Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection

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Could the prominent appearance of large, boldly brushed Chinese characters on the cover of House & Garden magazine (May 1999) signal that Americans are ready to appreciate the ancient but often modern-looking art of calligraphy? The Embodied Image offers both stellar examples of Chinese calligraphy and tools with which to view it. And it successfully bridges the gap between the non-Chinese reader's concern over incomprehension, the modernist's appreciation of calligraphy as linear abstraction, and the traditional connoisseur's approach.

Edited by art historians Robert Harrist and Wen C. Fong and with contributions from 11 other scholars, the volume documents the calligraphy collection of Princeton University's Art Museum, which Fong calls "the only collection outside China and Japan that properly represents the sixteen-hundred-year history of this highly prized ... art form." Filled with marvels ranging from one of the earliest known fragments of the classic text Tao Te Ching to letters and scrolls by artists who are the Rembrandts and Picassos of the medium, The Embodied Image presents Chinese calligraphy in terms of brushwork, as text, as the expression of the writer's personal cultivation, and as the underpinning of later (if not all) Chinese painting.

There's plenty of ink play for the eye to dance over: fluid, angular, stiff, or scratchy. The accompanying texts--two introductory essays on calligraphic history and theory and eight specialized ones, with various levels of detail--allow readers to choose their own depth. But the visual "text" alone is illuminating and provides pleasure. The 55 featured works, dating from 270 to the 1870s, are divided into seven groups, with short historical introductions preceding the works (reproduced in color and nuanced duotone). Four hundred more illustrations, including character comparisons, are enormously helpful, as is the labeling of the parts of a 12-foot scroll assembled over several centuries around a traced copy of a two-line fragment of a letter by the most influential calligrapher of all, Wang Hsi-chih.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Though they may have some knowledge of painting, sculpture, and other art forms, most Westerners are perhaps less familiar with an art form that is one of the most highly treasured in China: calligraphy. The Embodied Image is the accompanying catalogue to an exhibition culled from one of the world's most comprehensive collections of Chinese calligraphy, the John B. Elliott Collection at The Art Museum, Princeton University.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Chinese painting, sculpture, ceramics, and other art have gradually become familiar to many Western viewers, but calligraphy, the art most valued in China, remains little known. The Embodied Image accompanies an exhibition of one of the most outstanding and comprehensive collections of Chinese calligraphy ever assembled outside Asia, the John B. Elliott Collection at The Art Museum, Princeton University. Encompassing works of calligraphy from the fourth through the twentieth centuries, the collection illustrates the extraordinary variety of formats and styles that makes calligraphy one of the most visually exciting of all artistic traditions. Reflecting the latest trends in art history, The Embodied Image carries the study of Chinese calligraphy beyond issues of style and connoisseurship to interpret this art as an integral part of Chinese culture. Nine scholarly essays written by a team of distinguished American and Chinese scholars examine the complex relationship between calligraphy and religion, politics, and literature.

FROM THE CRITICS

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