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Eulogy for Burying a Crane and the Art of Chinese Calligraphy

By Lei Xue

Eulogy for Burying a Crane (Yi he ming) is perhaps the most eccentric piece in China’s calligraphic canon. Apparently marking the burial of a crane, the large inscription, datable to 514 CE, was once carved...

Where Dragon Veins Meet

The Kangxi Emperor and His Estate at Rehe

By Stephen H. Whiteman

In 1702, the second emperor of the Qing dynasty ordered construction of a new summer palace in Rehe (now Chengde, Hebei) to support his annual tours north among the court’s Inner Mongolian allies. The Mountain...

Climate Change and the Art of Devotion

Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550-1850

By Sugata Ray

In the enchanted world of Braj, the primary pilgrimage center in north India for worshippers of Krishna, each stone, river, and tree is considered sacred. In Climate Change and the Art of Devotion, Sugata Ray...

Poetic Imagination in Japanese Art

Selections from the Collection of Mary and Cheney Cowles

By Maribeth Graybill

Assembled over the last four decades and still growing, the Mary and Cheney Cowles collection of Japanese art is one of the finest in private hands in North America. What began for Cheney Cowles as...

Mountain Temples and Temple Mountains

Architecture, Religion, and Nature in the Central Himalayas

By Nachiket Chanchani

From approximately the third century BCE through the thirteenth century CE, the remote mountainous landscape around the glacial sources of the Ganga (Ganges) River in the Central Himalayas in northern India was transformed into a...

Bronze and Stone

The Cult of Antiquity in Song Dynasty China

By Yunchiahn C. Sena

Despite China’s long tradition of venerating the past as the ultimate source of cultural authority, the discourse of antiquity prior to the Song period (960–1279) demonstrated little concern for ancient objects. With a focus on...

Creating the Universe

Depictions of the Cosmos in Himalayan Buddhism

By Eric Huntington

Winner, 2018 Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr. Prize in the Indian Humanities

Buddhist representations of the cosmos across nearly two thousand years of history in Tibet, Nepal, and India show that cosmology is a rich language for...

Flowering Plums and Curio Cabinets

The Culture of Objects in Late Chosŏn Korean Art

By Sunglim Kim

The social and economic rise of the chungin class (“middle people” who ranked between the yangban aristocracy and commoners) during the late Chosŏn period (1700–1910) ushered in a world of materialism and commodification of painting...

A New Middle Kingdom

Painting and Cultural Politics in Late Chosŏn Korea (1700–1850)

By J. P. Park

Historians have claimed that when social stability returned to Korea after devastating invasions by the Japanese and Manchus around the turn of the seventeenth century, the late Chosŏn dynasty was a period of unprecedented economic...

Illustrations of Myanmar

Manuscript Treasures of the Musée Guimet

By William Pruitt

This volume commemorates a new exhibition of Burmese artifacts at the Musée Guimet in Paris and showcases the vibrant art and manuscript traditions of Myanmar. The central pieces displayed in the exhibition were three richly...

The Art of Resistance

Painting by Candlelight in Mao’s China

By Shelley Drake Hawks

The Art of Resistance surveys the lives of seven painters—Ding Cong (1916–2009), Feng Zikai (1898–1975), Li Keran (1907–89), Li Kuchan (1898–1983), Huang Yongyu (b. 1924), Pan Tianshou (1897–1971), and Shi Lu (1919–82)—during China’s Cultural Revolution...

Indonesian Splendour / Indische pracht

Four Centuries of Fascination for the Flora of Indonesia / Vier eeuwen fascinatie voor de flora van Indonesie

By Dennis A-Tjak and Bea Brommer

Bilingual English / Dutch

Indonesia’s flora—with more than 45,000 plant varieties—is one of the most abundant in the world. Photographer Dennis A-Tjak has been making a name for himself as the portraitist of old flower varieties...

Heaven & Earth in Chinese Art

Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei

By Cao Yin. With Karyn Lai and entries by National Palace Museum curators

This publication presents some of the highest artistic achievements in Chinese history. Drawing on the exceptional collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Heaven and Earth in Chinese Art: Treasures from the National Palace...

Faith and Empire

Art and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism

By Karl Debreczeny

Faith and Empire explores the dynamic intersection of politics, religion, and art in Tibetan Buddhism. At the heart of this dynamic is the force of religion to claim political power. Covering the Tibetan, Tangut, Mongolian,...

Ambitious Alignments

New Histories of Southeast Asian Art, 1945–1990

By Stephen H. Whiteman, Sarena Abdullah, Yvonne Low, Phoebe Scott

This new volume explores the art and architecture of Southeast Asia in the postwar period. Ten essays by emerging scholars draw upon unexplored archives and works of art, bearing witness to rich local histories and...

The Social Life of Inkstones

Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China

By Dorothy Ko

An inkstone, a piece of polished stone no bigger than an outstretched hand, is an instrument for grinding ink, an object of art, a token of exchange between friends or sovereign states, and a surface...

Conflicts of Interest

Art and War in Modern Japan

By Philip Hu, Rhiannon Paget, Sebastian Dobson, Maki Kaneko, Sonja Hotwagner, and Andreas Marks

This fascinating publication showcases the Saint Louis Art Museum’s collection of Japanese military prints and related materials—one of the largest collections of such works in the world. The 1,400 objects in the collection are mostly...

Masterworks from India and Southeast Asia

By Kimberly Masteller

Spanning two millennia and the breadth of southern Asia, the thirty-seven masterworks presented here introduce the reader to the great artistic achievements of India and Southeast Asia. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is world-renowned for...

Bhupen Khakhar

You Can't Please All

By Chris Dercon, Nada Raza

Bhupen Khakhar (1934–2003) was active in India from the late 1960s. A gentle radical, his luminous paintings addressed issues of class, gender, and sexuality with sensitive, often tragicomic nuance. This publication presents a fresh take...

Image Problems

The Origin and Development of the Buddha's Image in Early South Asia

By Robert DeCaroli

This deft and lively study by Robert DeCaroli explores the questions of how and why the earliest verifiable images of the historical Buddha were created. In so doing, DeCaroli steps away from old questions of...