Westerners seeking to appreciate and understand Chinese art have long felt the need of a fundamental book that explains both the technical means used by Chinese artists and the traditional stylistic modes of artistic expression. In Chinese Painting Style Jerome Silbergeld addresses this need, beginning with a discussion of basic materials and methods and continuing with in-depth studies of the complex paintings created by these methods. No other work so thoroughly or systematically describes the Chinese artistic processes, ranging from the distinctively Chinese manner of handling the brush to the blending of brushlines, wash, color, and texture into a painted composition. The final chapters examine Chinese composition in terms of naturalistic representation and of abstract expression.Throughout the book, artistic problems are set against a background of Chinese history, ideas, and geography. The illustrations include drawings that reveal the principles of Chinese brushwork, together with a broad range of Chinese paintings and calligraphy. A unique feature is the precise coding of text and illustrations, by which the reader is invited to inspect the specific turn of the brush or adjustment of composition by which the artist achieves his effects.Chinese Painting Style provides a penetrating look into the formal basis of this age-old art, and one that will be useful and engaging both to the general reader and to the serious student.

Chinese painting style: Media, methods, and principles of form

Arts & Photography

Silbergeld, Jerome

Painting

University of Washington Press

Westerners seeking to appreciate and understand Chinese art have long felt the need of a fundamental book that explains both the technical means used by Chinese artists and the traditional stylistic modes of artistic expression. In Chinese Painting Style Jerome Silbergeld addresses this need, beginning with a discussion of basic materials and methods and continuing with in-depth studies of the complex paintings created by these methods. No other work so thoroughly or systematically describes the Chinese artistic processes, ranging from the distinctively Chinese manner of handling the brush to the blending of brushlines, wash, color, and texture into a painted composition. The final chapters examine Chinese composition in terms of naturalistic representation and of abstract expression. Throughout the book, artistic problems are set against a background of Chinese history, ideas, and geography. The illustrations include drawings that reveal the principles of Chinese brushwork, together with a broad range of Chinese paintings and calligraphy. A unique feature is the precise coding of text and illustrations, by which the reader is invited to inspect the specific turn of the brush or adjustment of composition by which the artist achieves his effects. Chinese Painting Style provides a penetrating look into the formal basis of this age-old art, and one that will be useful and engaging both to the general reader and to the serious student.

Chinese Painting Style: Media, Methods, and Principles of Form

History & Criticism

Mind Landscapes: The Paintings of C. C. Wang

Henry Art Gallery

Dust cover has very minor wear to the top edge. Otherwise book looks unread or used. The correct picture of the front cover is actually listed under the paperback version for some reason.

Mind Landscapes: The Paintings of C.C. Wang (Henry Art Gallery)

Li Huasheng (b. 1944) represents the first generation of artists raised and trained in the People’s Republic of China. His career spans the painting of Maoist propaganda in the 1960s, a decade of secretly studying forbidden traditional styles during the Cultural Revolution, an overnight rise from poverty to prominence during the artistic rejuvenation of Sichuan province under Deng Xiaoping, a hellish descent into political disgrace during the anti-Western campaign of 1983-1984, and a boldly pursued political rehabilitation to become Sichuan’s foremost younger artist today. All along, Li has been driven by a fearless flair for drama that is expressed not only in his remarkable paintings of teh Sichuan landscape but in a lifelong passion for Sichuan-style theater. Li’s career has been allied with that of his foremost mentor, Chen Zizhuang (1913-1976). Chen, a personal bodyguard and cultural adviser to Sichuan’s last warlord governor, was ostracized by the Communist arts administration after 1949 and died in obscurity, but posthumously became a centerpiece of the revival of traditional arts in Sichuan under the influence of Deng Xiaoping. Since the advent of socialism in China, no mainland Chinese artist has dared expose his life in detail. As a result, little is known outside China of how artistic life is lived or of the system that regulates it. In exploring the lives of Li Huasheng and Chen Zizhuang, Contradictions reveals for the first time both the details and the character of artistic life in socialist China. Particular attention is given to the various forms of patronage that shaped these artists’ options: state patronage, a monopoly that has been regulated by associations, academies, exhibition halls, and publication houses in conformity with Communist party ideology; commercial patronage, in which painting serves as a form of currency in the exchange of private services and personal favors; protective patronage, provided by the political elite in exchange for art and artistic companionship; and spiritual patronage, provided by Daoist and Buddhist temples that share the artist’s passion for individual creativity and antipathy to the state. Contradictions combines art, institutional history, and extensive and uncensored interviews and correspondence with a wide range of individuals, both friends and rivals, who have shaped Li Huasheng’s career: his teachers and artistic colleagues, the leaders of Sichuan’s arts administration, the patrons ranging from army commisar to Daoist priest, the illicit love, the state managed journalist looking for a target, the state arts store manager, and the newly liberated dealers in art and artistic forgeries.

Contradictions: Artistic Life, the Socialist State, and the Chinese Painter Li Huasheng (Jackson School Publications in International Studies)

Includes a DVD with scenes from Suzhou River, The Day the Sun Turned Cold, and Good Men, Good Women As China and the West grow closer together year by year, Chinese cinema becomes increasingly Westernized and Western interest in Chinese cinema continues to grow. Hitchcock with a Chinese Face examines three recent award-winning films--one from Shanghai, one from Hong Kong, one from Taipei--concerned with the issues of developing globalization and the defense of local identity and culture. Superficially different, these films surprise Western audiences with their sophisticated cinematic skills and the depth of their engagement with Dostoevsky and Freud, Faulkner and Hitchcock. They employ double-characters, multiple identities, and radically nonlinear narrative structures and pay homage to film noir, individualizing psychodynamics never before seen in Chinese cinema and increasing tension between traditional Chinese and modern Western moral values. Jerome Silbergeld examines Suzhou River (People's Republic of China, 2000), The Day the Sun Turned Cold (Hong Kong, 1994), and Good Men, Good Women (Taiwan, 1995) in greater depth than seen in any previous study of Chinese cinema. An art historian, he explores the visuality of these films in unusual detail, taking account of the film makers' reliance on the metaphoric image in skirting Chinese film censorship. Surprising connections are drawn as Silbergeld’s arguments unfold, and his ideas spiral outward in cyclical patterns that are themselves almost cinematic in scope. Witty and insightful, Silbergeld's text relates seemingly disparate elements of three films to create a new perspective on the latest and finest Chinese-language films, on the complexities of life in China's rapidly modernizing culture, and on the universal themes of politics and betrayal, honor and pity. The book is illustrated entirely with actual frames from films, rather than with the publicity stills used in most publications about Chinese cinema. A DVD accompanies this volume, containing key scenes from each film and a full-color version of each illustration in the book.

Hitchcock with a Chinese Face: Cinematic Doubles, Oedipal Triangles, and China's Moral Voice

In the Heat of the Sun and Devils on the Doorstep are two of the finest and most honored Chinese films ever made. Body in Question is the first book to thoroughly examine these groundbreaking works and one of the first books in English to study individual Chinese films in depth.
 These two award-winning films by renowned director-actor Jiang Wen and cinematographer Gu Changwei are unsurpassed in China for their exquisite attention to realistic detail, their stylistic range, their emotional breadth, and their razor-like commentary on contemporary China. In scenes that range from hilarious to horrific, China's ruling elite and its complicated relationship with Japan are subjected to the filmmakers' ironic treatment and profound concern with social justice. In the Heat of the Sun has become unavailable, and Devils on the Doorstep has been suppressed by the Chinese government. Jerome Silbergeld gives these two important films careful and extended study in Body in Question. He uses cinema and photography, political history, anthropology and philosophy, Chinese rhetorical traditions, and concepts of justice to explore the films' visual complexity and intellectual force, providing a unique look at the artistry and pressing concerns of Chinese cinema today. An accompanying DVD includes major clips from both films.
 Body in Question will be of interest to specialists in Chinese art and culture, and anyone interested in film, Chinese politics, and Asian culture.

Body in Question: Image and Illusion in Two Chinese Films by Director Jiang Wen (Publications of the Tang Center for East Asian Art, Princeton University)

Princeton University Press

Since 1984, Chinese cinema has been the most dramatic entry onto the international film scene. China into Film is the first book to look at contemporary Chinese cinema as a visual art and to illustrate the ways in which it has been shaped by centuries of Chinese tradition. Jerome Silbergeld looks at the significance of gender roles, the strategies of film-makers in coping with state censorship, the translation of novels into films, the continuing attachment of film-makers to melodrama, and cinematic critiques of Maoism and post-Maoist culture. Abundantly illustrated with Chinese paintings as well as scenes from such internationally acclaimed films as Yellow Earth, Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern and Farewell My Concubine, China into Film reveals a cinematic form at once excitingly new and deeply imbedded in traditional Chinese visual culture.

China into Film: Frames of Reference in Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Envisioning Asia)

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Reaktion Books

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