Brushwork: Chinese Painting in Time

Catalog description

How did the tenor of the individual brushstroke become the locus of value in traditional Chinese painting? What other possible standards of excellence—such as verisimilitude—were displaced in the process? This course pursues these questions by analyzing the great monuments of Chinese painting from the perspective of the aesthetic debates that defined them over the centuries. Proceeding from the famous Six Laws of Painting down to the aesthetic watershed of the Northern and Southern Schools, the course traces the fraught interplay of artistic practice and critical judgment in China over more than a thousand years. No prior knowledge required.