China can boast a history of art lasting 5,000 years and embracing a huge diversity of images and objects - jade tablets, painted silk handscrolls and fans, ink and lacquer painting, porcelain-ware, sculptures, and calligraphy. They range in scale from the vast 'terracotta army' with its 7,000or so life-size figures, to the exquisitely delicate writing of fourth-century masters such as Wang Xizhin and his teacher, 'Lady Wei'. But this rich tradition has not, until now, been fully appreciated in the West where scholars have focused their attention on sculpture, downplaying art more highlyprized by the Chinese themselves such as calligraphy. Art in China marks a breakthrough in the study of the subject. Drawing on recent innovative scholarship and on newly-accessible studies in China itself Craig Clunas surveys the full spectrum of the visual arts in China. He ranges from the Neolithic period to the art scene of the 1980s and 1990s,examining art in a variety of contexts as it has been designed for tombs, commissioned by rulers, displayed in temples, created for the men and women of the educated ilite, and bought and sold in the marketplace. Many of the objects illustrated in this book have previously been known only to a fewspecialists, and will be totally new to a general audience.

In a manufacturing metropolis in south China lies Dafen, an urban village that famously houses thousands of workers who paint van Goghs, Da Vincis, Warhols, and other Western masterpieces for the world market, producing an astonishing five million paintings a year. To write about work and life in Dafen, Winnie Wong infiltrated this world, first investigating the work of conceptual artists who made projects there; then working as a dealer; apprenticing as a painter; surveying wholesalers and retailers in Europe, East Asia and North America; establishing relationships with local leaders; and organizing a conceptual art exhibition for the Shanghai World Expo. The result is Van Gogh on Demand, a fascinating book about a little-known aspect of the global art world—one that sheds surprising light on the workings of art, artists, and individual genius. Confronting big questions about the definition of art, the ownership of an image, and the meaning of originality and imitation, Wong describes an art world in which idealistic migrant workers, lofty propaganda makers, savvy dealers, and international artists make up a global supply chain of art and creativity. She examines how Berlin-based conceptual artist Christian Jankowski, who collaborated with Dafen’s painters to reimagine the Dafen Art Museum, unwittingly appropriated the work of a Hong Kong-based photographer Michael Wolf. She recounts how Liu Ding, a Beijing-based conceptual artist, asked Dafen “assembly-line” painters to perform at the Guangzhou Triennial, neatly styling himself into a Dafen boss. Taking the Shenzhen-based photojournalist Yu Haibo’s award-winning photograph from the Amsterdam's World Press Photo organization, she finds and meets the Dafen painter pictured in it and traces his paintings back to an unlikely place in Amsterdam. Through such cases, Wong shows how Dafen’s painters force us to reexamine our preconceptions about creativity, and the role of Chinese workers in redefining global art. Providing a valuable account of art practices in an ascendant China, Van Gogh on Demand is a rich and detailed look at the implications of a world that can offer countless copies of everything that has ever been called “art.”

In the 18th and 19th centuries, relations between China and the West were defined by the Qing dynasty’s strict restrictions on foreign access and by the West’s imperial ambitions. Cultural, political and economic interactions were often fraught, with suspicion and misunderstanding on both sides. Yet trade flourished and there were instances of cultural exchange and friendship, running counter to the official narrative. Tribute and Trade: China and Global Modernity explores encounters between China and the West during this period and beyond, into the early 20th century, through examples drawn from art, literature, science, politics, music, cooking, clothing and more. How did China and the West see each other, how did they influence each other, and what were the lasting legacies of this contact?

In Visualizing China, the authors launch a broad inquiry aimed at a synergistic understanding of the story of visuality in modern China. The essays cluster around several nodal points including photographs, advertising, posters and movies, from the 1840s to the 1960s.

西方人眼中的清代中國神祕而綺麗，從珠江河上華美的畫舫到婦女裹著的三寸金蓮，凡此種種都引發西方人極大的好奇心。這些對中國的異想，造就了外銷畫的商機。採用西方繪畫技法的通草紙畫盛行於十九世紀晚清時期的廣州，由於繪畫內容充滿中國風情丶價格便宜且方便攜帶，而成為留駐口岸的歐美商人丶收藏者丶水手等人士極受歡迎的紀念品。小小的通草紙畫，既有助縮小中西之間彼此理解的差距，同時也反映了西方人對這片異域的一種浪漫想像。 本圖冊展示了香港中文大學圖書館所收藏丶繪製於十九世紀廣州的通草紙畫，呈現出一幅幅生動的昔日生活場景。飄洋近兩個世紀後，這些既美麗又脆弱的「明信片」再次回到它的產地。儘管物換星移，然而中國百年前豐富的民生面貌透過薄薄的通草紙畫得以留存下來，在我們面前仍然絢爛繽紛。 The Qing Dynasty of China was perceived as mysterious and beautiful in the eyes of Westerners. From the magnificent pleasure boats on the Pearl River to women with bound feet, all these sparked great curiosity among Europeans and Americans. These fantasies about China created a lucrative market for export paintings. Pith paper paintings, which adopted Western painting techniques, were prevalent in Guangzhou during the late Qing period in the 19th century. Due to their Chinese themes, affordable prices and portability, these paintings became popular souvenirs among European and American traders, collectors, and sailors residing at the port. These small pith paper paintings not only helped bridge the gap of mutual understanding between the East and the West, but also reflected the Westerners’ romantic imagination of this exotic land. This album showcases the pith paper paintings collected by the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library. Created in 19th-century Guangzhou, these artworks vividly depict daily life scenes of that era. After almost two centuries, these beautiful yet fragile“postcards” have returned to their place of origin. Despite the changes over time, the rich social landscape of China from a century ago is preserved through these delicate pith paper paintings, still radiating with vibrant colours before us.

Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges between China and the West examines how the contact between China and Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries transformed the arts on both sides of the East-West divide. The essays in the volume reveal the extent to which images, artifacts, and natural specimens were traded and copied, and how these materials inflected both cultures’ visions of novelty and pleasure, battle and power, and ways of seeing and representing. Artists and craftspeople on both continents borrowed and adapted forms, techniques, and modes of representation, producing deliberate, meaningful, and complex new creations. By considering this reciprocity from both Eastern and Western perspectives, Qing Encounters offers a new and nuanced understanding of this critical period.