Modern Asian Art is a seminal publication focusing on the modern art of Japan, China, India, Thailand and Indonesia. Clark offers a unique viewpoint, debunking the idea of a single 'modern Asian art' and of a one-way flow of influence from West to East, presenting instead a complex ebb and flow of information and transformation, where many diverse modernisms interact. Through a series of empirical micro-histories the book proceeds to look closely at the conditions for art practice in each country. Prehistories, colonialism, transfers of information, the application of neotraditional art, arts infrastructure, types of artist, modes of exhibition, domains of practice, the avant-garde movement, the influence of nationalism, and issues of integration and autonomy are rigorously explored by the author. The dynamic realm of contemporary Asian art, which today takes the international stage, is also highlighted in later chapters. Modern Asian Art is a scholarly publication that offers specialists - academics, art historians and curators - a sophisticated reading of modern art discourses, while presenting the general reader and student of modern and contemporary Asian art with an insight into the art and recent histories of the Asian region.
Through a series of empirical micro-histories the book proceeds to look closely at the conditions for art practice in each country. Prehistories, colonialism, transfers of information, the application of neotraditional art, arts infrastructure, types of artist, modes of exhibition, domains of practice, the avant-garde movement, the influence of nationalism, and issues of integration and autonomy are rigorously explored by the author. The dynamic realm of contemporary Asian art, which today takes the international stage, is also highlighted in later chapters.
Author(s): John Clark
Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press
Year: 1998
Language: English
Pages: 344
City: Honolulu
Tags: art history, modern asian art, asian art, modernism, avant-garde, indonesia, japan, china, thailand, india
1. Introduction: A Disciplinary Field
Prologue
Approach
Problematics
Histories
Modalities
Processes
2. Prehistories
Prehistory and Modernism
The Chinese and the Jesuits
Dutch Images and Eighteenth-Century Japan
Etching in Nineteenth-Century Japan
Glass Painting in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Knowledge of European Drawing Technique and Oil Painting in Asian Contexts before the 1850s
3. The Transfer
Models of Transfer
Modalities of Transfer
Types of Culture Mediating Transfer
4. Formation of the Neotraditional
The Notion of Tradition and its Modern Inapplicability
Towards a Definition of the Neotraditional
Criteria of Modernity and the Neotraditional
Neotraditionalist Painting in India
Some Recent Thai Neotraditional Painting
5. The Aristocrats
Types of Artists
Hyakutake Kaneyuki
Ravi Varma
Comparison of Aristocratic Artists
Two other Artists in Japan
6. The Plebeians
The Plebeian Artist
The Reprographic Context
Image Genealogies
The Workshop
Imported Equipment and Technicians
New Popular Visual Discourse
Photography as Technique
Photography as Style
Popular Illustration and 'Fine Art' Prints
7. The Professional Artist
The Professional
Historical Perspectives on some Major Art Schools in Asia
The Functions of Art Schools
The Artisan Atelier and its Modern Successors
The Regime of the Professional
The Integrated System
The Social Domain of Certification
Beyond the Art World
8. Exhibition: The Salon and the Establishment
Exhibited Spectacles
Types of Artist Group Structure and Exhibition
Fine Art Societies and Other Exhibition Venues in India
The Salon Structure
Salons and Society
Towards a Tripartite Notion of Art Society
The Scale of Social Time
9. The Avant-Garde
Definition of Avant-Garde
The Concept of the Avant-Garde
Towards an Asian Avant-Garde
The Avant-Garde as an Institutional Position
Defining Associated Types of Avant-Garde
Defining Functions of Avant-Garde for the Artist
Avant-Garde Art as Criticism
10. Nationalism and Allegories of the State
Thematic Approaches
Asian Nationalism and Modern Asian Art
Some Subjects in Pictorial Representation of the National
Allegory and National Expression in Art
11. Cycles of Integration and Autonomy
The Orientalismic Miasma
Types of Relationships between the Local and the International
Features of Relationships between the Local and the International
Features across Specifically Asian Discourses
Critical Functional Values in Modernity
Style as Discourse or as a Marker of Discourse
12. The Contemporary
The Contemporary as a Site in the Absence of History
Definitions of the Contemporary in the Late 1980s
Discourse Abandoned or Circumvented
Postmodernity or the Modern Extended
Formulations of Taste
Gatekeeping
International Sites and Spectacles
Historical Forgetting and Remembering
The Heritage of the Past in the Present Discourse of Modern Asian Art
Postscript, List for Colour Plates + Black and White Images, Reproduction acknowledgements, List of interviews, Bibliography, Index
