Sarah E. Fraser – författare

Performing the Visual explores the practice of wall painting in China from a new perspective. Relying on rare, virtually unpublished drawings on Buddhist themes from a long-hidden medieval library in western China, the author analyzes the painters' pictorial strategies. She also examines the financial accounting of Buddhist temples, providing practical information that ninth- and tenth-century critics ignored: how artists were paid and when, the temple's role as mediator between patrons and artists, and the way painters functioned outside the monastic system, working in guilds and secular academies affiliated with local government.Based on the careful study of hundreds of inaccessible wall paintings at Dunhuang, arguably Asia's largest and most important Buddhist site, the author shows that although critics celebrated spontaneous feats with brush and ink, artists at Dunhuang were heavily dependent on concrete tools such as sketches in the preparation of wall painting.

This volume offers a path-breaking reassessment of Xu Bing’s oeuvre by analyzing the diverse cultural environments in which his work has developed since the Book from the Sky.  It contains three lecture transcripts and eight art historical essays; these explore themes such as Xu’s animal works, audience participation, new ink, prints, realism, socialist spectacle, and word play. A critical question addressed in this volume is what carries art to a global level beyond regional histories and cultural symbols.Absorbing critical essays on contemporary Chinese aesthetics addressing the social context and philosophical concerns that underlie Xu Bing’s key works. The authors analyze Xu’s art, shedding light on the tangled history of socialism and neoliberalism in the Post-Mao period.--Prof. Dr. Lothar Ledderose, Senior Professor, Institute of East Asian Art, Universität Heidelberg

This volume offers a path-breaking reassessment of Xu Bing’s oeuvre by analyzing the diverse cultural environments in which his work has developed since the Book from the Sky.  It contains three lecture transcripts and eight art historical essays; these explore themes such as Xu’s animal works, audience participation, new ink, prints, realism, socialist spectacle, and word play. A critical question addressed in this volume is what carries art to a global level beyond regional histories and cultural symbols.Absorbing critical essays on contemporary Chinese aesthetics addressing the social context and philosophical concerns that underlie Xu Bing’s key works. The authors analyze Xu’s art, shedding light on the tangled history of socialism and neoliberalism in the Post-Mao period.--Prof. Dr. Lothar Ledderose, Senior Professor, Institute of East Asian Art, Universität Heidelberg