This book examines aesthetic issues based on humanities principles and creates a theory of Chinese aesthetics from a global perspective by applying China’s traditional and cultural history to a Western theoretical framework. In particular, this book emphasizes the shared features of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, namely the unity of heaven and men, unity of nature and society, and the materialization of human feelings and humanization of material things. It also highlights the dominant role of humans in the aesthetic relationship between human and object, while placing imagery in a focal position.

This book contains the papers of a symposium on the Chinese and Western cultural traditions, with topics ranging from questions of cross-cultural hermeneutics to politics, ethical values and aesthetics.

Invaluable resource for anyone who wants to understand contemporary Chinese art, one of the most fascinating art scenes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

The Reception of Chinese Art Across Cultures is a collection of essays examining the ways in which Chinese art has been circulated, collected, exhibited and perceived in Japan, Europe and America from the fourteenth century to the twenty-first. Scholars and curators from East Asia, Europe and North America jointly present cutting-edge research on cultural integration and aesthetic hybridisation in relation to the collecting, display, making and interpretation of Chinese art and material culture. Stimulating examples within this volume emphasise the Western understanding of Chinese pictorial art, while addressing issues concerning the consumption of Chinese art and Chinese-inspired artistic productions from early times to the contemporary period; the roles of collector, curator, museum and auction house in shaping the taste, meaning and conception of art; and the art and cultural identity of the Chinese diaspora in a global context. This book espouses a multiplicity of aesthetic, philosophical, socio-cultural, economic and political perspectives, and encourages academics, students, art and museum practitioners to re-think their encounters with the objects, practices, people and institutions surrounding the study of Chinese art and culture in the past and the present.

Contemporary Chinese art is still a young field now being opened up to critical academic research. Negotiating Difference is a pioneering collection of articles which engage with contemporary Chinese art in a global context. The contributions collectively address the urgent methodological question of how to describe, contextualize and theorize artworks and artistic processes in and beyond the People's Republic of China since the end of the Cultural Revolution. The studies break new ground as they chalk out the transcultural entanglements of which art and its practices partake and which they in turn reconfigure. The book features 20 essays written by a select group of international junior and senior scholars engaged in ambitious and methodologically innovative research on contemporary Chinese art. Their multi-faceted, in part interdisciplinary approaches are complemented by four contributions by distinguished practitioners in the field, who - as art curators and critics - are located in China and explore key developments within Chinese art and the changing art scene of the last three decades.

Globalization euphoria and enthusiasm for the West are on the decline in contemporary China. Critical voices make themselves heard in artistic and cultural circles, turning towards their personal everyday lives to take stock. Their questions revolve around concrete experiences in the radical upheaval of lifeworlds, the continued significance of traditions after many of them have been thoroughly uprooted, and the paradoxes produced by the predominance of neo-liberalism. The 17 positions assembled in this volume provide a vivid illustration of such a »new thoughtfulness« in a wide variety of aspects ranging from aesthetics and art to theatre and photography.

How Chinese is contemporary Chinese art? Treasured by collectors, critics, and art world cognoscenti, this art developed within an avant-garde that looked West to find a language to strike out against government control. Traditionally, Chinese artistic expression has been related to the structure and function of the Chinese language and the assumptions of Chinese natural cosmology. Is contemporary Chinese art rooted in these traditions or is it an example of cultural self-colonization? Contributors to this volume address this question, going beyond the more obvious political and social commentaries on contemporary Chinese art to find resonances between contemporary artistic ideas and the indigenous sources of Chinese cultural self-understanding. Focusing in particular on the acclaimed artist Xu Bing, this book looks at how he and his peers have navigated between two different cultural sites to establish a third place, a place from which to appropriate Western ideas and use them to address centuries-old Chinese cultural issues within a Chinese cultural discourse.

For anyone working in aesthetics interested in understanding the richness of the Chinese aesthetic tradition this handbook is the place to start. Comprised of general introductory overviews, critical reflections and contextual analysis, it covers everything from the origins of aesthetics in China to the role of aesthetics in philosophy today. Beginning in early China (1st millennium BCE), it traces the Chinese aesthetic tradition, exploring the import of the term aesthetics into Chinese thought via Japan around the end of the 19th century. It looks back to early practices of art and craftsmanship, showing how the history of Chinese thought provides a multitude of artefacts and texts that give rise to a wide range of aesthetic creations and notions. Introducing various perspectives on traditional arts in China, including painting, ceramics, calligraphy, poetry, music and theatre, it explores those aesthetic traditions not included in “canonic” art forms, such as martial arts, rock gardening, and ritual performance. Written by Chinese, European, and American theoreticians and practitioners, this authoritative research resource enhances contemporary aesthetics by revealing the possibilities of a Chinese philosophy of art.

This book articulates a unique conception of aesthetic educational philosophy and its relation to the Chinese world, drawing on the works of the prominent contemporary Chinese philosopher Zehou Li. The book outlines an aesthetics approach to educational maturity that recognises both the contributions of Western Enlightenment ideals and Chinese traditions, paving the way for an inclusive and post-comparative philosophy. It offers a nuanced discussion of Zehou Li’s thought and how his work can be framed at the border between traditional and modern China, between China and the West. The book combines a discussion of aesthetics with educational theory and considers their combined implications for educational practice (in particular in the first-person perspectives of students, parents and teachers), in both local and global contexts. Providing a way of doing philosophy of education that carefully considers interactions and overlaps between Western and Chinese civilisation, the book will be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of educational philosophy, educational theory, and Chinese and cross-cultural philosophy.

The Making of A Modern Art World explores the artistic institutions and discursive practices prevailing in Republican Shanghai, aiming to reconstruct the operational logic and the stratified hierarchy of Shanghai’s art world. Using guohua as the point of entry, this book interrogates the discourse both of guohua itself, and the wider discourse of Chinese modernism in the visual arts. In the light of the sociological definition of ‘art world’, this book contextualizes guohua through focusing on the modes of production and consumption of painting in Shanghai, examining newly adopted modern artistic practices, namely, art associations, periodicals, art colleges, exhibitions, and the art market.