This richly illustrated book provides an anthology and summation of the
work of one of the world's leading historians of Chinese painting and
calligraphy. Wen Fong helped create the field of East Asian art history
during a distinguished five-decade career at Princeton University and
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Few if any writers in English have such
a broad knowledge of the history and practice of Chinese painting and
calligraphy. In this collection of some of his most recent essays, Fong
gives a sweeping tour through the history of Chinese painting and
calligraphy as he offers new and revised views on a broad range of
important subjects.
The topics addressed include "art as history," in which each art object
preserves a moment in art's own significant history; the museum as a
place of serious study and education; the close historical relationship
between calligraphy and painting and their primacy among Chinese fine
arts; the parallel development of representational painting and
sculpture in early painting history; the greater significance of
brushwork, seen abstractly as a means of personal expression by the
artist, in later painting history; the paradigmatic importance of the
master-to-follower lineage as a social force in shaping the continuity
and directing the subtle changes in Chinese painting history; the role
of collectors; and the critical necessity of authenticated works for
establishing an accurate art history.
Throughout the book, Fong skillfully combines close analysis and
detailed contextualization of individual works to reveal how the study
of Chinese painting and calligraphy yields deep insights about Chinese
culture and history.
