Academic Sessions: Belfast 2007
Painting Workshops of the (17th century) World: Grounds for Contestation
Convenor:
Shane McCausland, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin smccausland@cbl.ie
With globalisation has come the fledgling field of world art. Yet, the effects, if any, of this development on inter-cultural and comparative research in art history remain uncertain. Uncoupling modernity from ‘the west’ enabled any culture to have its own modernity, and the autonomy to determine it, in theory. In practice, it has often meant that colonised cultures, by necessity, continued to be investigated in relation to the historical powers, while Euro-American cultures could continue to be investigated per se. What impact do power relations in geopolitics have on our ability, or otherwise, to engage in comparative and cross-cultural scholarship in art history? Are other, local factors more significant, such as the lack of broadly established empirical foundations for many of the cultures in question? This panel is as an object- and practice-based approach to such questions. Speakers aim to demonstrate a series of cultural paradigms and styles seen in the painting practices of artists’ workshops across 17th-century Asia, and to contest them. What happens, for instance, when we juxtapose the practices of fairly closely related artistic traditions, such as those of the Kano School in Japan and a late Ming Chinese professional. What happens when we juxtapose these with a contemporary practice in Safavid Iran. These papers are presented by individuals working on specific artistic workshops of this period, who are minded to identify productive models of comparison in light of cultural differences.
Speakers:
Moya Carey (independent, London)
Snowbound At Home: Mu’in Musavvir in 17th-century Safavid Isfahan
Shane McCausland (Chester Beatty Library, Dublin)
The Painting workshop of a late Ming Chinese eccentric: Chen Hongshou (1598–1652)
Matthew P. McKelway (Gakushûin University, Tokyo)
Representations of the Song of Everlasting Sorrow in Early Modern Japan: Painters of the Kano School