Questions We Can Help to Answer
Instructions:
You are encouraged to choose one of the topics listed below, although with my permission you may write on a topic of your choosing if you can convince me that it is worthwhile and relevant. If you choose your own topic you must first submit, and have accepted by me, a thesis statement.
Each of the following questions involves a different set of issues in the “art historical project.” Read the questions and assess which topic best suits your interests and skills. Neither of these questions will produce a paper in which you are expected to do research outside of the textbooks or specifically assigned readings. Rather, you are to analyze the images and the texts that I have given you. The goal is to think about what has been presented; it is not to find some “right answer” from information found in another source.
Please follow standard note and bibliographic practices—those used on our textbook. If you have any doubt about these, consult Sylvan Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing About Art. You will be graded in part on how well you make your argument, so writing is very important: your ideas are indistinguishable from the manner of their presentation. Look carefully, read carefully, making notes as you do both. Think hard and develop a clear thesis that you will demonstrate with specific analysis (not description). Make an outline to ensure that your presentation is orderly and that you cover all points without repetition. Write a first draft. Print it out and then read it out loud, making corrections. Rewrite your paper, making sure that each paragraph has a clear topic sentence. Polish your prose so it is concise yet elegant.
1. Feminine Images: Themes in Chinese Culture. (a social art history topic)
In Sullivan; text books (Sullivan [S] as well as in Jessica Rawson’s [R] Mysteries of Ancient China), the authors reproduce and discuss many images of women from nearly all dynasties and in the media of sculpture as well as in graphic art. Consider the following subjects or cultural types: the virtuous lady or filial daughter, the beautiful court lady or concubine, the powerful empress or aristocrat, and the maternal religious deity.
What do images (these types of women) suggest about the roles of women in Chinese culture and society? (Also consider what we know about women from the tombs of Fu Hao, Dou Wan and Lady Xin, wife of the Marquis of Dai.) Based on the examples given here, do you see change or stasis—lack of change—in the roles of women in Chinese society? Do you see variation in female type based on the social class of the patron/viewer? In the body of your paper analyze what types of women are depicted, the patrons of these images, and, most critically, the function(s) of each art work. Because all of these images were presumably made by men, in your conclusion ask yourself if you think images made by women of women would be different? If so, how? If not, why not?
2. Chinese Creativity? (a theoretical topic)
Prof. Lothar Ledderose has recently argued (in his book Ten Thousand Things and in several articles) that Chinese conceive of creativity differently than do Westerners. Where Western tradition, beginning with Genesis in the Bible, often conceives of creativity as creation ex nihilo (from nothing) and puts a premium on those things which break the rules, overturn conventions, or “go where no man has gone before,” the Chinese tradition, Prof. Ledderose maintains, emphasizes on gradual change. The stress is on evolutionary or incremental difference in which artists add on to well-known and long-accepted styles. This approach stresses variation within a set pattern or type. In this view, Chinese creativity is an on-going process rather than one-time event.
In this paper your goal is to defend and expand on this thesis, or to argue against it. Find works in our text books that support Ledderose’s thesis. Analyze the creativity of each work in terms of the style and subject, paying attention to how they contribute to the work’s function. Each new example you analyze should expand on and deepen your thesis rather than simply reiterating it. In your conclusion, can you find examples of works that seem to demonstrate the opposite of your thesis? If so, how do you account for these?
3. [The] Art[s] of/in China: Writing Chinese Art History. (methodo-historiographic topic)
There are two basic text books on Chinese art: one is our Sullivan, The Arts of China (first written in 1967!), the other is Craig Clunas’ Art in China. (Oxford Univ. Press, 1997). These two books represent approaches that may be termed “modern” (Sullivan, The Arts of China) and “post-modern” (Clunas, Art in China). These differences are clearly expressed in the titles of the two books. They represent two very different ways of writing art history, of analyzing Chinese art, and of studying culture.
What are the respective approaches of the authors in writing an art history of China? What are their goals and their fundamental ideologies? How are these ideologies expressed in the structure and organization of each book, in the choice of objects presented, and in the analysis of those objects (what are they trying to discover through their analysis)? Answering these three questions—with a detailed analysis of each book for each question—should constitute the body of your paper. Of course you cannot analyze the entire body of each work, so choose a section germane to our class material: either “art of the tomb” chapter 1 in Clunas and chapters 2-6 in Sullivan, or Buddhist art (the first half of Clunas’ chapter 3 and chapters 6 and 7 in Sullivan). In your analysis, it may be wise to compare the two authors’ treatments of similar media, periods and subject. In your conclusion, how would you categorize the ideology and methodology of Rawson’s book?
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