Format:
Online-Ressource
ISBN:
0520065670
Content:
This book is about portraits that were not intended to be physical likenesses of their subjects and about why they look the way they do. It began when, reading several studies of recent archaeological finds in China, I wondered why someone in the fourth century would want to be buried with portraits of men who had lived a century earlier. I had not expected that answering this question would be so time-consuming, so intricateand so intellectually rewarding. Although I do not know who first created the composition of the Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi, studying these works of art from the other side, that of the patrons, has increased my appreciation of the artist's genius. As is proper for a rhetorical work, that creation has instructed, moved, and delighted me. I continue to be in awe of the artist's ability to translate ideas into an enduring work of visual art, precisely as Lu Ji, in his great third-century Rhyme-prose on Literature, had insisted for another art form. "The function of style is, to be sure, to serve as a prop for your ideas," he noted (in Achilles Fang's translation).
Note:
A digital reproduction is available from E-Editions, a collaboration of the University of California Press and the California Digital Library's eScholarship program
Language:
English
Keywords:
China
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Bildnis
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