The Double Screen

Product Description

In the first exploration of Chinese paintings as both material products

and pictorial representations, The Double Screen shows how the

collaboration and tension between material form and image gives life to

a painting. A Chinese painting is often reduced to the image it bears;

its material form is dismissed; its intimate connection with social

activities and...

Product Description

In the first exploration of Chinese paintings as both material products

and pictorial representations, The Double Screen shows how the

collaboration and tension between material form and image gives life to

a painting. A Chinese painting is often reduced to the image it bears;

its material form is dismissed; its intimate connection with social

activities and cultural conventions neglected.

A screen occupies a space and divides it, supplies an ideal surface for

painting, and has been a favorite pictorial image in Chinese art since

antiquity. Wu Hung undertakes a comprehensive analysis of the screen,

which can be an object, an art medium, a pictorial motif, or all three

at once. With its diverse roles, the screen has provided Chinese

painters with endless opportunities to reinvent their art.

The Double Screen provides a powerful non-Western perspective on

issues from portraiture and pictorial narrative to voyeurism,

masquerade, and political rhetoric. It will be invaluable to anyone

interested in the history of art and Asian studies.

Wu Hung is the Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor, director for the Center for the Art of East Asia, and consulting curator at the Smart Museum of Art, all at the University of Chicago.