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Opening Kailasanatha

The Temple in Kanchipuram Revealed in Time and Space

By Padma Kaimal

Stone figures hardened by ascetic discipline and heroic effort face north in deep shadow. There they meet the gazes of the same gods and goddesses but with gentler bodies enacting grace, warmth, seduction, and marriage,...

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...

Making Kantha, Making Home

Women at Work in Colonial Bengal

By Pika Ghosh

In Bengal, mothers swaddle their infants and cover their beds in colorful textiles that are passed down through generations. They create these kantha from layers of soft, recycled fabric strengthened with running stitches and use...

What the Emperor Built

Architecture and Empire in the Early Ming

By Aurelia Campbell

One of the most famous rulers in Chinese history, the Yongle emperor (r. 1402–24) gained renown for constructing Beijing’s magnificent Forbidden City, directing ambitious naval expeditions, and creating the world’s largest encyclopedia. What the Emperor...

A Fashionable Century

Textile Artistry and Commerce in the Late Qing

By Rachel Silberstein

Clothing and accessories from nineteenth-century China reveal much about women’s participation in the commercialization of textile handicrafts and the flourishing of urban popular culture. Focusing on women’s work and fashion, A Fashionable Century presents an...

Citizens of Beauty

Drawing Democratic Dreams in Republican China

By Louise Edwards

In the early twentieth century China’s most famous commercial artists promoted new cultural and civic values through sketches of idealized modern women in journals, newspapers, and compendia called One Hundred Illustrated Beauties. This genre drew...

Yumeji Modern

Designing the Everyday in Twentieth-Century Japan

By Nozomi Naoi

The hugely popular Japanese artist Takehisa Yumeji (1884–1934) is an emblematic figure of Japan’s rapidly changing cultural milieu in the early twentieth century. His graphic works include leftist and antiwar illustrations in socialist bulletins, wrenching...

Great Qing

Painting in China, 1644-1911

By Claudia Brown

Addressing the previous lack of a comprehensive English-language study of Qing painting, art historian Claudia Brown’s account ranges from the tumultuous Ming–Qing transition to the end of imperial rule. In response to omissions in previous...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The Odyssey of China's Imperial Art Treasures

By Jeannette Shambaugh Elliot and David Shambaugh

The Odyssey of China's Imperial Art Treasures traces the three-thousand-year history of the emperor's imperial collection, from the Bronze Age to the present. The tortuous story of these treasures involves a succession of dynasties, invasion...