Possessing the past : treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei / Wen C. Fong, James C.Y. Watt ; with contributions by Richard M. Barnhart [and others].

Includes bibliographical references (pages 610-624) and index.

Title device: 中華瑰寶.

目錄  · · · · · · 大洋彼岸的“玉”華天寶 -- 加拿大皇家安大略博物館藏中國玉器觀感 -- 館藏中國古代玉器選粹 -- 新石器時代 -- 商周時期 -- 春秋戰國時期 -- 漢魏晉南北朝時期 -- 隋唐宋遼金元時期 -- 明代 -- 清代 -- 館藏中國古代玉器概覽 -- 捐贈者名單.

The National Palace Museum : a history of the collection / Chang Lin-sheng -- Chinese art and cross-cultural understanding / Wen C. Fong -- Jade ; The Bronze Age and the first empires / James C.Y. Watt -- The imperial cult ; Some cultural prototypes ; Monumental landscape painting ; Sung imperial portraits ; The scholar-official as artist / Wen C. Fong -- The Imperial Painting Academy / James Cahill -- Some Buddhist images / Wai-kam Ho and Wen C. Fong -- Antiquarianism and naturalism / James C.Y. Watt -- The orthodox lineage of Tao / Wen C. Fong -- Imperial portraits of the Yüan Court / Wen C. Fong and Maxwell K. Hearn -- Reunification and revival ; The artist as hero / Maxwell K. Hearn -- Imperial portraiture of the Ming Dynasty / Wen C. Fong -- The return of the academy / Richard M. Barnhart -- The literati artists of the Ming dynasty ; The expanding literati culture ; Creating a synthesis / Wen C. Fong -- Official art and commercial art / James C.Y. Watt -- The orthodox school of painting ; The individualist masters / Wen C. Fong -- The antique-elegant / James C.Y. Watt -- Imperial patronage of the arts under the Ch'ing / Wen C. Fong.

Only two major exhibitions from the fabled Chinese Palace Museum collections have been seen in the West - the first in London in 1935-36 and the second in the United States in 1961-62. These two exhibitions provided an extraordinary stimulus to the study of Chinese culture, revolutionized Asian art studies in the West, and opened the eyes of the public to the artistic traditions of Chinese civilization. Possessing the Past: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei is the publication that accompanies the third great exhibition of Chinese masterworks to travel to the West. Written by scholars of both Chinese and Western cultural backgrounds and conceived as a cultural history, the book tells the story of Chinese art from its foundations in the Bronze Age and the first empires through the rich diversity of art produced during the Sung, Yuan, Ming, and Ch'ing dynasties, contrasting China's absolutist political structure with the humanism of its artistic and moral philosophy. Synthesizing scholarship of the past three decades, the authors present not only the historical and cultural significance of individual works of art and analyses of their aesthetic content, but a reevaluation of the cultural dynamics of Chinese history, reflecting a fundamental shift in the study of Chinese art from a focus on documentation and connoisseurship to an emphasis on the cultural significance of the visual arts. National treasures passed down from dynasty to dynasty, the works of art that now form the collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, originally constituted the personal collection of the Ch'ien-lung emperor, who ruled China from 1736 to 1795. Two centuries after Ch'ien-lung ascended the dragon throne, when the Japanese invaded China in 1937, the nearly 10,000 masterworks of painting and calligraphy and more than 600,000 objects and rare books and documents - which had earlier been moved from Peking to Nanking following the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931 - were packed in crates and evacuated to caves near the wartime capital, Chungking. It was not until after World War II that the crated treasures were moved to their present home in Taiwan, where today they represent a major portion of China's artistic and cultural legacy.

The embodied image : Chinese calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection / Robert E. Harrist, Jr., Wen C. Fong ; with contributions by Qianshen Bai [and others].

Catalog of an exhibition: Art Museum, Princeton University, Mar. 27, 1999-June 27, 1999; Seattle Art Museum, Feb. 10-May 7, 2000; Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sept. 15, 2000-Jan. 7, 2001.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 401-411) and index.

Introductory Essays: Reading Chinese Calligraphy / Robert E. Harrist, Jr. -- Chinese Calligraphy: Theory and History / Wen C. Fong -- Catalogue. Early Calligraphy: Ritual and Art. The Imperial Court and Calligraphy of the T'ang Dynasty. Calligraphy of the Sung Dynasty. The Yuan Dynasty: Chinese Calligraphy under Mongol Rule. Calligraphy of the Ming Dynasty. Calligraphy of the Ch'ing Dynasty: Model-Books and Stelae. Letters from the Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties -- Essays. Texts of Taoism and Buddhism and the Power of Calligraphic Style / Amy McNair. A Letter from Wang Hsi-chih and the Culture of Chinese Calligraphy / Robert E. Harrist, Jr. Opposite Paths to Originality: Huang T'ing-chien and Mi Fu / Jay Xu. The Two Perfections: Reading Poetry and Calligraphy / Robert E. Harrist, Jr. A Quest for the Imperishable: Chao Meng-fu's Calligraphy for Stele Inscriptions / Zhixin Sun. Ming Dynasty Soochow and the Golden Age of Literati Culture / Chuan-Hsing Ho. The Aesthetics of the Unusual and the Strange in Seventeenth-Century Calligraphy / Dora C.Y. Ching. Calligraphic Couplets as Manifestations of Deities and Markers of Buildings / Cary Y. Liu. Chinese Letters: Private Words Made Public / Qianshen Bai -- The John B. Elliott Collection of Chinese Calligraphy and Painting, The Art Museum, Princeton University.

"Chinese painting, sculpture, ceramics, and other art have gradually become familiar to many Western viewers, but calligraphy, the art most valued in China, remains little known. The Embodied Image accompanies an exhibition of one of the most outstanding and comprehensive collections of Chinese calligraphy ever assembled outside Asia, the John B. Elliott Collection at The Art Museum, Princeton University.

Encompassing works of calligraphy from the fourth through the twentieth centuries, the collection illustrates the extraordinary variety of formats and styles that makes calligraphy one of the most visually exciting of all artistic traditions.".

"Reflecting the latest trends in art history, The Embodied Image carries the study of Chinese calligraphy beyond issues of style and connoisseurship to interpret this art as an integral part of Chinese culture. Nine scholarly essays written by a team of distinguished American and Chinese scholars examine the complex relationship between calligraphy and religion, politics, and literature."--BOOK JACKET.