Skip to main content

Distributed for Reaktion Books

The Double Screen

Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting

Distributed for Reaktion Books

The Double Screen

Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting

This book contemplates a large problem: what is a traditional Chinese painting? Wu Hung answers this question through a comprehensive analysis of the screen, a major format and a popular pictorial motif in traditional China. With a broad array of examples ranging from the early centuries C.E. to the 1800s, he explores the screen’s position in art – as an important site for artistic imagination, as an illusionary representation on a flat surface, and as an architectural device defining cultural conventions. A screen occupies a space and divides it, supplies an ideal surface for painting, and has been a favourite pictorial image in Chinese art since antiquity. With its diverse roles, the screen has provided Chinese painters with endless opportunities to reinvent their art.

The author argues that any understanding of Chinese painting must include discussion of its material forms as well as its intimate connection with cultural context and convention. Thus, The Double Screen offers a powerful non-western perspective on diverse artistic and cultural genres, from portraiture and pictorial narrative to voyeurism and masquerade, and will be invaluable to anyone interested in the history of art and Asian studies as well as to students and specialists in the field.


296 pages | 170 halftones | 6 x 9 | © 1997

Essays in Art and Culture

Art: Middle Eastern, African, and Asian Art


Reaktion Books image

View all books from Reaktion Books

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Screen
1: The ’Night Entertainment of Han Xizai’
2: Interior and Exterior Spaces
3: Inner and Outer Worlds
4: Emperor’s Choice
Coda: Metapictures
References
Bibliography
List of Illustrations

Be the first to know

Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!

Sign up here for updates about the Press