Picturing Ecology: Flora and Fauna in East Asian Art

Catalog description

Tigers roaring, fish frolicking, gibbons swinging; magnolia whispers, cherry blossoms, willow sways. Pictures of flora and fauna in East Asian visual culture capture some of the most vivid and touching moments in world art history. What does art have to say about the environment and ecology? This course delves into the animated, aromatic, and arresting, yet also the political, polemical, and plural aspects of living creatures depicted on a range of objects in East Asia. Personal, political, gender, and cultural identities are negotiated through the depictions of a nexus of flora and fauna. The class motivates students to think about how art tells stories about our human relationships with the environment, in both historical and contemporary times. Objects to be studied include paintings, prints, ceramics, screens, sculptures, and jades. Through museum visits, lectures, discussions, and hands-on projects, the class will offer a diverse experience of the natural world as perceived through art and aesthetics in China, Japan, and Korea.