Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China

This is the first survey of the vast array of images produced in sixteenth-century China, from conventional artworks, to wall decorations, to books, maps, images on ceramics, and even on the dress of the prosperous. Craig Clunas provides a stimulating and innovative point of entry to Chinese art history. The sixteenth century in China was a period of rapid and unprecedented economic expansion. The period also saw a parallel growth in the sphere of cultural production,as a growing class of consumers benefited from the formation of one of the classic early modern consumer societies. Pictures were a major source of consumable luxury at this time; pictures not only in the form of images classifiable as ‘art’, but also in the form of wall decoration, in books, maps, images on ceramics, and even on the dress of the prosperous. Artefacts that had previously been decorated with formal patterns now bore landscape scenes, representations of historical characters and incidents, and scenes from literature, often closely related to the world of the illustrated book. This is the first attempt to survey this vast array of images in all its aspects, providing a stimulating and innovative point of entry to Chinese history. Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China will be of interest to students of China’s history and culture and to anyone exploring theories of visuality.

Aiming to provide a stimulating point of entry to Chinese history, this work presents an introduction to the Chinese way of seeing . The 16th century was a period of rapid and unprecedented economic expansion in China. It also saw a parallel expansion in the sphere of cultural production, as a growing class of consumers of luxury goods benefited from the formation of one of the classic Early Modern consumer societies. Pictures were a major source of consumable luxury at this time - pictures not only in the form of independently circulating images classifiable as art , but also in the form of wall decoration, in books, prints and maps, in images on ceramics and lacquer boxes, on textile furnishings, and even on the dress of the prosperous. Artefacts which had previously been decorated with formal patterns, or with plants and animals only, now bore landscape scenes, representations of historical characters and incidents, and scenes from literature, often closely related to the world of the illustrated book. The wide range of pictures circulating in the rich visual culture of 16th- and 17th-century China is covered in this volume.