Staging art and Chineseness

Staging art and Chineseness
Author: Jane Chin Davidson
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2019-12-17
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1526139804

This book addresses the politics of borders in the era of global art by exploring the identification of Chinese artists by location and exhibition. Focusing on performative, body-oriented video works by the post-1989 generation, it tests the premise of genealogical inscription and the ways in which cultural objects are attributed to the artist’s residency, homeland or citizenship rather than cultural tradition, style or practice. Acknowledging historical definitions of Chineseness, including the orientalist assumptions of the past and the cultural-mixing of the present, the book’s case studies address the paradoxes and contradictions of representation. An analysis of the historical matrix of global expositions reveals the structural connections among art, culture, capital and nation.

Staging Art and Chineseness

Staging Art and Chineseness
Author: Jane Chin Davidson
Publisher: Rethinking Art's Histories
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781526139788

Questioning what the term 'Chinese art' means in the era of global art, this book situates Chinese contemporary art in the matrix of global expositions and political transnationalisms. Its case studies explore the changing political concept of Chineseness by examining performative, body-oriented video and eco-feminist works.

Chinese Art: The Impossible Collection

Chinese Art: The Impossible Collection
Author: Adrian Cheng
Publisher: Assouline Publishing
Total Pages: 6
Release: 2021-05-01
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1614288844

While readers will come away from Chinese Art with a nuanced understanding of Chinese culture, the volume is also a work of art in its own right—a must-have collectible for any devotee of Chinese art and culture. Assouline’s Ultimate Collection is an homage to the art of luxury bookmaking—the oversized volume is hand-bound using traditional techniques, with several of the plates hand-tipped on art-quality paper and housed in a luxury silk clamshell.

Worldly Stage

Worldly Stage
Author: Sophie Volpp
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2020-03-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 168417435X

"In seventeenth-century China, as formerly disparate social spheres grew closer, the theater began to occupy an important ideological niche among traditional cultural elites, and notions of performance and spectatorship came to animate diverse aspects of literati cultural production. In this study of late-imperial Chinese theater, Sophie Volpp offers fresh readings of major texts such as Tang Xianzu’s Peony Pavilion (Mudan ting) and Kong Shangren’s Peach Blossom Fan (Taohua shan), and unveils lesser-known materials such as Wang Jide’s play The Male Queen (Nan wanghou). In doing so, Volpp sheds new light on the capacity of seventeenth-century drama to comment on the cultural politics of the age.Worldly Stage arrives at a conception of theatricality particular to the classical Chinese theater and informed by historical stage practices. The transience of worldly phenomena and the vanity of reputation had long informed the Chinese conception of theatricality. But in the seventeenth century, these notions acquired a new verbalization, as theatrical models of spectatorship were now applied to the contemporary urban social spectacle in which the theater itself was deeply implicated."

Staging for the Emperors

Staging for the Emperors
Author: Liana Chen (Assistant professor)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2021
Genre: China
ISBN: 9781621965480

"Theatrical performance occupied a central place in the emotional and political life of the Qing dynasty imperial household. For over two centuries, the Qing court poured a tremendous amount of human and material resources into institutionalizing the theatrical arts for the purposes of entertainment and edification. The emperors and empresses were ardent patrons and key players in establishing an artistic form that the court theatre called its own. They went to great lengths to cultivate a discerning taste in theatre and oversaw the artistic and managerial aspects of court theatrical activities. In the imperial theatrical spaces within and outside the Forbidden City, which were designed and built with the capacity to produce stunning visual effects, theatrical productions were staged to entertain imperial family members and to impress obeisance-paying guests from near and afar. Treating Qing dynasty court theatre as a unique site in which to examine important but uncharted realms of Chinese theatrical experience, Staging for the Emperor examines two distinct and interlocking dimensions of the Qing court theatre-the vicissitudes of the palace troupe and the multifaceted functions of court-commissioned ceremonial dramas-to highlight the diverse array of views held by individual rulers as they used theatrical means to promote their personal and political agendas. Drawing on recently discovered materials from a variety of court administrative bureaus, memoirs, diaries, and play scripts written for court ceremonial occasions, this study places the history of Qing court theatre in the broader context of Qing cultural and political history. Staging for the Emperors would appeal to readers interested in China studies and performance studies. It would also appeal to those outside the field of China studies who are interested in developing a cross-cultural perspective on the interplay between state rituals, power, identity formation, and theatrical experiences"--

Culture is bad for you

Culture is bad for you
Author: Orian Brook
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2020-09-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1526144174

Culture will keep you fit and healthy. Culture will bring communities together. Culture will improve your education. This is the message from governments and arts organisations across the country; however, this book explains why we need to be cautious about culture. Offering a powerful call to transform the cultural and creative industries, Culture is bad for you examines the intersections between race, class, and gender in the mechanisms of exclusion in cultural occupations. Exclusion from culture begins at an early age, the authors argue, and despite claims by cultural institutions and businesses to hire talented and hardworking individuals, women, people of colour, and those from working class backgrounds are systematically disbarred. While the inequalities that characterise both workforce and audience remain unaddressed, the positive contribution culture makes to society can never be fully realised.

Staging Chinese Revolution

Staging Chinese Revolution
Author: Xiaomei Chen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2017
Genre: Biography
ISBN: 9780231166386

Introduction: Propaganda performance, history, and landscape -- The place of Chen Duxiu: political theater, dramatic history, and the question of representation -- Returning a people's hero: a "new" legacy in the plays of Mao -- Staging Deng Xiaoping: the "incorrigible capitalist roader" -- Performing the "red classics": three revolutionary music-and-dance epics and their peaceful restorations -- Epilogue: Where are the "founding mothers"?

Staging Personhood

Staging Personhood
Author: Guojun Wang
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2020-04-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231549571

After toppling the Ming dynasty, the Qing conquerors forced Han Chinese males to adopt Manchu hairstyle and clothing. Yet China’s new rulers tolerated the use of traditional Chinese attire in performances, making theater one of the only areas of life where Han garments could still be seen and where Manchu rule could be contested. Staging Personhood uncovers a hidden history of the Ming–Qing transition by exploring what it meant for the clothing of a deposed dynasty to survive onstage. Reading dramatic works against Qing sartorial regulations, Guojun Wang offers an interdisciplinary lens on the entanglements between Chinese drama and nascent Manchu rule in seventeenth-century China. He reveals not just how political and ethnic conflicts shaped theatrical costuming but also the ways costuming enabled different modes of identity negotiation during the dynastic transition. In case studies of theatrical texts and performances, Wang considers clothing and costumes as indices of changing ethnic and gender identities. He contends that theatrical costuming provided a productive way to reconnect bodies, clothes, and identities disrupted by political turmoil. Through careful attention to a variety of canonical and lesser-known plays, visual and performance records, and historical documents, Staging Personhood provides a pathbreaking perspective on the cultural dynamics of early Qing China.

Diasporic Chineseness After the Rise of China

Diasporic Chineseness After the Rise of China
Author: Kam Louie
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2013-11-26
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0774825936

As China rose to its position of global superpower, Chinese groups in the West watched with anticipation and trepidation. In this volume, international scholars examine how artists, writers, filmmakers, and intellectuals from the Chinese diaspora represented this new China to global audiences. The chapters, often personal in nature, focus on the nexus between the political and economic rise of China and the cultural products this period produced, where new ideas of nation, identity, and diaspora were forged.