Art History 688 - Special Topics in Asian Art

This course surveys the art of China's modern age, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century with the treaty port cultures following the second Opium War in 1860, and ending with the 2008 Olympics. Topics include urban print cultures, modern ink painting, Sino-Japanese exchanges, arts institutions, popular and mass culture, socialist state art, experimental art and exhibitions in the Reform era, and art of the diaspora. We consider recurring questions over definitions of the avant-garde, political participation and representation, modernity and tradition, nationalism and transnationalism, urbanization and globalization, and gender and identity. All readings in translation.

Both Tokyo and Shanghai were once described as the Paris of the East? How did this split identity shape the artists and art movements that emerged in Tokyo and Shanghai? This course explores connections between the two cities as both were continually reinvented from small fishing villages to global metropolises over the late 18th to the 21st centuries. We look at early modern urban culture in prints, consumerism and the Modern Girl /New Woman, design and popular culture, and the role of avant-gardes in political movements. In order to understand the role of the city in making modernity, the sources (in translation) are interdisciplinary, combining literature, film, music, art, and architecture.