isabella Ramos

Scripps Senior Theses

Imagined Sceneries is a work written by composer Dr. Koji Nakano of Burapha University, Thailand for two sopranos, koto, light percussion, narrations, soundscapes recorded in Kyoto, Japan in December 2015, and digital projections of Ebina Masao’s 1953 print series Tale of Genji. Imagined Sceneries’ reimagining and “re-sounding” of Heian Kyoto relies on a balance between what is imagined and what is experienced in performance. Its many elements collectively explore multiple layers of Japanese histories, soundscapes, environments, and sensibilities. Using Michel de Certeau’s concepts of the city, this thesis journeys through Nakano’s imagined spaces.

Chinese Glass Paintings In Bangkok Monasteries, Jessica Lee Patterson Phd

Art, Architecture + Art History: Faculty Scholarship

Reverse glass paintings, a form of Chinese export art, were extensively traded in the nineteenth century. Several examples are on display in prominent Thai Buddhist monasteries in Bangkok. King Nangklao of Siam, Rama III, encouraged Sino-Siamese trade that brought Chinese objects and images to nineteenth-century Siam. The ideals of accretion and abundance characteristic of Thai Buddhism and the sinophilia of Rama III facilitated the construction of “Chinese-style” Thai temples. Glass paintings with scenes of the Pearl River Delta, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, auspicious objects, and bird-and-flower compositions were installed in temples and inspired new directions in Thai mural …

How Liberal Korean And Taiwanese Textbooks Portray Their Countries’ “Economic Miracles”, Frances Chan

Student Work

A 2015-2016 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Frances Chan (Timothy Dwight College '16) for her essay submitted to the Department of History, “How Liberal Korean and Taiwanese Textbooks Portray their Countries’ “Economic Miracles”.” (Peter C. Perdue, Professor of History, advisor.)

Frances Chan’s essay “How Liberal Korean and Taiwanese Textbooks Portray their Countries’ “Economic Miracles,” is a fascinating exploration of the creation of historical memory as seen in textbooks on the history of postwar economic development in Korea and Taiwan. Drawing on her remarkable linguistic skills in both Korean and …

The Unintended Legacy Of Hellenism: The Development And Dissemination Of The Buddha Image, Chukyi Kyaping

History Honors Papers

This paper traces the development and evolution of the Buddha image from the first century CE in Gandhara to the fifth century CE in Luoyang, China and discusses the circumstances that allowed the image to adapt to different cultural environments. The emergence of the Buddha image marked a significant shift in the perception of the Buddha himself, through which Buddhism had effectively transformed from a philosophy into a religion.

Due to the syncretic nature of the Gandhari region, the Buddha image incorporated elements from multiple cultures, most notably from the Hellenistic artistic tradition. The dissemination of the Buddha image, traced …

Remembering Vietnam War Veterans: Interpreting History Through New Orleans Monuments And Memorials, Catherine Bourg Haws

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This thesis is concerned with the question of how America’s citizen soldiers are remembered and how their services can be interpreted through monuments and memorials. The paper discusses the concept of memory and the functions of memorialization. It explores whether and how monuments and memorials portray the difficulties, hardships, horror, costs, and consequences of armed combat. The political motivations behind the design, formation and establishment of the edifices are also probed. The paper considers the Vietnam War monuments and memorials erected by Americans and Vietnam expatriates in New Orleans, Louisiana, and examines their illustrative and educational usefulness. Results reflect …

Imagination And Reality: Landscape And The Folk Culture Of Joseon Dynasty Korea, Matthew Finley

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

The Five Peaks Screen of Korea’s Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) is one of the most iconic works of its time. Nevertheless, the remarkable visual impact and cultural significance of the Five Peaks Screen evades systematic scholarly study, partly because of its generic classification as folk art. In this paper, I will resituate the Five Peaks Screen in the artistic tradition of East Asian landscape painting. When considered in the context of literati painting traditions and relevant popular landscapes, it becomes clear that the design of the Five Peaks Screen coheres to traditional aesthetics to emphasize the ability of artwork to inform …

Reviving Project:A Chinese-American Culture Exchange Project, Yushan Cassie Sun

Undergraduate Research Posters

Through art exhibitions in Beijing, China and Richmond, Virginia, Reviving project 01 aims to help promote/ revive a craft technique in Qinghai, China that is disappearing due to the urbanized surroundings.

American artist were invited to collaborate with people from Qinghai to make new pieces incorporating original crafted pieces.

The Formation Of A Sacred Political Site : The Birthplace Of Mao Zedong At Shaoshan, Zhe Dong 1988-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Between 1949 and 1966, Mao Zedong’s cult of personality swelled into a kind of secular religion in China, and his birthplace, the remote village of Shaoshan, became a sacred site and s signal representative of national commemorative culture. This study rediscovers Shaoshan’s memorial projects undertaken during this period and explores how they embody the complex interplay between art/architecture and politics and the artistic tensions between rural and urban settings in post-Revolutionary China. The text focuses on four endeavors: the historic preservation of Mao’s Old House; the urban renovation plans advanced during the Great Leap Forward; the Exhibition Pavilion constructed by …

The Art Of Being: A Study Of The Relationship Between Daoism And Art, Jessica Ortis

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Ever since the beginning of time, artists have been inspired by the religion they choose to follow. Sometimes religion was the subject, but more often than not, one had to really dig deeper into a work of art to understand the religious meaning. In my paper, I focused on contemporary Chinese artist Song Dong, who uses his artistic abilities to reflect the ideals of Daoism. Focusing on a couple of more well known works by Song Dong, one can see that he shows how one is able to move down the path to lead a more full life through the …

A Contemporary Spin On Tradition: Xu Bing's Cultural Exploration, Karen Obermeyer-Kolb

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

This paper analyzed the artwork of Xu Bing and his exploration of cultural values, specifically of language in China. Chinese is one of the oldest written languages of the world, with forms established by 1000CE. One of the purposes of classical Chinese calligraphy was self expression. The Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s brought a shift to this tradition by using large characters as propaganda. Xu Bing uses prominent symbols of culture and language, stemming from the classical teaching of his parents and his work experience during the Cultural Revolution, to convey views of society, as well as to …

A Fragmented Treasure On Display: The Turfan Textile Collection And The Humboldt Forum, Mariachiara Gasparini

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In the summer 2012, thanks to the Department of Central Asian Art of the museum and the International Dunhuang Project (IDP) at the British Library in London, UK, the so-called Turfan textile collection--gathered during the last century Prussian Turfan Royal Expeditions in the Tarim Basin--held in the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin, Germany, was finally microscopically analyzed and digitized. Except for a couple of pieces taken into account in previous studies as examples of comparison, the collection as a whole (ca. 350 pieces) has not enjoyed particular attention from scholars in the fields of Chinese or Central Asian art …

Painting Taiwan's Modern Identity, Shelley D. Hawks

2013 New England Association for Asian Studies Conference

Taiwan’s painters were dynamic contributors to a revolution in color that dramatically reshaped East Asian art. During the early twentieth century, new techniques of on-site sketching and the introduction of oil paint shook the foundations of Chinese and Japanese ink painting as it had been practiced for centuries. The Japanese colonization of Taiwan, a period when educators such as Ishikawa systematically introduced European painting methods, produced a cohort of painters in Taiwan professionally trained and committed to watercolor and oil painting. Building on international art trends like Impressionism and Fauvism, these painters developed a sense of color distinctly their own. …

Field And Factory: Chinese Revolutionary Posters, Molly E. Reynolds

Schmucker Art Catalogs

The images on display for Field and Factory, political propaganda used by the Communist Party of China during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, construct a fictitious world. In perceiving these kinds of illustrations, the audience is asked either to visualize the society in its ideal form or unify in opposition to a national enemy. In the first half of the twentieth century, before the possibilities of the television advertisement were fully realized, posters were one of the most popular forms of propaganda: cheap to produce in mass quantities and simple enough to hang in any public building. The art form’s …