IntroductionHailed as one of the most important historians of Chinese art today, Wu Hung of the University of Chicago is a multiple award-winner for his teaching and prolific publications. In his research over the last forty years, Wu Hung has been working on developing new methodologies in the interpretation and writing on Chinese art through reviewing, challenging and redefining concepts from the history of Western art. His innovative interdisciplinary approach explored the relationship between art discourse and practice, drawing materials from the cultural, sociopolitical and artistic contexts of specific time and place. Based on historical practice of both Chinese and Western traditions, Wu Hung integrated conventionally separate fields of both traditions into new kinds of art historical narratives and advocated a new global art history. The three lectures in the series will demonstrate his methodologies and narratives in a wide range of topics.About the SpeakerWu Hung holds the Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professorship at the Department of Art History and the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, and is also the director of the Center for the Art of East Asia at the same university. An elected member of the American Academy of Art and Science and the American Philosophic Society, he sits on multiple domestic and international committees. He has received many awards for his publications and academic services, including the Distinguished Teaching Award (2008) and Distinguished Scholar Award (2018) from the College of Art Association (CAA), an Honorary Degree in Arts from Harvard University (2019), and the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art from CAA (2022).Wu Hung’s research interests include both traditional and contemporary Chinese art, and he has published many books and curated many exhibitions in these two fields. His interdisciplinary interest has led him to experiment with different ways to tell stories about Chinese art, as exemplified by his Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture (1995), The Double Screen: Medium and Representation of Chinese Pictorial Art (1996), Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square: the Creation of a Political Space (2005), The Art of the Yellow Springs: Understanding Chinese Tombs (2010), A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture (2012), Zooming In: Histories of Photography in China (2016), and Space in Art History (2018). His three newest books from 2022 and 2023 include Chinese and Dynastic time (Princeton University Press), Spatial Dunhuang: Experiencing the Mogao Caves (Washington University Press), and The Full Length Mirror: A Global Visual History (Reaktion Books).
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LANGUAGE English
ProgramLecture 1: Spatial Dunhuang: Experiencing the Mogao Caves
6 October 2023 6:00pm – 7:30pm
KB419, Knowles Building, The University of Hong Kong
Abstract
This lecture retells the story of Dunhuang art through the perspective of space. This is necessary because although there are countless overviews of the art of Dunhuang, the framework is generally temporal. Guided by the dynasties of China’s past, these overviews present a linear history of the Mogao Caves, supplanting the actual place with an abstract temporal sequence. This lecture presents an alternative narrative based on visitors’ experience and discusses some representative caves to demonstrate a new methodology in studying Dunhuang art Mogao.Lecture 2: One or Two? Emperor Qianlong’s Mirrors and Mirror Images8 October 2023 3:00pm – 4:30pmThe Hong Kong Jockey Club Auditorium, Hong Kong Palace Museum
Abstract
Throughout his long sixty-year reign (1736–1795), the Qianlong Emperor was fascinated by newly invented objects and art styles from Europe. In this lecture, Professor Wu Hung explores the interconnections between "object", "painting", and the trompe l'oeil style that the emperor was so fond of. Two important palaces in the Forbidden City, the Hall of Three Rarities (Sanxi Tang) and the Lodge of Retirement (Juanqin Zhai), are taken as examples for this examination.Lecture 3: The Inscribed Studio Photo as “I-Portrait”: Photographing a New Self in Early Twentieth-Century China. Lecture 3: The Inscribed Studio Photo as “I-Portrait”: Photographing a New Self in Early Twentieth-Century China10 October 2023 4:30pm – 6:00pmCiti Lecture Theater (LT-A), The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology AbstractPortraiture and self-portraiture are two standard genres in visual art, including photography. A self-portrait is a likeness whose subject is the artist him/herself; a portrait is a representation of a person made by someone else. This lecture investigates some photographs which disrupt this seemingly self-evident classification of images. These examples belong to a group of studio portraits that bear the sitters’ inscriptions. The speaker suggests that when an inscription is imbued with a distinct “I” voice and expresses the sitter’s personal experience and aspiration, it transforms the anonymous portrait into an I-portrait. The main part of the talk discusses several images related to the “queue-cutting” movement in early twentieth-century China, before and after the Republican Revolution in 1911 that ended the country’s dynastic history. The final section contemplates how photography’s media specificity contributes to such transformation. Research Seminar9 October 2023 2:00pm – 3:00pmRoom 3301, Division of Humanities, The Hong Kong University of Science and TechnologyLanguage: English and Mandarin Organizers
Division of Humanities, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Global China Center, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study
Co-organizersCentre for Chinese Architecture and Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong KongThe University of Chicago Francis and Rose Yuen CampusHong Kong Palace Museum SupporterThe Public Lecture Series is generously supported by the U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong and Macau. 点击左下角“阅读原文”即可查看巫鸿近年出版的美术史新书！