Art History 116 - Art & Visual Culture/East Asia

This course surveys the visual culture and art of China, Korea, and Japan. We begin with archaeological findings from the late Neolithic cultures and end with the early twentieth century transcultural encounters that formed modern art in East Asia. Emphasizing global interconnections and exchange across East Asia as well as other parts of the world, we consider how visual expression contructed a wide range of perspectives on death and the afterlife, faith and devotion, society and community, empire and governance, and the pressures of market economies. Topics include the spatial cosmologies of early tombs, the spread of Buddhist art as cosmopolitan exchange, imperial patronage of painting and architecture, elite social spaces created through calligraphy and gardens, and the depiction of urban spectacle in print culture. (Gen. Ed. AT, DG)