Art History 388 - 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.

Modern Art in East Asia - This course examines how art became modern in China, Korea, and Japan. We explore issues distinctive to the history of modernism in East Asia: the confrontation between brush-and-ink traditions and new artistic mediums such as photography and easel painting; the spread of art academies and Japanese imperialism; urban modernity and Western semi-colonialism; proletarian art movements; and postwar legacies and the creation of new avant-gardes. Throughout the course we ask: can modernity and modernism become multiple? Do histories from the periphery challenge, or reinforce, narratives of Western modernism?