Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T18:08:14.793Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Some Fundamental Issues in the History of Chinese Painting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Max Loehr
Get access

Extract

The history of Chinese painting is a relatively new discipline. None of us who work in that discipline can as yet rely on a binding tradition, accepted methods, or even on established facts of historical significance. It is possible for several critics to arrive at surprisingly contradictory judgments about one and the same work, or sequence of works, or about the meaning of the same evidence. Our judgments, naturally, will change; the work adjudged will not. We have to come to terms with it in the end. Coming to terms, however, does not mean a compromise between opposed views or viewers. It means that the right understanding of the work or sequence in question will sooner or later prevail—that is, the right understanding of the work as a historical monument. But how is this understanding achieved? It is this seemingly simple question, the basic problem facing the historian, that I shall discuss.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , February 1964 , pp. 185 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1964

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Fiedler, Konrad, Schriften über Kunst, ed. Konnerth, Hermann (München, 1914) II, 121.Google Scholar

2 Hauser, Arnold, The Philosophy of Art History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), p. 165.Google Scholar

3 Kahler, Erich, “What is Art? An answer to Morris Weitz's ‘The Role of Theory in Aesthetics’,” ApudGoogle ScholarWeitz, Morris, Problems in Aesthetics (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1959), pp. 157–171.Google Scholar

4 Jaspers, Karl, Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (Zürich, 1949), p. 60Google Scholar; cf. Fischer Bücherei, Frankfurt/Hamburg, 1955, 1956, 1957, p. 46.

5 Hauser, , op. cit., p. 189.Google Scholar

6 Wölfflin, Heinrich, Principles of Art History, tr. Hottinger, M. D. (New York: Dover Publications, s.a. First publ. 1932, after seventh German ed., München, 1929). Cf. Hauser's critique, op. cit., Ch. IV, esp. p. 189.Google Scholar

7 Hauser, , op. cit. (n. 2 above), p. 208.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 209.

9 Ibid., p. 208.

10 Simmel, Georg, “Das Problem der historischen Zeit,” in Zur Philosophie der Kunst (Potsdam: Kiepenheuer, 1922), pp. 152–169, esp. p. 156.Google Scholar

11 Hauser, , op. cit., p. 243.Google Scholar

12 van Gulik, R. H., Chinese Pictorial Art at Viewed by the Connoisseur, Serie Orientale Roma, XIX (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1958), esp. Second Part, pp. 339 ff.Google Scholar

13 Kahler, , op. cit., p. 165.Google Scholar

14 Cf. Loehr, Max, “Chinese Paintings with Sung dated Inscriptions,” in: Ars Orientalis, IV (1961)Google Scholar, esp. Introduction, 219–229.

15 Kubler, George, The Shape of Time (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1962), p. 65.Google Scholar

16 Jo-hsü, Kuo, T'u-hua chien-wen-chihGoogle Scholar, Chüan 2:8 b; cf. Soper, Alexander C., Kuo Jo-hsü's Experiences in Painting (Washington: A.C.L.S., 1951), p. 26.Google Scholar

17 Rowley, George, Principles of Chinese Planting (Princeton, rev. ed., 1959), pp. 3 ff.Google Scholar

18 Fiedler, , op. cit. (n. 1 above), p. 131.Google Scholar

19 Cf. Paragraph I, above, and n. 2.

20 Riegl, Alois, Stilfragen (Wien, 1893)Google Scholar; idem, Die spätrömische Kunstindustrie nach den Funden in Österreich-Ungarn (Wien, 1901)Google Scholar (new edition tided Spätrömische Kunstindustrie, Wien, 1927).Google Scholar

21 A phenomenon which Gilson thought unlikely to exist; cf. Gilson, Étienne, Painting and Reality (New York: Bollingen Scries, 1957).Google Scholar