This article examines intersensory practices between seeing and hearing surrounding the medium of... more This article examines intersensory practices between seeing and hearing surrounding the medium of painting in middle-period China. Deviating from the better-known pictorial practice in which a mimetic image of a sound maker provides an entryway into a fictive soundscape, the central work discussed in this article depicts only a listener, and an unusual one at that: a seated monkey at the intersection of poetic, religious, and ecological boundaries. Attentive to the puzzling nonhuman form of the represented subject as an unlikely listener, it probes how the interplay between seeing and hearing gave rise to a complex sonic environment in pictorial medium. The unveiling of the mixed modality steers us toward an underrecognized role of painting in Chinese history as a material stimulus for multisensorial experiences, beyond the rhetoric of "soundless poetry" that has often stifled such dynamic potential of the medium.
Representations of intense emotions are rare in the Chinese visual tradition in comparison with t... more Representations of intense emotions are rare in the Chinese visual tradition in comparison with their counterpart in literary convention. While the reasons for this deserve an in-depth interdisciplinary study, such general reservation contrastingly highlights a distinct visual phenomenon that emerged and flourished during the middle period (9th-14th centuries). This time period witnessed a growing number of visual representations of grieving figures in funerary and religious (mainly Buddhist) contexts. By articulating various representational modes of mourning images, this essay discusses a significant development in the emotional lives of middle-period Chinese. Occupying seemingly disparate ritual spaces (the Buddhist pagoda crypt and the tomb) the images of sorrowful mourners conspicuously emerged as an appealing motif for adorning the burial spaces of their deceased. These two sites of intense affect reveal that era's desire for placing the virtual mourner in the space designed for the dead as a visual agency conveying the emotive surrounding the death of the beloved, be they local monks or family members, who often lacked literary means to express their feelings. Recognizing this affective mode helps us to better understand the complex interplay between the emotions, the social and cultural sanctions in expressing them, and the visual codes created thereof, in post-medieval China.
Representations of intense emotions are rare in the Chinese visual tradition in comparison with t... more Representations of intense emotions are rare in the Chinese visual tradition in comparison with their counterpart in literary convention. While the reasons for this deserve an in-depth interdisciplinary study, such general reservation contrastingly highlights a distinct visual phenomenon that emerged and flourished during the middle period (9th-14th centuries). This time period witnessed a growing number of visual representations of grieving figures in funerary and religious (mainly Buddhist) contexts. By articulating various representational modes of mourning images, this essay discusses a significant development in the emotional lives of middle-period Chinese. Occupying seemingly disparate ritual spaces—i.e., the Buddhist pagoda crypt and the tomb—the images of sorrowful mourners conspicuously emerged as an appealing motif for adorning the burial spaces of their deceased. These two sites of intense affect reveal that era’s desire for placing the virtual mourner in the space designed for the dead as a visual agency conveying the emotive surrounding the death of the beloved, be they local monks or family members, who often lacked literary means to express their feelings. Recognizing this affective mode helps us to better understand the complex interplay between the emotions, the social and cultural sanctions in expressing them, and the visual codes created thereof, in post-medieval China.
The Bhagavat Sutra Repository (1038) in China, celebrated as the earliest extant wood-constructio... more The Bhagavat Sutra Repository (1038) in China, celebrated as the earliest extant wood-construction repository of sutras in East Asia, includes elaborate wood cabinets in the shape of miniaturized architecture. Challenging the traditional treatment of the cabinets as merely a model for reconstructing the middle-period architecture in northern China, this essay examines contemporaneous visual, technological, and religious knowledge cutting across Buddhist and funerary discourses that nurtured the emergence of the distinctive structure. In so doing, this study showcases the complex ways in which boundaries between the mundane and the sacred were visualized at the dawn of the second millennium in China.
Journal of Chinese Religions, vol. 43, no. 2 (2015)
One of the quintessential components in traditional funerary culture in China, the mingqi 明器 (spi... more One of the quintessential components in traditional funerary culture in China, the mingqi 明器 (spirit article) was not a mere substitute for a real object to be buried with the deceased in the tomb, but was a material manifestation of the dual perspectives of the living and the dead and the relationship between those two realms during a given time period. This article examines a major shift in the conception and practice of the mingqi that occurred during the middle period (tenth–fourteenth centuries). The case studies presented in this article—ranging from simulated clay fruits to miniature furniture—reveal that the dynamics between the dual components of the classical principle of mingqi (i.e., “resembling a real object yet unusable for the living”) changed in ways to conform to the new conception of the tomb space and netherworld, often interacting with parallel developments in the Buddhist visual culture. Virtually usable and ontologically complete, the new mingqi was heavily imbued with the visual mechanisms that operated in the society of the living, no longer envisioning the tomb occupant as the only subject who had full control of the space. I suggest that the common description of the tomb space of the post-Tang era as undergoing “secularization” be corrected by more accurately characterizing it as “socialization,” recognizing the infiltration of the logic of life into the burial space forged within the conceptual framework of the environs of the living.
Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, vol. 44 (2014). [Published in 2016]
A n c e s t r a l W o r s h i p o f t h e N o n -l i t e r a t i E l i t e i n N o r t h C h i n ... more A n c e s t r a l W o r s h i p o f t h e N o n -l i t e r a t i E l i t e i n N o r t h C h i n a ( 1 0 0 0 -1 4 0 0 ) Jeehee Hong S y r a c u s e U n i v e r s i t y
The outer dazzlingly cut and carved The inner pulled by strings, Crimson and purple [sleeves] fly... more The outer dazzlingly cut and carved The inner pulled by strings, Crimson and purple [sleeves] fly up, float down Silver and gold seals glisten and shine Life and death come from [his] mouth Flourishing and withering are in [his] hands.
In traditional China, as in many other cultures, the corpse was understood as a natural entity wh... more In traditional China, as in many other cultures, the corpse was understood as a natural entity whose uncertain ontological status could be normalized through ritualization. As a result, feeding the deceased in the broad context of funerary process took on different forms. While actual food was placed in burial spaces, visual representations of comestibles commonly adorned surfaces of tomb walls and coffins by the second century CE. Offering practices continued to develop into the middle period, and were enriched by increasingly influential Buddhist burial practices. All the while, new social elites contributed to the making of innovative imagery of feasting in funerary monuments. This paper delves into some of the remarkable visualization of feasting in tombs during the middle period. On the one hand, the deceased’s enjoyment of food as multi-sensorial experience—including visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory senses— was staged through the crafting and placement of simulated objects; such an effort challenged the classical definition of the spirit article (mingqi), as supposedly inedible things became virtually “edible.” On the other, the process of preparing and presenting the food in pictorial representations emerged as a performative site where the environs of the living were, paradoxically, emphasized at the unprecedentedly tangible level.
This article examines intersensory practices between seeing and hearing surrounding the medium of... more This article examines intersensory practices between seeing and hearing surrounding the medium of painting in middle-period China. Deviating from the better-known pictorial practice in which a mimetic image of a sound maker provides an entryway into a fictive soundscape, the central work discussed in this article depicts only a listener, and an unusual one at that: a seated monkey at the intersection of poetic, religious, and ecological boundaries. Attentive to the puzzling nonhuman form of the represented subject as an unlikely listener, it probes how the interplay between seeing and hearing gave rise to a complex sonic environment in pictorial medium. The unveiling of the mixed modality steers us toward an underrecognized role of painting in Chinese history as a material stimulus for multisensorial experiences, beyond the rhetoric of "soundless poetry" that has often stifled such dynamic potential of the medium.
Representations of intense emotions are rare in the Chinese visual tradition in comparison with t... more Representations of intense emotions are rare in the Chinese visual tradition in comparison with their counterpart in literary convention. While the reasons for this deserve an in-depth interdisciplinary study, such general reservation contrastingly highlights a distinct visual phenomenon that emerged and flourished during the middle period (9th-14th centuries). This time period witnessed a growing number of visual representations of grieving figures in funerary and religious (mainly Buddhist) contexts. By articulating various representational modes of mourning images, this essay discusses a significant development in the emotional lives of middle-period Chinese. Occupying seemingly disparate ritual spaces (the Buddhist pagoda crypt and the tomb) the images of sorrowful mourners conspicuously emerged as an appealing motif for adorning the burial spaces of their deceased. These two sites of intense affect reveal that era's desire for placing the virtual mourner in the space designed for the dead as a visual agency conveying the emotive surrounding the death of the beloved, be they local monks or family members, who often lacked literary means to express their feelings. Recognizing this affective mode helps us to better understand the complex interplay between the emotions, the social and cultural sanctions in expressing them, and the visual codes created thereof, in post-medieval China.
Representations of intense emotions are rare in the Chinese visual tradition in comparison with t... more Representations of intense emotions are rare in the Chinese visual tradition in comparison with their counterpart in literary convention. While the reasons for this deserve an in-depth interdisciplinary study, such general reservation contrastingly highlights a distinct visual phenomenon that emerged and flourished during the middle period (9th-14th centuries). This time period witnessed a growing number of visual representations of grieving figures in funerary and religious (mainly Buddhist) contexts. By articulating various representational modes of mourning images, this essay discusses a significant development in the emotional lives of middle-period Chinese. Occupying seemingly disparate ritual spaces—i.e., the Buddhist pagoda crypt and the tomb—the images of sorrowful mourners conspicuously emerged as an appealing motif for adorning the burial spaces of their deceased. These two sites of intense affect reveal that era’s desire for placing the virtual mourner in the space designed for the dead as a visual agency conveying the emotive surrounding the death of the beloved, be they local monks or family members, who often lacked literary means to express their feelings. Recognizing this affective mode helps us to better understand the complex interplay between the emotions, the social and cultural sanctions in expressing them, and the visual codes created thereof, in post-medieval China.
The Bhagavat Sutra Repository (1038) in China, celebrated as the earliest extant wood-constructio... more The Bhagavat Sutra Repository (1038) in China, celebrated as the earliest extant wood-construction repository of sutras in East Asia, includes elaborate wood cabinets in the shape of miniaturized architecture. Challenging the traditional treatment of the cabinets as merely a model for reconstructing the middle-period architecture in northern China, this essay examines contemporaneous visual, technological, and religious knowledge cutting across Buddhist and funerary discourses that nurtured the emergence of the distinctive structure. In so doing, this study showcases the complex ways in which boundaries between the mundane and the sacred were visualized at the dawn of the second millennium in China.
Journal of Chinese Religions, vol. 43, no. 2 (2015)
One of the quintessential components in traditional funerary culture in China, the mingqi 明器 (spi... more One of the quintessential components in traditional funerary culture in China, the mingqi 明器 (spirit article) was not a mere substitute for a real object to be buried with the deceased in the tomb, but was a material manifestation of the dual perspectives of the living and the dead and the relationship between those two realms during a given time period. This article examines a major shift in the conception and practice of the mingqi that occurred during the middle period (tenth–fourteenth centuries). The case studies presented in this article—ranging from simulated clay fruits to miniature furniture—reveal that the dynamics between the dual components of the classical principle of mingqi (i.e., “resembling a real object yet unusable for the living”) changed in ways to conform to the new conception of the tomb space and netherworld, often interacting with parallel developments in the Buddhist visual culture. Virtually usable and ontologically complete, the new mingqi was heavily imbued with the visual mechanisms that operated in the society of the living, no longer envisioning the tomb occupant as the only subject who had full control of the space. I suggest that the common description of the tomb space of the post-Tang era as undergoing “secularization” be corrected by more accurately characterizing it as “socialization,” recognizing the infiltration of the logic of life into the burial space forged within the conceptual framework of the environs of the living.
Journal of Song-Yuan Studies, vol. 44 (2014). [Published in 2016]
A n c e s t r a l W o r s h i p o f t h e N o n -l i t e r a t i E l i t e i n N o r t h C h i n ... more A n c e s t r a l W o r s h i p o f t h e N o n -l i t e r a t i E l i t e i n N o r t h C h i n a ( 1 0 0 0 -1 4 0 0 ) Jeehee Hong S y r a c u s e U n i v e r s i t y
The outer dazzlingly cut and carved The inner pulled by strings, Crimson and purple [sleeves] fly... more The outer dazzlingly cut and carved The inner pulled by strings, Crimson and purple [sleeves] fly up, float down Silver and gold seals glisten and shine Life and death come from [his] mouth Flourishing and withering are in [his] hands.
In traditional China, as in many other cultures, the corpse was understood as a natural entity wh... more In traditional China, as in many other cultures, the corpse was understood as a natural entity whose uncertain ontological status could be normalized through ritualization. As a result, feeding the deceased in the broad context of funerary process took on different forms. While actual food was placed in burial spaces, visual representations of comestibles commonly adorned surfaces of tomb walls and coffins by the second century CE. Offering practices continued to develop into the middle period, and were enriched by increasingly influential Buddhist burial practices. All the while, new social elites contributed to the making of innovative imagery of feasting in funerary monuments. This paper delves into some of the remarkable visualization of feasting in tombs during the middle period. On the one hand, the deceased’s enjoyment of food as multi-sensorial experience—including visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory senses— was staged through the crafting and placement of simulated objects; such an effort challenged the classical definition of the spirit article (mingqi), as supposedly inedible things became virtually “edible.” On the other, the process of preparing and presenting the food in pictorial representations emerged as a performative site where the environs of the living were, paradoxically, emphasized at the unprecedentedly tangible level.
Nov. 3-5, 2016
Logan Center, University of Chicago
With China’s recent growing presence on the w... more Nov. 3-5, 2016 Logan Center, University of Chicago
With China’s recent growing presence on the world stage, the last three decades or so have marked a new chapter in the study of Chinese art history. There were more studies than ever that took advantage of new excavated materials and newly accessible archives and sites of research, as well as China’s new-found position in the global world. The scholarship also grew out of deeper engagements between China and the broader field of art history, while exploring its interdisciplinary potential by implementing approaches derived from literary theories and visual and material cultures. This crucial moment coincided with the careers of several prominent scholars, whose research provided the foundation of teaching and research that in turn have nurtured generations of scholars, together reshaping the field of Chinese art history as it is today. China, Art, History: New Orientations was conceived in respond to this development in Chinese art history. But more than being a retrospective reflection on the field, it is also intended to provide a venue for discussing new directions in relation to the past and current trends. The three-day conference will be hosted by the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago in honor of Professor Wu Hung. It will bring together scholars and graduate students at different stages in their careers from both the University of Chicago and other institutions worldwide, facilitating exchange of ideas and approaches across different generations. A complete program will be available in mid-September. For more information, please contact Wei-Cheng Lin at [email protected].
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This paper delves into some of the remarkable visualization of feasting in tombs during the middle period. On the one hand, the deceased’s enjoyment of food as multi-sensorial experience—including visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory senses— was staged through the crafting and placement of simulated objects; such an effort challenged the classical definition of the spirit article (mingqi), as supposedly inedible things became virtually “edible.” On the other, the process of preparing and presenting the food in pictorial representations emerged as a performative site where the environs of the living were, paradoxically, emphasized at the unprecedentedly tangible level.
This paper delves into some of the remarkable visualization of feasting in tombs during the middle period. On the one hand, the deceased’s enjoyment of food as multi-sensorial experience—including visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory senses— was staged through the crafting and placement of simulated objects; such an effort challenged the classical definition of the spirit article (mingqi), as supposedly inedible things became virtually “edible.” On the other, the process of preparing and presenting the food in pictorial representations emerged as a performative site where the environs of the living were, paradoxically, emphasized at the unprecedentedly tangible level.
Logan Center, University of Chicago
With China’s recent growing presence on the world stage, the last three decades or so have marked a new chapter in the study of Chinese art history. There were more studies than ever that took advantage of new excavated materials and newly accessible archives and sites of research, as well as China’s new-found position in the global world. The scholarship also grew out of deeper engagements between China and the broader field of art history, while exploring its interdisciplinary potential by implementing approaches derived from literary theories and visual and material cultures. This crucial moment coincided with the careers of several prominent scholars, whose research provided the foundation of teaching and research that in turn have nurtured generations of scholars, together reshaping the field of Chinese art history as it is today.
China, Art, History: New Orientations was conceived in respond to this development in Chinese art history. But more than being a retrospective reflection on the field, it is also intended to provide a venue for discussing new directions in relation to the past and current trends. The three-day conference will be hosted by the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago in honor of Professor Wu Hung. It will bring together scholars and graduate students at different stages in their careers from both the University of Chicago and other institutions worldwide, facilitating exchange of ideas and approaches across different generations. A complete program will be available in mid-September. For more information, please contact Wei-Cheng Lin at [email protected].