----- Original Message -----
From: "John McCrone" <j.mccrone@btinternet.com>
To: <artwithbraininmind-l@pks.bu.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2000 3:00 AM
Subject: Re: evolutionary purpose in art?
> Amy Ione still seems to be criticising me for something I'm not doing -
> ignoring other cultural traditions. And it hurts all the more having been
> brought up in countries like Hong Kong and Singapore. My first hand
> experience of where East meets West was important in shaping the views I
> hold about the role of cultural evolution. And as for Chinese art, well
all
> I can say is I lived in a house full of it. My mother painted in a Chinese
> style and we had Chinese painters as friends.
Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't see anything in the piece you sent or in
your bifold Model of freewill that says anything about Chinese art or even
Chinese culture. I'm not disagreeing with the idea that art is an integral
part of cultural traditions and that art changes as traditions change.
Evolution and purpose are more complicated, as the lively discussion your
post started clearly indicates.
I do have a problem with the way you present art. You fit it into a
philosophical tradition and don't seem to have any sense of art per se
socially or on a personal level. It is not my impression that you have
actually engaged with (1) artwork on its own terms, (2) thought about how
various types of art co-exist within communities, (3) thought about how the
pictorial and iconographic traditions actually interface in the West, and
(4) considered the complex ways in which artists and society are connected
outside of the philosophical models and in a living sense. I would think
with your background you would be in a unique position to broaden the story
you present.
Perhaps I should add that I think art is meaningful, and I don't think that
the practices we have are well defined in terms of games.
> But anyway, I accept that my knowledge of art history within any cultural
> tradition is probably shallow compared to hers (my area is neuroscience
and
> human evolution). So here's a question I would be interested to hear her
> answer to.
I deleted all of your good questions so that this message will not be too
long. My field (if I have one!) is not Chinese art history, but I will do
my best to add some thoughts on areas where I think you could enlarge your
picture of Chinese art and art in general. I will also mention some books,
as I talk, that you might find useful.
The changes culturally that connect to Chinese art are so complex and are
much more than I could even begin to address. One striking change when you
look at a broad chronology of Chinese art and culture is evident with the
entry of Buddhist elements into China. For example, sculpted images before
this don't have all of the detail and elaboration that the Indian influence
added. This period of time was one of intense re-evaluation within China
and while the Chinese didn't adopt Buddhism in an Indian sense, the two
cultural dispositions are radically different, the input of Buddhist ideas
did inform how the Chinese re-defined some ontological and epistemological
issues at that time. You might head over to the British Museum or the V&A
to see some of these chronological differences, if you are not as aware of
Chinese art now as you were when you were young. At the British Museum they
have (or at least did have) the Chinese and Indian art in a large gallery so
it is easy to walk across the space and make comparisons.
Michael Sullivan has written quite a bit about the interplay of Chinese and
Western Art. His book The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art offers lots to
think about, including thoughts on Western work. For example, he talks
about Rembrandt and notes that while there is no evidence that he ever say
Japanese paintings many of his freely inked wash sketches have a very
Chinese quality to them. There is a calligraphic vitality in his clear and
precise, but yet fluid, draftsmanship.
Sullivan also has an essay entitled "Chinese Art and Its Impact on the West"
in a wonderful anthology entitled Heritage of China: Contemporary
Perspectives on Chinese Civilization. Here Sullivan points out the language
of Chinese painting is rich and varied. Some traditions are more accessible
than others and some schools are easier to appreciate. Actually, I highly
recommend this entire book. The authors do a great job of comparing how
generalized assumptions about both China and the West are misleading. One
of the authors in the book, I least I think it was this book, talks about
the myth that everyone in China is socially integrated, pointing out that
not everyone fits as well as we are often led to believe. Aside from the
well known position of women in China (or lack thereof) there are other
realities people have to deal with that make them not quite fit the
community image. The point they make is that things like death and disease
can rob one of parents, children, a spouse, etc. and the Chinese framework
doesn't really give them an adequate place if they end up oddly positioned,
to oversimplify, as ususal.
Probably the best place to start, however, is with Views of Difference:
Different Views of Art, edited by Catherine King. I actually bought this
book when I was in London last summer, so I'm sure you can get a copy
easily. There is a Case Study entitled "What about Chinese Art?" by Craig
Clunas that focuses on painting. Here too you can find solid comparisons
with Western ideas and approaches. He also talks about how art that doesn't
fit within the Chinese canon, so to speak, is generally not considered
because no one knows what to do with it. By no one he means in China or the
West.
Finally, just to give you a work with a more classical type of focus, James
Cahill wrote a book entitled The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in
Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting in which in talks about what he terms
the 'self-conscious' age in Chinese painting. He talks about how the late
Ming and early Ch'ing situation was a time of intense change and the issues
re-directed some artists and pushed others more firmly toward older,
established ways. Cahill also says that one can easily miss the differences
from painting to painting if one does not look closely, just as a visitor to
a European exhibition of work ranging from Italian primitives to Picasso
might miss nuances in pictorial forms and techniques.
> What does Ione or anyone else feel about this generalised picture? Doesn't
> Chinese art mirror the distinguishing particulars of Chinese culture (and
> indeed the Chinese model of mind)?
I copied some images onto http://users.Lmi.net/ione/temp.html to give you a
few atypical images. I will keep the page up about a week, that is why I
called it temp. I don't like randomly scanning images and then posting them
on the web.
FYI, I also included an example of how Vincent Van Gogh was influenced by
Japanese work on the web page. Your approach, as I said before, seems to
leave out the ways in which artists look at art. I'm not sure how you would
factor in this type of influence on van Gogh, just as you don't seem to
recognize that other cultures had a noticeable influence on China. By the
way, Van Gogh's work could not have been as free and expressive as it is
without the tubed paints and manufactured brushes that became available to
the artistic community in the 19th century.
Hope some of this is helpful.
Amy
References:
Cahill, James (1982). The compelling image: nature and style in seventeenth
century chinese paintings, . (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England:
Harvard University Press).
Clunas, Craig. (1999). What About Chinese Art? In C. King (Ed.), Views of
Difference: Different Views of Art (pp. 119-142). New Haven and London:
Yale University Press in association with The Open University.
Ropp, Paul S. (Ed.). (1990). Heritage of China: contemporary perspectives on
Chinese civilization. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press).
Sullivan, Michael (1989). The meeting of Eastern and Western Art. (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press).
_____________________________
Amy Ione
PO Box 12748
Berkeley, CA 94712-3748 USA
Tel: 1 510 548 2052
Fax: 1 510 548 2054
Email: ione@Lmi.net
URL: http://users.Lmi.net/ione
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