Acknowledgments

Harrist Jr., Robert E.

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Acknowledgments

Robert E. Harrist Jr.

Painting and Private Life in Eleventh-Century China: Mountain Villa by Li Gonglin

~So many people have helped me with this book that I feel it is as much their work as my own, though the blame for its shortcomings rests, of course, on my shoulders.

Author

Robert E. Harrist Jr.

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23819

Acknowledgments

So many people have helped me with this book that I feel it is as much their work as my own, though the blame for its shortcomings rests, of course, on my shoulders.

I am grateful above all to Wen Fong, Susan E. Nelson, Margot Clark, and Evelyn McCarty, four remarkable teachers who set me on the path toward becoming a teacher myself. Although I was never formally their student, Richard Barnhart and James Cahill have offered good advice over the years and in their own work have set a standard of how to write beautifully about Chinese art—a standard to which most of us can only longingly aspire.

During my visits to Asia, Kohara Hironobu, Yang Xin, and Xu Bangda helped me gain access to collections and acquire essential photographs.

In addition to Susan E. Nelson, Deborah Del Gais Muller, Alfreda Murck, and Richard Kent painstakingly read drafts of this book and offered many valuable corrections and suggestions for its improvement.

For their countless acts of kindness and for their sound advice, I am deeply grateful to my colleagues and former classmates Virginia Bower, Elizabeth Brotherton, Chen Pao-chen, Dora Ching, Chou Chao-ming, Chu Hui-liang, Cary Liu, Shane MacCausland, Michael Nylan, Shih Shou-chien, Jan Stuart, Sun Zhixin, and Xu Jie.

Much help also came from my mentor in Princeton, Lucy L. Lo, and my faithful friend Joann Connell. Maxwell K. Hearn and Judith Smith at the Metropolitan Museum of Art made many of the resources of that great institution available to me.

In Oberlin my profoundly learned colleague Li Kai helped me with many tasks, including the Chinese characters for this book.

Funding to complete this book came from the National Endowment for the Humanities—long may it prosper! A generous grant from the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University helped defray costs of publication.

My wife, Lu Weizhi, has given me a reason to finish this book, and to her I offer my loving thanks.

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Book details

BOOKPainting and Private Life in Eleventh-Century China: Mountain Villa by Li Gonglin

Robert E. Harrist Jr.

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23817

In the eleventh century, the focus of Chinese painting shifted dramatically. The subject matter of most earlier works of art was drawn from a broadly shared heritage of political, religious, and literary themes. Late in the century, however, a group of scholar-artists began to make paintings that reflected the private experiences of their own lives. Robert Harrist argues here that no work illuminates this development more vividly than Mountain Villa, a handscroll by the renowned artist Li Gonglin (ca. 1041–1106). Through a detailed reading of the painting and an analysis of its place in the visual culture of Li's time, the author offers a new explanation for the emergence of autobiographic content in Chinese art. Harrist proposes that the subject of Li's painting—his garden in the Longmian Mountains—was itself a form of self-representation, since a garden was then considered a reflection of its owner's character and values. He demonstrates also that Li's turn toward the imagery of private life was inspired by the conventions of Chinese lyric poetry, in which poets recorded and responded to the experiences of their lives. The book draws the reader into the artistic, scholarly, and political world of Li Gonglin and shows the profound influence of Buddhism on Chinese painting and poetry. It offers important insights not just into Chinese art, but also into Chinese literature and intellectual history.

*This eBook is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.*

Author

Robert E. Harrist Jr.

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Print publication date April 1998 (out of print)

Print ISBN 9780691016092

EISBN 9780300275308

Illustrations 80

Print Status out of print

Publisher (out of print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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