HAA 18x

Introduction to the History of Chinese Art
Eugene Wang
Tuesday/Thursday 12-1:15pm
This course surveys Chinese art from antiquity to the recent avant-garde. Though the introduction follows a chronological order, it is also thematically motivated. We will see how visual artifacts_paintings, sculptures, architectural monuments_both consciously encode different pragmatic agendas and circumstantial exigencies and unconsciously betray cultural anxieties and tensions. The purpose is to enable students to look at Chinese history in visual terms and to view visual objects in historical terms, with a critique of the perception of Oriental art as static aesthetical objects suspended in a timeless vacuum.