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SoSe 21: Reading Between Lines and Lineages: Art Historiographies of Chinese Calligraphy

Shao-Lan Hertel

Information for students

Das Seminar findet in deutscher und englischer Sprache statt. Sprach- und Schriftkenntnisse des Chinesischen sind von Vorteil, für die Seminarteilnahme jedoch nicht obligatorisch. Die unten genannte Einführende Literatur versteht sich *zusätzlich* zu der Einführenden Literatur der Vorlesung (in Kurztiteln angegeben). Der Verlaufsplan und eine erweiterte Literaturliste des Seminars werden zu Semesterbeginn bereitgestellt. close

Additional information / Pre-requisites

The seminar is held in German and English language. Knowledge of the Chinese language is of advantage yet not mandatory for participation. The bibliographic references listed below are to be considered *in addition to* the introductory literature of the lecture (denoted in short titles). The course syllabus and extended list of readings will be provided at the beginning of the semester. close

Comments

With reference to the concurrent lecture “Arts and Histories of Chinese Calligraphy: Plural Perspectives,” the seminar is conceived as an intensive reading course expanding on issues of both thematic and methodological concern. Through the critical reading and discussion of selected texts, also with respect to their varying genres, formats, and functions as well as contexts of emergence (alongside academic publications and secondary literature, e.g., art-theoretical treatises, art-critical essays, inscriptions and seals on artworks, text translations and interpretations, exhibition catalogues), the complex richness of “Chinese calligraphy” is carved out as an idea and concept informed by diverse resonating and diverging art historiographies, therein moreover comprehensible in its quality of non-uniqueness, non-uniformity. In juxtaposing different art-historiographical approaches and positions, plural and polyvalent perspectives are opened up hereupon and highlighted prismatically. Discernable evaluative premises and aesthetic categories underlying these approaches and positions indicate alternative systems of meaning, knowledge, and judgement in art history writing; in the Chinese context of calligraphy discourse moreover manifesting variant ideologically informed identities and realities (e.g. of collective national; global; [trans-/sub-]cultural nature): oftentimes visible and readable only implicitly, “between the lines” of its manifold texts generated over different time periods and geographical spaces. The denoted “lines” of this discourse, indeed, here refer not only to the ciphers and columns of semantic texts but also the formal-visual narrative of the (brush-written, calligraphic) stroke lines themselves; therein likewise referencing the metaphorical lines, or lineages of tradition, and the genealogies of constructing and inscribing art history, including its canonizations.

The seminar is conceived in synergy with the concurrent lecture and its exemplary, case study-based approach. Within the module “Object-Based Research (East Asia),” the seminar readings furthermore provide a working basis for the concurrent project seminar to be attended, “‘Text Cultures and the Art of Writing in East Asia: Magic, Myth, and Meta-Language of the Modern Era,’ Project Seminar in Cooperation with the Museum für Asiatische Kunst in Preparation of a Thematic Exhibition at the Humboldt Forum.” close

Suggested reading

Doris Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns: Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften (Rowohlt 2006); Qianshen Bai, Fu Shan’s World: The Transformation of Chinese Calligraphy in the Seventeenth Century (Harvard University Asia Center 2003); Barrass 2002; Dora C. Y. Ching et al., eds., Character and Context in Chinese Calligraphy (The Art Museum, Princeton University Press 1999); Debon 1978; Wen C. Fong, Art as History: Calligraphy and Painting as One (Princeton University Press 2014); Fong/Harrist 1999; Fong/Ouyang 2008; Goepper 1974; Robert E. Harrist, Jr., “The New Stone Drums in Qianlong’s Empire of Replication,” Orientations 42, no.1 (2011): 52–59; Hearn 2013; Hertel 2020; Shao-Lan Hertel, “Of Kowloon’s Uncrowned Kings and True Recluses: Commemoration, Trace, and Erasure, and the Shaping of a Hong-Kong-topia from Chen Botao (1855–1930) to Tsang Tsou-choi (1921–2007),” Art Research 1 (2020): 24–35; Shao-Lan Hertel, “Tasting Antiquity in a ‘Newborn Palace of Art’: Collecting and Displaying Chinese Calligraphy at Tsinghua University Art Museum,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 18, no. 4 (July/August 2019): 23–44; Peter Hessler, Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present (HarperCollins 2006); Hopfener 2019; Birgit Hopfener, „Historische Sammlungen und Gegenwartskunst: Eine Diskussion kuratorischer Strategien“, Archiv Humboldt Lab Dahlem (2012–2015) (online); Karlsson/Przychowski 2015; Richard C. Kraus, Brushes with Power: Modern Politics and the Chinese Art of Calligraphy (University of California Press 1991); Jason C. Kuo, Discovering Chinese Painting: Dialogues with Art Historians. 2nd ed. (Kendall/Hunt 2006); Ledderose 1986; Anne Lumban Tobing, Schriftkunst in Rot und Weiß: Ku¨nstlersiegel der Ming- und Ch’ing-Zeit, unter besonderer Beru¨cksichtigung der Siegel des Chao Chih-ch’ien (1829–1884) (Steiner 2010); Amy McNair, “Engraved Calligraphy in China: Recension and Reception”, Art Bulletin 160, no. 1 (1995): 106–14; Obert 2013; Tsien 2004; Frank Vigneron, “‘Ink Art’ as Strategy for Hong Kong Institutions,” Journal for Cultural Research 21, no. 1 (2017): 92–117; Ching-Ling Wang, “Robert Van Gulik and His World of East Asian Painting and Calligraphy,” Aziatische Kunst: Publication of the Royal Asian Art Society in the Netherlands 50, no. 2 (2020): 22–25; Yen 2005. close