Tangible whispers, neglected encounters : histories of East-West artistic dialogues, 14th-20th century / Marco Musillo.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-266).

The relationship between East and West remains a topic of burning timeliness, particularly in its political dimension. Yet, we can gain a complete understanding of the current tensions only if we consider them within a broader historical framework, spanning from art to diplomacy, from religion to ethnography. The present volume tackles precisely this complex task, offering its reader a rich mosaic of case studies and scholarly research, relating to the mutual approaches between the Euro-American ‘West’, and the Sino-Japanese ‘East’. In the first part of the book, art historian Marco Musillo uses the depictions of Tartars in fourteenth-century Italian frescoes as the starting point of a trajectory leading to eighteenth-century European literature on China. In the second part, the reader is introduced to two cases of diplomatic encounter, one in sixteenth-century Italy between Japanese subjects and local courts, and the other one between Qing China and twentieth-century United States, in the space of the universal exhibition in St. Louis. Finally, the last section proposes three interconnected art historical explorations: the screen design of Chinese origin in colonial Mexico, Medieval Christian tombstones in China, and early-modern Filipino sacred sculpture.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Hot Air and Flying Dragons: Historiographical Fractures and Interpretation

Part I: Ethnography
1. From Tartar Faces to Chinese Bodies: the Transformation of Identities

Part II: Diplomacy
2. Dancing Venues and Theatrical Receptions: Early Modern Diplomacy and the Japanese Legation to Europe
3. American Entertainment and Display: Qing Empress Cixi in the St. Louis Exposition

Part III: Materiality
4. The Routes of the Screen: Local Forms and Transcultural Designs
5. Tombstones and “Anomalous” Canons
6. Filipino Sculptures as Eventful Art