Fifty Years of East Asian Art History in Heidelberg
Programme
Friday, 11 December 2015
Venue: Institute of East Asian Art History, Graimberg Room, Seminarstraße 4, 69117 Heidelberg
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6.15 pm
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Xuefeng Wei Zhang Daqian: Dunhuang and Beyond |
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| 7.30 pm |
Anniversary Dinner, Seminar Room 311 Shanghai cuisine, Japanese sushi, beer and soft drinks Limited number of tickets available |
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Saturday, 12 December 2015
Venue: Karl Jaspers Centre, Room 212, Voßstraße 2, Building 4400, 69115 Heidelberg
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10.30 am |
Lothar Ledderose |
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Doris Croissant |
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| 12.00 pm | Lunch | |
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1.30 pm |
Eugenia Bogdanova Postwar International Zen and Japanese Avant-Garde Calligraphy |
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Yu-Chieh Li Collecting Japanese and Chinese Art at the Museum of Modern Art |
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| 3.00 pm | Tea / Coffee Break | |
| 3.30 pm |
Sarah E. Fraser Self-Reflexivity in 18th c. Qianlong and Sachsen Court Painting |
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Lianming Wang Ten Noble Hounds: Compositional Features of Animal Painting in Qianlong's Court |
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Melanie Trede |
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| 6.00 pm |
Wrap-up Discussion The Past, the Present, and the Future of East Asian Art History |
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| 7.00 pm | Conclusion | |
Abstracts
Zhang Daqian: Dunhuang and Beyond
Xuefeng Wei
A discussion of Zhang’s Dunhuang years copying early Buddhist wall painting during the 1940s, the ensuing changes in his art practice, and its impact on his later success as an artist.
Lothar Ledderose
The 1960s were the founding years for many German universities. Many professorships were newly established, among others the chair for East Asian Art History at Heidelberg. Furthermore World Art History was set up at Heidelberg.
Heidelberg Romanticism and Prewar Aesthetics in Japan
Doris Croissant
My paper addresses the reputation of Heidelberg as center of German romanticism and philosophy in Japan. In the 1920s. the seminar of the Neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert attracted many Japanese students, among them the influential cultural historians Abe Jirô, Kuki Shuzô and Miki Kiyoshi. It stands to reason that their theories about the exceptionalism of aesthetics and art of Japan contributed greatly to the comeback of East Asian art history at Heidelberg University after World War II.
Postwar International Zen and Japanese Avant-Garde Calligraphy
Eugenia Bogdanova
In the first postwar decades, the intellectual fashion for Zen first spread rapidly to the U.S. and then Europe. It directed audiences' and artists' attention towards Japan and its philosophies and encouraged Japanese avant-garde calligraphers to highlight the religious dimensions of their art. This paper investigates the impact of postwar Zen philosophy on the cooperation between Japanese calligraphers and Euro-American abstract painters and its role in shaping their interactions.
Collecting Japanese and Chinese Art at the Museum of Modern Art
Yu-Chieh Li
Since the 1989 “global turn,” museums of modern and contemporary art in Europe and North America have developed various approaches to collecting and displaying global modernism and contemporaneity. However, none of the models can be considered flawless. As a museum with a widely acknowledged canon that represents the history of European Modernism, what kind of “global” mission can it undertake? What is the key that bridges modernisms between Asia and Europe from its New York perspective?
Self-Reflexivity in 18th c. Manchu and Sachsen Court Painting
Sarah E. Fraser
In the 18th c. artists and courts experimented with new modes of interior display amid transcultural flows of technical information for spatial and figural representation. This paper addresses the emergence of trompe l’oeil murals in the Qing Manchu court, the simultaneous development of 'Chinese rooms' in Sachsen schloss, and mirroring devices in both European and Qing palatial representations that reflect as much on the environments of display as the ostensible pictorialized subjects.
Ten Noble Hounds: Compositional Features of Animal Painting in Qianlong’s Court
Wang Lianming
In addition to exotic animals displayed in tribute paintings and naturalistic images that reproduced the Renaissance knowledge of domesticated animals, Qianlong’s court favored a special type of “animal portrait.” Similar to falcons and steeds, the emperor’s beloved hounds were depicted with subtle emotions similar to humans. Relying on Sichelbart’s album, this paper investigates the interconnectedness between animal paintings, the division of labor, and their close ties to 17th c. animal paintings of the Lower Countries.
Political Iconography in Japanese narrative paintings
Melanie Trede
The classical narrative handscroll with its alternating calligraphies and paintings was and continues to be celebrated as a Japanese art form par excellence, serving even to explain the origins of manga. Little attention has been paid to its chronological breadth after the sixteenth-century as well as its politically explosive potential until around the 1980s. This paper addresses the relevance of gender and religion, military power and regional pride as well as personal prowess subtly (or not so subtly) addressed in a select number of scrolls.
