Literati Culture

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Roddy
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Mature Phase ◽  
Late Ming ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Bronze Vessels ◽  
Second Tier ◽  
The Aesthetic

Although the term literati culture (wenren wenhua) entered the Chinese lexicon only in the late 20th century, the aesthetic, moral, and intellectual pursuits it encompasses can be traced back nearly two millennia to the Wei-Jin era (220–420 ce). In its narrowest sense, it denotes the “four arts” (siyi) associated with cultured, literate males (wenren): music (especially the qin or guqin), the game of go (weiqi), calligraphy, and painting, as well as poetry and lyrical essays (especially xiaopin) associated with them. Literati culture is also usually construed to include connoisseurship of various categories of material objects, including tea and its implements, antique paintings and specimens of calligraphy, celebrated or rare manuscripts and book editions, rubbings taken from steles, ancient bronze vessels, and objets d’art associated with writing, such as ink stones or seals. During the mature phase of literati culture in the late Ming and Qing dynasties, this repertoire of practices further widened to include, inter alia, the collecting of any manner of rare or prized objects (both natural and man-made), garden design and architecture, the connoisseurship of the theater and its actors or other entertainers, and the espousal of philosophical ideals associated with leisure or reclusion. Given this expansive scope, scholarship has tended to treat this array of arts and avocations either through disciplinary lenses such as art history and material culture, or in terms of their associations with the principal intellectual vocations—literature (the so-called wenyuan or Garden of Literature) and textual scholarship (rulin or Forest of Scholarship)—that marked literati status. As the relatively elastic conception of literati culture has gained currency, however, cultural historians have increasingly studied these arts within the continuum of socioeconomic practices that marked membership in the elite, and also in light of the position of these arts in relation to more-demotic (tongsu) cultural forms. The growth of literati avocations and the writings about them after c. 1500 was stimulated by the surfeit of first- and second-tier examination holders, along with opportunities for patronage by wealthy merchants in the Yangzi delta region. Also evident in the late Ming and throughout the Qing is the influence of philological scholarship (kaozheng) on the classification or cataloguing of objects of various kinds. Finally, the statecraft-oriented (jingshi) scholarship and letters that flourished during the last century of Qing rule, and critiques of literati social preeminence relative to other vocations and social categories, stimulated the rethinking of the social and cultural institutions that perpetuated their dominance, which extended to the arts associated with the literati as well.

scholarly journals Non-discursive Knowledge and the Construction of Identity Potters, Potting and Performance at the Bronze Age Tell of Százhalombatta, Hungary

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy Budden ◽  
Joanna Sofaer
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
Differential Acquisition ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Bronze Age

This article explores the relationship between the making of things and the making of people at the Bronze Age tell at Százhalombatta, Hungary. Focusing on potters and potting, we explore how the performance of non-discursive knowledge was critical to the construction of social categories. Potters literally came into being as potters through repeated bodily enactment of potting skills. Potters also gained their identity in the social sphere through the connection between their potting performance and their audience. We trace degrees of skill in the ceramic record to reveal the material articulation of non-discursive knowledge and consider the ramifications of the differential acquisition of non-discursive knowledge for the expression of different kinds of potter's identities. The creation of potters as a social category was essential to the ongoing creation of specific forms of material culture. We examine the implications of altered potters' performances and the role of non-discursive knowledge in the construction of social models of the Bronze Age.

Art and Archaeology of the Bronze Age in China

Art History ◽  
2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
English Language ◽  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Museum Displays ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Bronze Vessels ◽  
The Bronze Age

“China” here designates much but not all of China Proper or Inner China, terrain controlled during the Imperial era (221 bce to ce 1912) by historic dynastic states. Vast regions to the northeast, north, and west—Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet—are excluded even though they are now integral to the modern-day nation-state. Similarly, we slight areas of the south, for example the modern-day Lingnan and Yun-Gui macroregions, that only gradually were absorbed after the Bronze Age. In Chinese scholarship, “Bronze Age” (qingtong shidai青铜时代) serves as an alternate for the “Three Dynasties” (san dai三代) of traditional historiography: Xia (Hsia), Shang, and Zhou (Chou). Bracketing dates of c. 2000–221 bce are now widely used, the first an approximation, the latter firm. Bronze alloy, however, was just one ingredient of material cultures of the Three Dynasties. Other features include the appearance of states, social stratification, urbanization, warfare, and the appearance of iron (the Iron Age), in addition to achievements in literature, music, and philosophy during the latter centuries, a kind of “Classical Age.” Today, “arts” may encompass many forms of crafting materials for a variety of purposes and audiences. This bibliography specifically addresses architecture, bronze, jade, lacquer, and silk as well as music, pictorial representation, and writing. A term from the Bronze Age—“Six Arts” (or “skills,” liu yi六艺)—defined expertise for an elite male as ritual, music, archery, chariot driving, writing, and calculation. While the overlap between the ancient and modern categories is at best partial, these concepts do intersect in terms of makers and consumers and in social and religious purposes. The elite’s luxury lifestyle was sustained by the “arts.” Ritual required bronze vessels, and the requisite music was performed on instruments of bronze, stone, lacquer, etc. Chariots were outfitted with bronze; writing and picturing employed silk. This bibliography emphasizes Chinese archaeology, both as a discipline and as a realm of knowledge that have burgeoned since the late 20th century. Archaeology creates fresh evidence, which then becomes the stuff of excavation reports, investigative scholarship, exhibitions and museum displays, and reference works. Only some of this bounty can be cited here, and readers are directed to Oxford Bibliographies for Chinese Studies (e.g., Chinese Architecture, Calligraphy, Ceramics, Paleography, Ancient Chinese Religion) for further advice. This essay is limited to publications from 1980 and, when possible, favors English-language sources.

Archaeology and Race

Anthropology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna S. Agbe-Davies
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Physical Characteristics ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Boundary Formation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Anthropological Research

For as long as archaeologists have studied the human past, they have been concerned with the social categories we sometimes call “race.” In this bibliography, I use “race” to indicate a constellation of ideas sharing the assertion that meaningful claims about a person or group can be based on their origins or background, especially relying on their appearance or other physical characteristics. Anthropological research has shown us that when people partition humanity in this way, the results are not meaningful biological units. Race is an ideology of hierarchical, social differentiation masked as embodied differentiation. This is what anthropologists mean when they say that race is a system of social categories that has no basis in biology (see Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology article Race). Archaeologists are not the only anthropologists who have considered “race” in the human past. Bioarchaeology (see Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology article Bioarchaeology) and paleoanthropology (see the section “Microevolutionary Issues” in the Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology article Human Evolution) have also addressed race. These fields examine people’s bodies, for the most part. This bibliography emphasizes archaeology as the study of material culture. “Race” as such has not always featured in archaeological scholarship, but related concepts such as “culture” (when referring to a group of people) and “ethnic group” have long structured archaeology’s understanding of humanity’s past. The archaeological study of “race” is here divided into three arenas: racial difference; racism; and racialization. In reality, these themes cannot be so neatly parsed, but for the purposes of this bibliography racial difference includes sources that address boundary formation and maintenance; racism emphasizes studies concerning inequality; and racialization considers race as a process rather than a state of being.

Performance Art, Performativity, and Environmentalism in the Capitalocene

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Chin Davidson
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Feminist Art ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Arts ◽  
European Colonization ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Eco Art

Since the late 20th century, performance has played a vital role in environmental activism, and the practice is often related to concepts of eco-art, eco-feminist art, land art, theatricality, and “performing landscapes.” With the advent of the Capitalocene discourse in the 21st century, performance has been useful for acknowledging indigenous forms of cultural knowledge and for focusing on the need to reintegrate nature and culture in addressing ecological crisis. The Capitalocene was distinguished from the Anthropocene by Donna Haraway who questions the figuration of the Anthropos as reflexive of a fossil-fuel-burning ethos that does not represent the whole of industrial humanity in the circuit of global capital. Jason W. Moore’s analysis for the Capitalocene illustrates the division between nature and society that is affirmed by the tenets of the Anthropocene. Scientists Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer had dated the Anthropocene age to the industrial acceleration of the late-18th/mid-19th century but Moore points to the rise of capitalism in the 15th century when European colonization reduced indigenous peoples to naturales in their modernist definition of nature that became distinct from the new society. As material property, women were also precluded from this segment of industrial humanity. By the 20th century, the Euro-American system for progressive modernism in the arts was supported by the inscription of cultures that represented un-modern “primitivist” nature. The tribal and the modern became a postcolonial debate in art historical discourse. In the context of the Capitalocene, a different historiography of eco-art, eco-feminist art, and environmental performances can be conceived by acknowledging the work of artists such as Ana Mendieta and Kara Walker who have illustrated the segregation of people according to the nature/society divide. Informed by Judith Butler’s phenomenological analyses of performative acts, the aesthetic use of bodily-oriented expression (with its effects on the viewer’s body) provides a vocabulary for artists engaging in the subjects of the Capitalocene. In the development of performances in the global context, artists such as Wu Mali, Yin Xiuzhen, and Ursula Biemann have emphasized the relationship between bodies of humans and bodies of water through interactive works for the public, sited at the rivers and the shores of streams. They show how humans are not separate from nature, a concept that has long been conveyed by indigenous rituals that run deep in many cultures. While artists have been effective in acknowledging the continuing exploitations of the environment, their performances have also reflected the “self” of nature that humans are in the act of destroying.

The Impact of the Social Context on Aesthetic Experience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Mastandrea
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The Social ◽  
Affective Processes ◽  
The Family ◽  
Socio Demographic Factors ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Impact

Not only cognitive and affective processes determine an aesthetic experience; another important issue to consider has to do with the social context while experiencing the arts. Several studies have shown that the aesthetic impact of a work of art depends on, to an important extent, the different socio-demographic factors including age, class, social status, health, wealth, and so on. The concepts of cultural and social capital by Pierre Bourdieu and the production and consumption of artworks by Howard Becker are discussed. Another important aspect of the impact of the social context on aesthetic experience deals with early art experience in childhood within the family—considered as the first social group to which a person belongs.

Indigenismo

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Estelle Tarica
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Latin American ◽  
English Word ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Las Casas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Bartolome De Las Casas ◽  
The Status ◽  
Indigenous Social Movements

Indigenismo is a term that refers to a broad grouping of discourses—in politics, the social sciences, literature, and the arts—concerned with the status of “the Indian” in Latin American societies. The term derives from the word “indígena,” often the preferred term over “indio” because of the pejorative connotations that have accrued to the latter in some contexts, and is not to be confused with the English word “indigenism.” The origins of modern indigenismo date to the 16th century and to the humanist work of Bartolomé de las Casas, dubbed “Defender of the Indians” for his efforts to expose the violence committed against native populations by Spanish colonizers. Indeed indigenismo generally connotes a stance of defense of Indians against abuse by non-Indians, such as criollos and mestizos, and although this defense can take a variety of often-contradictory forms, it stems from a recognition that indigenous peoples in colonial and modern Latin America have suffered injustice. Another important precursor to modern indigenismo is 19th-century “Indianismo.” In the wake of Independence, creole elites made the figure of “the Indian” a recurring feature of Latin American republican and nationalist thought as the region sought to secure an identity distinct from the colonial powers. The period 1910–1970 marks the heyday of modern indigenismo. Marked by Las Casas’s stance of defense toward indigenous people and by creole nationalists’ “Indianization” of national identity, the modernizing indigenismo of the 20th century contains three important additional dimensions: it places the so-called “problem of the Indian” at the center of national modernization efforts and of national revolution and renewal; it is, or seeks to become, a matter of state policy; and it draws on contemporary social theories—positivist, eugenicist, relativist, Marxist—to make its claims about how best to solve the “Indian problem.” Though its presence can be found in many Latin American countries, indigenismo reached its most substantive and influential forms in Mexico and Peru; Bolivia and Brazil also saw significant indigenista activity. Anthropologists played a central role in the development of modern indigenismo, and indigenismo flourished in literature and the performing and visual arts. In the late 20th century, indigenous social movements as well as scholars from across the disciplines criticized indigenismo for its paternalist attitude toward Indians and for promoting Indians’ cultural assimilation; the state-centric integrationist ideology of indigenismo has largely given way to pluri-culturalism.

‘Comunicare con il popolo’: Novel, Drama, and Music in Mazzini’s Work

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlotta Sorba
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Active Power ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Art ◽  
The Aesthetic

This chapter observes and relocates the role of the arts in Mazzini's political reflections, seeing in it a kind of prelude to the aesthetic dimension of politics generally explored in the 20th century. Through a close analysis of his large output of literary and musical criticism (1826–44), it shows how the language of the arts, and especially drama as ‘the social art par excellence’, was considered by the Italian thinker to be the main means to communicate to the public – in a forceful and emotional way – political and national goals. Mazzini believed that, in the specific case of Italy, opera, with its active power to move, thrill, and provoke enthusiasm in Italian theatres, could play a crucial political role.

Calligraphy

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy McNair
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Art World ◽  
Shang Dynasty ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Excellent Research ◽  
Bronze Vessels ◽  
Precise Moment

Calligraphy is the art of writing characters with a brush and ink. Yet, the word “calligraphy,” from the Greek kalligraphía (beautiful writing), is something of a mistranslation of the Chinese term shufa (書法), which means “model writing,” or writing that is good enough to serve as a model. Calligraphy has no referent in nature, so all writing is modeled on that of another. Traditional calligraphers were less interested in mere beauty than in the ability of the gesture and the line to create images of aesthetic power and movement and in the paramount issue of upon whose writing they were modeling theirs. The precise moment Chinese characters were born is unknown, but a fully developed system was in use by c. 1200 bce, as seen on scripts on the incised oracle bones (jiaguwen甲骨文) and inscriptions cast into ritual bronze vessels (guwen古文) of the Shang dynasty. Over the next millennium, five major script types evolved. The archaic scripts gave way to the “large” seal script (zhuan篆) of the Zhou dynasty and the “small” seal script of the Qin. In Qin the clerical script (li隸) came into being and flourished during the succeeding Han, whereas by the end of the 2nd century the modern script types of regular (kai楷 or zhen真), running (xing行), and cursive (cao草) all had developed. Seal and clerical were relegated to decorative and monumental functions until they were revived as antiquarian modes in later times. Although mythic names are associated with the creation of each script type, there were no signed works of calligraphy until the Han dynasty. Since that time, when it began to be seen as expressive of its writer’s personality and character, calligraphy has been accorded the supreme position among the arts. Calligraphers could practice their art purely for their own pleasure or self-expression, or their work could be done for payment or in exchange for goods and services. Calligraphy had a rich tradition until the 20th century, and after China’s turmoil ended in the late 1970s, the amateur scene burgeoned again. In the late 20th century, Chinese calligraphy made a place for itself in the international art world, particularly through the incorporation of nonsense characters in multimedia installations. Critical texts that assessed famous calligraphers appeared in the 4th century, and histories of calligraphy have been written continually from the 5th century to the early 21st century. Japanese scholars have produced excellent research in the 20th and early 21st centuries, and researchers in the West have been writing on calligraphy history since the 1970s.

The Art of Emergency

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Power Dynamics ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Common Complication ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Multiple Media ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Arts Activism ◽  
Power Negotiations

Across Africa, artists increasingly turn to NGO sponsorship in pursuit of greater influence and funding, while simultaneously NGOs—both international and local—commission arts projects to buttress their interventions and achieve greater reach and marketability. As a result, the key values of artistic expression become “healing” and “sensitization” measured in turn by “impact” and “effectiveness.” Such rubrics obscure the aesthetic complexities of the artworks and the power dynamics that inform their production. Clashes arise as foreign NGOs import foreign aesthetic models and preconceptions about their efficacy, alongside foreign interpretations of politics, medicine, psychology, trauma, memorialization, and so on. Meanwhile, each community embraces its own aesthetic precedents, often at odds with the intentions of humanitarian agencies. The arts are a sphere in which different worldviews enter into conflict and conversation. To tackle the consequences of aid agency arts deployment, the volume assembles ten case studies from across the African continent employing multiple media including music, sculpture, photography, drama, storytelling, ritual, and protest marches. Organized under three widespread yet underanalyzed objectives for arts in emergency—demonstration, distribution, and remediation—each case offers a different disciplinary and methodological perspective on a common complication in NGO-sponsored creativity. The Art of Emergency shifts the discourse on arts activism away from fixations on message and toward diverse investigations of aesthetics and power negotiations. In doing so, this volume brings into focus the conscious and unconscious configurations of humanitarian activism, the social lives it attempts to engage, and the often fraught interactions between the two.

Zygmunt Krasiński wobec sztuk pięknych / Zygmunt Krasiński and the Fine Arts

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Płaszczewska
Keyword(s):  
Fine Arts ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Individual Sensitivity ◽  
What Works ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
A Current ◽  
Aesthetic Preferences

Summary This is an attempt at examining Zygmunt Krasiński’s opinions and preferences with regard to the fine arts, a theme many critics believed to be missing from his writings. While putting things right, this article looks at the issues involved in his artistic choices, for example, what works or artists attracted his attention, in general, and to the point of him actually drawing on them in his own work or provoking him to some response (critical, approving, emotional, etc.). Furthermore, the article tries to explore the reasons and circumstances which may account for Krasiński’s interest in a given painting, print, or sculpture. It may have been the work’s theme as in the case of his ekphrasis of Ary Scheffer’s Dante and Virgil Encountering the Shades of Francesca and Paolo Di Rimini, where literary tradition provided the impulse, or the mode of its execution, or the personal ties with its author, or, finally, some other factors, like a current vogue or simply Krasiński’s individual sensitivity. The ultimate aim of all these inquiries is to outline Krasiński’s relationship with the arts (beaux arts) in the context of the aesthetic preferences of the epoch.

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