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PICTURES AND VISUALITY IN EARLY MODERN CHINA. By Craig Clunas. Princeton (New Jersey): Princeton University Press. 1997. 221 pp. (Photos.) US$39.50, cloth. ISBN 0-691-05761-3.
THE BORDERS of disciplines in the humanities are being redefined, and perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in "art history." Clunas, of the University of Sussex, says this right from the start: "[N] othing less than the abolition of `Chinese painting' as the sole object of study will suffice" (p. 12). There has been very little of this among studies of Chinese painting to date, though James Cahill's Three Alternative Histories of Chinese Painting (The University of Kansas: Spencer Museum of Art, 1988), particularly its chapter 3 and afterword, was a successful pioneering effort. The present book will represent a challenge to some; but the author meets it with singularly important insights that scholars of art as well as culture and history cannot ignore.
His material is drawn from the Ming (136&1644) and early...