Bøger udgivet af BIRMINGHAM MUSEUM OF ART

Through the lens of the fourseasons--spring, summer, autumn, and winter--this publication explores intimatevisual storytelling embedded within small-scale Chinese landscape paintings.Whether formatted in a popular fan shape, as an album leaf, a handscroll, hanging scroll, or a glossy ceramic, the paintings featured in this publicationwere intended to be studied up close and to be handled. Many of the paintingscombine the elevated art form of calligraphy with inscriptions that describefamous Chinese painting styles, reference poetry, provide dedications tofriends and family, and offer dates for when the works were made. KatherineAnne Paul provides an overview of visual keys that unlock the seasonality inthe paintings. Intended to enhance and intensify the viewing experience, calligraphy, an elevated artform unto itself, compliments the paintings' imagery. The intended audience of these workscould fully read the inscriptions, thereby understanding their personal, poetic, and cultural significance. Ruoxin Wang's English translations of theinscriptions provide this understanding for all readers. Richard A. Pegg delvesinto some of the deeper coded visual and cultural language of the potentially"endless combinations of painting, poetry, and calligraphy." Kayi Ho discusseshow late Qing cultural elites of Guangdong "adapted the artistic tastes andcultural practices popular in the Jiangnan area" to bring forward afluorescence of painting for this region while harnessing earlier precedents.Doris Sung poses the question, "Why are there so few women in Chinese arthistory?" and answers it in part by elevating named women painters in the lateQing period. An interview with Curator Emeritus Donald A. Wood providesinsights into institutional transparency for acquisitions and provenance forhow two extraordinary but underknown collections of Guangdong regional paintingof the late Qing period and early Republic period came to Birmingham, Alabama.Distributed on behalf of the Birmingham Museum of Art