Sensuous surfaces : the decorative object in early modern China
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Sensuous surfaces : the decorative object in early modern China
Reaktion Books, c2010
- : hardback
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 417-422) and index.
Description and Table of Contents
Description
"Sensuous Surfaces" is a richly illustrated and in-depth introduction to the decorative arts in Ming and Qing dynasty China. Jonathan Hay explores materials and techniques, as well as issues of patronage and taste, which together formed a loose system of informal rules that affected every level of decoration in early modern China, from an individual object to the arrangement of an entire residential interior. By engaging the actual and metaphoric potential of surface, Hay contends, this system guided the production and use of the decorative arts during a period of explosive growth, which started in the late sixteenth century and continued until the mid-nineteenth century. This understanding of decorative arts in China made a fundamental contribution to the sensory education of its early modern urban population, both as individuals and in their established social roles. "Sensuous Surfaces" is also an elegant meditation on the role of pleasure in decoration. Often intellectually dismissed as merely pleasurable, Hay argues that decoration is better understood as a necessary form of art which can fulfil its function only by engaging the human capacity for erotic response.
Featuring around 250 colour images of a wide range of early modern Chinese objects and artworks, this book will engage anyone with an interest in decoration, art, China or the experience of pleasure itself.
Table of Contents
Preface THE DECORATIVE OBJECT 1 Decoration as Luxury 2 The Object Thinks with Us 3 Surface, Metaphor, Affect THE SURFACESCAPE OF THE OBJECT 4 Monochrome Smoothness 5 Material Patterning 6 Formal Pattern 7 Depiction 8 Inscription 9 Fictive Surface 10 Diversified Surface THE SURFACESCAPE OF THE ROOM 11 Layering across Hierarchy 12 Object Landscapes 13 The Atmospherics of Surface 14 The Erotic Economy of Decoration Acknowledgments
by "Nielsen BookData"
