Talks by Lihong Liu
Papers by Lihong Liu
The Routledge Companion to Global Renaissance Art, edited by Stephen J. Campbell, Stephanie Porras (Routledge), pp. 431-448, 2024
Francine Giese, Hans Bjarne Thomsen, Elisa Ambrosio, Aina Martimyanova, eds., China and the West: Reconsidering Chinese Reverse Glass Painting. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023
This study examines the transformation of reverse glass painting from an art of virtuosity to a v... more This study examines the transformation of reverse glass painting from an art of virtuosity to a vernacular form of art from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century during Sino-European encounters. The vernacularization of reverse glass painting, I argue, reflected a consumption-driven reinvention of certain literary stories and popular dramas that highlighted the common value of plate glass as a diaphanous spectatorial plane. By examining the correspondences among technique, medium, and genre, this essay assesses the correlation between materiality and visuality of clear plate glass that was used to support and spark theatrical views.
Proceedings to Motion: Transformation. Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art, Florence, 1-6 September 2019.” Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2021
Introductions to Session 5 De/Sign and Writing: Toward an Aesthetic of the Asemic prove to be a d... more Introductions to Session 5 De/Sign and Writing: Toward an Aesthetic of the Asemic prove to be a disenchanted projection. Thus, the present collection of essays inquires into the dynamic relationships between de/sign and writing by interrogating not only their differences but also how they resemble or evoke one another.
Art History, Vol 44, Issue 1 (2021), pp. 108-129, 2021
Crystal glass containers as novel artefacts in the early modern period acted out their function o... more Crystal glass containers as novel artefacts in the early modern period acted out their function of containment as miraculous material events. Focusing on glass containers used to contain and constitute Buddhist objects in China's Qing dynasty (1644–1911), this essay provides historical and critical views on issues of aura and containment. Primarily, it examines the modalities and experiences of container and containment as expressed in the Qing court's material, religious and political practices. In doing so, the essay highlights the fusional relationship between matter and form, while also apprehending the metamorphosis between image and object in processes of transmedial translation and transcultural crossing or dislocation. It argues that glass containers used to simulate, animate and amplify the ‘aura’ of devotional objects manifested more general religio‐political and intercultural phenomena at that time. Those phenomena in turn invite reflections on material objects' immaterial expressions, and vice versa, in terms of the interplay between formal schema and amorphous force.
Gudian de Fuxing: Xikejiulu cang Ming Qing wenren huihua yanjiu 古典的復興: 溪客舊廬藏明清文人繪畫研究 [The Revival of the Classical: Studies of Literati Paintings of the Ming and Qing Dynasties in the Old Lodge of the Creek Sojourner]. Edited by Zhang Hui 章暉 and Fan Jingzhong 範景中. Shanghai: Shanghai shuhua chubanshe, 2018
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/res/2017/67-68/+
Fireworks in the early modern world paradoxically wedded a local experience of ephemeral sensatio... more Fireworks in the early modern world paradoxically wedded a local experience of ephemeral sensations with an impulse to create patterns of perpetual motion. Exploring the custom of fireworks in China alongside their pictorial representations and decorative applications in a transcultural context during the long eighteenth century, this article draws connections among various artifacts that enacted pyrotechnic spectacles and elicited synesthetic immersions of light, sound, motion, hue, and temperature. It opens up a broader discussion regarding the conceits and sensations of pyrotechnics and pyropolitics, while also responding to recent accounts of early modern European pyrotechnic arts and sciences.[1] I argue that fireworks not only engaged in redefinitions of art and power, but also that the lifelike simulation of pyrotechnic effects in objects such as automaton clocks transformed conceptions and strategies of ornamentation. When activated alongside other movable accessories on mechanical clocks, firework ornaments highlighted a sense of synchronic time and fueled the vigor of temporal imminence. They acted out a spectacle of power that was manifested in an illusory unity of variations governed by the workings of an automatic system.[2] As mechanical clocks became the most salient objects and technologies of Sino-European exchange, flourishing especially during the High Qing era (1661-1796), such effects generated a sense of spatiotemporal profusion. This idea was demonstrated in the time-honored themes, syncretic compositions, and spectacular abundance of artifacts commissioned and collected at the Qing court and intended to resound with the panoptic ordering of imperial power.
Akedun’s 1725 album Fengshi tu [Diplomatic Paintings] is an extraordinary example of the diplomat... more Akedun’s 1725 album Fengshi tu [Diplomatic Paintings] is an extraordinary example of the diplomatic painting genre popular during the High Qing era (1661-1796) that represents imperial delegations through the commissioners’ eye-witness experiences. Created after his four journeys to Chosǒn Korea, this album constructs a narrative in which Akedun carries out the role of an imperial ambassador while it captures ethnographic details of the lived places, curious customs, and courteous peoples of Korea. By rendering an imperial image of the Manchu Qing court, the album commemorates the amelioration of the Qing-Chosǒn relations after they had fraught confrontations during the Manchu’s post-conquest period. I argue that the Manchu ambassador Akedun keenly established his persona as an orthodox Confucian scholar in order to justify his position as a civil court-official whose missions were to negotiate for a mutual respect between the two regimes in the process of reaffirming an overarching Qing imperial order.
This article investigates plate glass as a new material medium in the art, architecture, and desi... more This article investigates plate glass as a new material medium in the art, architecture, and design in eighteenth-century China. By situating the production and consumption of plate glass in the processes of material, technological, and artistic and cultural exchanges in the early modern world, I examine how the uses of plate glass during China’s high Qing era (1662–1795) correspond to an epistemological shift to fictionality and illusionism, as well as a scopic culture of observation. Specifically, I look at the use of plate glass in painting, architectural construction (as in windowpanes), and interior display (mirrors and object coverings). Through examining the techniques and methods of using plate glass in those forms, I argue that the use of it as a novel material medium triggered new ways for people to recognize the self in relation to surroundings—knowing and experiencing spaces through bodily movement and action as well as disembodied imagination.
Th is article examines birthday albums, a genre that combines paintings and literary texts in cal... more Th is article examines birthday albums, a genre that combines paintings and literary texts in calligraphy, produced by a group of peer artists and writers to celebrate birthdays of elders in the Wu region (Suzhou) during the mid-Ming period (1450-1550). Each album pairs paintings and texts devoted to a series of locales im por tant to the honoree. Place mediated social, physical, and cultural experiences among groups of literati as they commemorated their social activities and their bodily and intellectual engagement with the sites. Birthday albums defi ned an aesthetic format of artistic and literary practices at that time. As a collection that synthesized multivalent associations, birthday albums documented a cultural fi eld of mid-Ming Suzhou. Artists and writers collaborated in a broader cultural practice that valorized contemporary works made by groups of associates that express the makers' and honorees' nuanced collective sensibility of "our time."
Book Reviews by Lihong Liu
The Burlington Magazine, 2024
A vivid photograph of a lotus pond ushers visitors into this ambitious exhibition on the arts and... more A vivid photograph of a lotus pond ushers visitors into this ambitious exhibition on the arts and culture of Jiangnan. Lying to the south of the Yangtze-its name literally means 'south of the river'-this part of China includes such major cities as Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou. Curated by Clarissa von Spee, Chair of Asian Art and the James and Donna Reid Curator of Chinese Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), this is the first exhibition outside China to present an encyclopaedic view of the cultural history of this historically affluent region. Installed across six rooms at the CMA, the choice of 240 objects from the Neolithic period to the 1800s-including paintings, prints, musical instruments, furniture and tapestry, as well as jades, bronzes, silks, ceramics, lacquer and bamboo carvings-challenges the commonly held assumption that art and commerce flourished in Jiangnan relatively late, when it was promoted by Ming-Qing literati and by the Kangxi (reg.1662-1722) and Qianlong (reg.1735-96) emperors on their southern tours. The exhibition instead retraces Jiangnan's arts and culture from prehistory to
Where Dragon Veins Meet: The Kangxi Emperor and His Estate at Rehe, by Stephen H. Whiteman, , 2022
9. For example, on the positive representation of the Ethiopian monk Moses, see Maja Kominko, "Ch... more 9. For example, on the positive representation of the Ethiopian monk Moses, see Maja Kominko, "Changing Habits and Disappearing Monsters-Ethnography between Classical and Late Antiquity," in Durak and Jevtić, Identity and the Other, 60.
http://caareviews.org/reviews/3509#.Xv4tji2ZPYJ , 2020
Where Dragon Veins Meet (UWP, 2020) by Lihong Liu
The Art Bulletin, 2022
9. For example, on the positive representation of the Ethiopian monk Moses, see Maja Kominko, "Ch... more 9. For example, on the positive representation of the Ethiopian monk Moses, see Maja Kominko, "Changing Habits and Disappearing Monsters-Ethnography between Classical and Late Antiquity," in Durak and Jevtić, Identity and the Other, 60.
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Talks by Lihong Liu
Papers by Lihong Liu
Book Reviews by Lihong Liu
Where Dragon Veins Meet (UWP, 2020) by Lihong Liu