14 Books BOOKS 2023 China


Four Centuries of Blue & White: The Frelinghuysen Collection by Becky Macguire, Paul Hoberton, ISBN 9781915401090, £90


Tis catalogue of the Frelinghuysen Collection considers Chinese and Japanese blue and white together. Assembled over 50 years, the collection ranges from Chinese pieces specially made for Portuguese traders in the 16th century to late 19th-century commissions for the Tai royal court. Te collection also includes numerous Chinese ceramics from the era of the European trading companies, as well as a selection of Japanese export porcelain. More than 300 pieces from the collection are illustrated and discussed in full and another 250 are illustrated in a compendium, all divided into thematic chapters that reflect the many ways Chinese and Japanese porcelain has been traded, collected and lived with around the world. Tere is a foreword by William R Sargent, former Curator of Asian Export Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, as well as an essay on Identity by the armorial porcelain authority Angela Howard. Chapters cover topics such as Faith, for the Table, Drinking and Pouring, Furnishing and Decoration, Figures and Animals, European Design, the Southeast Asian Market and Zhangzhou, the Japanese Market, objects made in Japan and finally the Tai market. With its adherence to blue and white porcelain, the collection intensifies our focus on forms, patterns and designs, gathering together wares that are often considered only separately for study while also covering areas of little recent scholarship, such as the Tai material. Alongside the compendium, there is an extensive bibliography and index. Te book will be an important reference for collectors and those interested in Asian blue-and-white ceramics.


Flowers on the River:


The Art of Chinese Flower and Bird Painting, 1368-1911 by Willow Weilan Hai, Chen Zhuo, Lin Jian, David Ake Sensabaugh, et al, China Institute, ISBN 9798218138387, $60


Te highest forms of Chinese art have always been regarded as painting and calligraphy. Together with figures and landscapes, flower-and-bird painting is one of the three main categories of traditional Chinese painting. After emerging during the Six Dynasties period, possibly in the third century, this genre thrived and endured for over a thousand years as it transformed the observation of nature into art and culture. It transmitted the traditional Chinese concept of ‘humanity in harmony with nature’, as well as a universal outlook and the wisdom of life. Tis publication includes discussions of each work in the exhibition and multiple essays that deepen our understanding and appreciation of the genre.


ASIAN ART | WINTER 2023 | Du Fu’s poetry still


resonates in a timeless manner


Bernardaud in Limoges. Zao worked in watercolour throughout his long life and this catalogue features examples from as early as 1960. But during his last years, the artist rediscovered the medium with newfound enthusiasm and turned increasingly to nature as the source of inspiration. In 2008, he gave up oil painting entirely, and for the next two years, watercolour was his primary form of expression.


China’s Hidden Century: 1796-1912 edited by Jessica Hall-Harrison and Julia Lovell, British Museum Press, ISBN 9780714124933, £45


Chinese Fans: The Untold Story by Hahn Eura Eun Kyung and Ha Young Joo, Scala, ISBN 978178551525, £14.95


Tis book introduces 71 Chinese fans, dating from the late 18th century to the end of the 20th century, which are part of the Eurus Collection in Seoul. It is the sister volume to the previously published European Fans: Te Untold Story, also showcasing some treasures from the Eurus Collection, one of the most important displays of Asian and Western fans in the world. It houses the private collection of the late Dr Hahn Kwang-ho CBE, who was one of the key contributors to the establishment of the Korea Foundation Gallery at the British Museum. Te book broadly comprises of three parts, the first chapter is an introduction to folding fans (probably the best-known type), the second chapter is a study of fixed fans (not foldable) and the last one features fans produced for export, characterized by a fusion of Chinese and European art, and which became increasingly popular in Britain from the end of the 18th Century. As early as 1700, a trader from the East India Company is said to have ordered tens of thousands of fans for his customers.


Zao Wou-Ki: Watercolors and Ceramics by Gilles Chazal, D Giles Ltd, ISBN 9781913875282, £39.95


Zao Wou-Ki (1920-2013) was the first artist of the Chinese diaspora to achieve international recognition and was one of France’s most important painters of the postwar


#AsianArtPaper | asianartnewspaper |


era and beyond. His large abstract canvases were in step with those of New York School artists of the late 1940s and 50s and emerged from the growing international impulse for non-objective painting. Zao married western vanguard painting with Chinese traditions of calligraphy and ink drawing and in doing so created a powerful personal aesthetic that was uniquely his own. Drawn largely from European private collections, the works of art in this catalogue have almost never been exhibited before and were deeply personal to Zao. Te ceramics consist of two main groups – plates produced in the late 1970s in association with Sèvres, bearing designs created by Zao expressly for this purpose, and later designs from the 2000s painted directly on vases, bowls and plates that were subsequently editioned by Maison


Cultural creativity in China between 1796 and 1912 demonstrated extraordinary resilience at a time of intense external and internal warfare and socioeconomic turmoil. Innovation can be seen in material culture (including print, painting, calligraphy, textiles, fashion, jewellery, ceramics, lacquer, glass, arms and armour, silver, and photography) during a century in which China’s art, literature, crafts and technology faced unprecedented exposure to global influences. 1796, the official end of the reign of the Qianlong emperor, is viewed as the close of the ‘high Qing’ and the start of a period of protracted crisis. In 1912, the last emperor, Puyi, abdicated after the revolution of 1911, bringing to an end some 2,000 years of dynastic rule and making way for the republic. Until recently the 19th century in China has been often defined – and dismissed – as an era of cultural decline. Built on new research from a four-year project supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and


In the Footsteps of Du Fu By Michael Wood, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 9781398515444, £16.99


Du Fu (712-70) is one of China’s greatest poets. His career coincided with periods of famine, war and huge upheaval, yet his secular philosophical vision, combined with his empathy for the common folk of his nation, ensured that he soon became revered. Like Shakespeare or Dante, his poetry resonates in a


timeless manner that ensures it is always relevant and offers something new to the modern generation. Now, in this recently released illustrated book, broadcaster and historian Michael Wood follows in his footsteps to try to understand the places that inspired Du Fu to write some of the most famous and best-loved poetry the world has known. Te themes he wrote about – friendship, family, human suffering – are universal and in our troubled times are just as relevant as they were almost 1,300 years ago.


asianartnewspaper | Asian Art Newspaper


with chapter contributions by international scholars from leading institutions sets out a fresh understanding of this important era.


Creators of Modern China:


100 Lives from Empire to Republic 1796-1912 by Jessica Hall-Harrison and Julia Lovell, Thames & Hudson, ISBN 9780500480809, £35


Both famous and surprisingly little-known women and men are brought together in eight thematic sections that bring to life the complexities of China’s path to modernity. Featured figures include the Dowager Empress Cixi, the power behind the throne of the Qing dynasty for 50 years; Yu Rongling, the aristocratic daughter of a Qing diplomat who trained in Paris with Isadora Duncan and is now seen as one of the founders of modern dance in China; Shi Yang, the most powerful woman pirate in the world, celebrated in popular culture as a female icon; the Manchu-Chinese Duanfang, a lynchpin of late Qing government and an avid collector of international art, murdered by his own troops in the 1911 Revolution that ended dynastic rule; Luo Zhenyu, a pioneer of Chinese archaeology whose discoveries and research empirically confirmed the antiquity of Chinese civilization; and many others.


China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta edited by Clarissa von Spee, Yale University Press, ISBN 9780300273243, £50


Focusing on the artistic production and cultural impact of the lower Yangzi River delta, an area known as Jiangnan, this volume features more than 200 objects from Neolithic times through the 18th century that range in media from jade, silk, prints, and paintings to porcelain, lacquer, and bamboo carvings. Essays by internationally renowned scholars cover topics such as Jiangnan in poetry, the region’s economy, silk production, southern green stoneware, landscape painting, colour print production and urban culture, Buddhism, and garden culture. Te essays and object entries consider how the region – home to such great cities as Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Nanjing, as well as hilly picturesque landscapes stretched along rivers and lakes – became the epicentre of the Chinese art scene and largely defined the image of traditional China. Presenting both iconic as well as previously unpublished works from collections around the world, this study is the first English-language consideration of a region that through the course of millennia has been one of China’s most rich, populous, fertile, and artistically influential areas.


Fortune’s Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong by Vaudine England, Corsair, ISBN 9781472157140, £25


Hong Kong has always been many cities to many people: a seaport, a gateway to an empire, a place where fortunes can be dramatically made or lost, a place to disappear and reinvent


Continued on page 16


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24