Ordinary Images - Hardcover

Abe, Stanley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226000443 ISBN 13: 9780226000442

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2002

Synopsis

This text explores the large body of sculpture, paintings and other religious imagery produced for China's common classes from the third to the sixth centuries CE. In contrast to the works made for imperial patrons, illustrious monastics, or other luminaries, these ordinary images - modest in scale, mass-produced, and at times incomplete - were created for those of lesser standing. Because they cannot be related to well-known historical figures or social groups, these images have been considered a largely nebulous, undistinguished mass of works. Situating his study in the gaps between conventional categories such as Buddhism, Daoism and Chinese popular art, Stanley K. Abe examines works (including some of the earliest known examples of Buddha-like images in China) that were commissioned by patrons of modest standing and produced by nameless artists and artisans.

About this title

Review:

"Abe treats the images as case studies of specific regional and temporal groups outside the scope of traditional surveys of Chinese art history and engages the reader with his fresh visual insights and conviction that ordinary images are significant in their own right. His focus on and respect for objects and his resistance to using them merely for rhetorical or illustrative purposes can serve as an example to art historians and those in other fields of study who work with visual materials."--Katherine R. Tsiang "Artibus Asiae "

"Abe has presented a substantive study in this book, which is written with clarity and full of insights. The thorough documentation of sources is invaluable for further investigation."--Dorothy C. Wong "Journal of Asian Studies "

"This lavishly illustrated volume revises our understanding of China's early medieval (200-600 CE) religious sculpture. Through an exhaustive analysis of run-of-the-mill religious art objects and their accompanying inscriptions, Abe skillfully demonstrates the explanatory insufficiency of previous interpretative paradigms. . . . For students of East Asian religion and culture, it is a must."--Keith N. Knapp "Religious Studies Review "

"Abe's elegant new book, packed with photographs, maps, and diagrams, follows on decades of consistent and often spectacular excavation and scholarship. . . . Abe reviews a good part of this material, describing both new finds and older ones, and presenting the new wealth of scholarship in English, Japanese, and especially Chinese on Buddhist artifacts from early medieval China."--Journal of Chinese Religion

About the Author:

Stanley K. Abe is an associate professor of Chinese art history in the Department of Art and Art History at Duke University.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0226000443
• ISBN 13: 9780226000442
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 408