MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY EAST ASIA

ENCE IN MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY EAST ASIA

Course description:

Two central themes will run throughout the course that take into consideration new modes of mechanical reproduction and travel:i.) different ideas over time about art, artists and their role in society; and ii.) connections between “modern” and “contemporary” in relation to “art history” and “visual culture studies.”

FINAL PROJECT PROMPT

Propose an idea for an exhibition at a gallery, museum, public space, or other setting of your choice. Anchor your proposal by choosing ONE object of focus and discuss it in relation to TWO additional objects to clarify the theme you envision for the show. In fluent and grammatically correct English prose, clearly and concisely explain what is most interesting about the objects you have chosen and why you think they ought to be exhibited together. To support your proposal, use available scholarship to establish a framework for the exhibition. What are the key visual and/or material features of the objects that you want to highlight for your audience, and why? What are the central historical, artistic, social and/or political issues you want to foreground for your audience, and why? Exhibitions are often accompanied by a publication so the framework you provide in your proposal will also function as a program for further research. Pertinent non-academic sources can certainly be used (news reports, art criticism, blog entries, gossip columns, works of fiction, etc.). However, you must cite at least FIVE scholarly sources such as academic books, journal articles, and essays in edited volumes. You may choose to frame your exhibition as a critique of scholarship encountered in your research, but this is not required.

The assignment requires you to do the following:

• )  Briefly introduce your objects by indicating the makers’ names, titles, dates of production, materials, original sites of display if known, etc. Provide images of your objects, juxtaposed as you see fit on a single page if possible. Please also provide proper documentation which will allow us to locate the images (ie. museum or gallery collection, online database, book title).
• )  Include visual analyses or descriptions of your objects that draw attention to elements which are most pertinent to the theme of your exhibition and the concerns you want to highlight for your potential audience. If the site of your exhibition is important, explain why.
• )  To establish the framework of your proposed exhibition, summarize your research on the objects and related historical, artistic, social and/or political issues to demonstrate your understanding of how these have been addressed in scholarship thus far.
• )  Situate YOUR ideas for the proposed exhibition in relation to the relevant scholarship you summarized. You may choose to build on existing perspectives or explain why you feel a different perspective is needed

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Primary Documents in English Translation:

Susan Bush. The Chinese Literati on Painting: Su Shih (1037-1101) to Tung Ch’i-ch’ang (1555-1636). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971.

Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih. Early Chinese Texts on Painting. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012.

Doryun Chong, et al, ed. From Postwar to Postmodern: Art in Japan 1945-1989: Primary Documents. New York: Museum of Modern Art, dis. Duke University press, 2012.

Wu Hung, ed. Contemporary Chinese Art: Primary Documents. New York: Museum of Modern Art, dis. Duke University Press, 2010.

Osvald Siren, The Chinese on the Art of Painting: Texts by the Painter-Critics from the Han through the Ch’ing Dynasties. Mineaola: Dover Publications, 2005.

Online Resources:

Asian Art Archives

https://aaa.org.hk/en

Asian Art Collection – Online Collection

http://searchcollection.asianart.org/

British Museum – Collections Online

htt://wwwp.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=33580 07&partId=1
Freer-Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution
https://www.freersackler.si.edu/

MET Museum

https://www.metmuseum.org/

MIT Visualizing Cultures

https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/home/index.html

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

http://www.mfa.org/

FAH262H1-S 2020