Modern Asian Art

Description

Modern Asian Art is a seminal publication focusing on the modern art of Japan, China, India, Thailand and Indonesia. Clark offers a unique viewpoint, debunking the idea of a single 'modern Asian art' and of a one-way flow of influence from West to East, presenting instead a complex ebb and flow of information and transformation, where many diverse modernisms interact. Through a series of empirical micro-histories the book proceeds to look closely at the conditions for art practice in each country. Prehistories, colonialism, transfers of information, the application of neotraditional art, arts infrastructure, types of artist, modes of exhibition, domains of practice, the avant-garde movement, the influence of nationalism, and issues of integration and autonomy are rigorously explored by the author. The dynamic realm of contemporary Asian art, which today takes the international stage, is also highlighted in later chapters. Modern Asian Art is a scholarly publication that offers specialists - academics, art historians and curators - a sophisticated reading of modern art discourses, while presenting the general reader and student of modern and contemporary Asian art with an insight into the art and recent histories of the Asian region. Through a series of empirical micro-histories the book proceeds to look closely at the conditions for art practice in each country. Prehistories, colonialism, transfers of information, the application of neotraditional art, arts infrastructure, types of artist, modes of exhibition, domains of practice, the avant-garde movement, the influence of nationalism, and issues of integration and autonomy are rigorously explored by the author. The dynamic realm of contemporary Asian art, which today takes the international stage, is also highlighted in later chapters. 1. Introduction: A Disciplinary Field Prologue Approach Problematics Histories Modalities Processes 2. Prehistories Prehistory and Modernism The Chinese and the Jesuits Dutch Images and Eighteenth-Century Japan Etching in Nineteenth-Century Japan Glass Painting in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Knowledge of European Drawing Technique and Oil Painting in Asian Contexts before the 1850s 3. The Transfer Models of Transfer Modalities of Transfer Types of Culture Mediating Transfer 4. Formation of the Neotraditional The Notion of Tradition and its Modern Inapplicability Towards a Definition of the Neotraditional Criteria of Modernity and the Neotraditional Neotraditionalist Painting in India Some Recent Thai Neotraditional Painting 5. The Aristocrats Types of Artists Hyakutake Kaneyuki Ravi Varma Comparison of Aristocratic Artists Two other Artists in Japan 6. The Plebeians The Plebeian Artist The Reprographic Context Image Genealogies The Workshop Imported Equipment and Technicians New Popular Visual Discourse Photography as Technique Photography as Style Popular Illustration and 'Fine Art' Prints 7. The Professional Artist The Professional Historical Perspectives on some Major Art Schools in Asia The Functions of Art Schools The Artisan Atelier and its Modern Successors The Regime of the Professional The Integrated System The Social Domain of Certification Beyond the Art World 8. Exhibition: The Salon and the Establishment Exhibited Spectacles Types of Artist Group Structure and Exhibition Fine Art Societies and Other Exhibition Venues in India The Salon Structure Salons and Society Towards a Tripartite Notion of Art Society The Scale of Social Time 9. The Avant-Garde Definition of Avant-Garde The Concept of the Avant-Garde Towards an Asian Avant-Garde The Avant-Garde as an Institutional Position Defining Associated Types of Avant-Garde Defining Functions of Avant-Garde for the Artist Avant-Garde Art as Criticism 10. Nationalism and Allegories of the State Thematic Approaches Asian Nationalism and Modern Asian Art Some Subjects in Pictorial Representation of the National Allegory and National Expression in Art 11. Cycles of Integration and Autonomy The Orientalismic Miasma Types of Relationships between the Local and the International Features of Relationships between the Local and the International Features across Specifically Asian Discourses Critical Functional Values in Modernity Style as Discourse or as a Marker of Discourse 12. The Contemporary The Contemporary as a Site in the Absence of History Definitions of the Contemporary in the Late 1980s Discourse Abandoned or Circumvented Postmodernity or the Modern Extended Formulations of Taste Gatekeeping International Sites and Spectacles Historical Forgetting and Remembering The Heritage of the Past in the Present Discourse of Modern Asian Art Postscript, List for Colour Plates + Black and White Images, Reproduction acknowledgements, List of interviews, Bibliography, Index