Speakers and Abstracts
1. Puay-Peng HO 何培斌 (Professor, Department of Architecture, The Chinese University of
Hong Kong)
Mind the Gap: Will More Translated Works in the Field of Chinese Architectural History Help?
Abstract
The development of the field of Chinese and Japanese architectural history, encompassing
official and vernacular architectural traditions, cities, gardens and the craft traditions, can be
divided into two distinct periods with a significant break between1950-1979. Before the break,
Western and Japanese scholars were noted for their pioneering and exploratory research; while
Chinese scholars were striving to establish the field with textual and building surveys. Ernst
Boerschmann 鮑希曼 (1873-1949), Osvald Sirén 喜仁龍 (1879-1966), Johannes Prip-Møller
艾術華 (1889-1943), Itō Chūta 伊東忠太(1867-1954), and many others were engaged in
discursive studies with reference to art historical methodology from the West, while Liang
Sicheng 梁思成 (1901-1972) and Liu Dunzhen 劉敦楨 (1897-1968) who graduated from US and
Japanese schools were translating foreign language texts and publishing original research based
on first hand materials and adapted methodology. Since late 1970s, there was, on the one hand,
a flourish of research in Chinese architectural history within China spearheaded by students of
Liang and Liu who applied their methodology to a larger corpus of newly identified architectural
monuments. On the other hand, Western and Japanese scholars including Ronald Knapp 那仲良
(1940-), Tanaka Tan 田中淡 (1946-), Frances Wood 吳芳思 (1948-), and Nancy Shatzman
Steinhardt 夏南悉 worked tirelessly on a different track and published essentially in English and
Japanese. They used first hand information from China through meeting Chinese scholars and
visiting buildings and sites. The most likely crossing between Chinese and Western scholarship
in Chinese architectural history would be at the intersection of this generation of scholars through
the translation of their works. However, this has not been the case. Although the dual edition of
Chinese Architecture in English (2002 Yale University Press) and Zhongguo gudai jianzhu
中國古代建築 in Chinese (2004 New World Publishers) seems to go some way to address this
gap, there are just a handful of works being translated into either Chinese or English.
This paper will explore why translation has never played a major role for scholarly exchanges in
shaping the field of Chinese architectural history. One of the major factors might be the perceived
lack of interest in translated works in this field because of unequal dominance of research in
Chinese. The consequence of such lack of translation has denied both English-reading and
Chinese-reading communities access to in-depth research and alternative methodology adopted
by scholars in both languages. While the publication of Chinese Architecture in both languages
may help to bridge the gap, there are inherent issues involved in the ‘translated’ works which will
also be discussed in this paper. Will future generations of researchers in Chinese architectural
history become more mindful of the ‘gap’ and see translation as an engaging and necessary
exercise to further their field of study? This paper will look into the question of historiography in
both Western and Chinese tradition and explore if translation of critical works may help to
facilitate exchanges between Chinese and Western scholars in time to come.
2. Michael NYLAN (Professor, Department of History, University of California-Berkeley)
Heritage Issues in Translation: Convergent Preoccupations in Chinese and Western Scholarship
My paper will discuss examples from China, Europe, England, and the United States of key
figures operating in art history and in the international art markets, whose work was influential in
developing, through complex processes of cross-pollination and selection, enduring standards for
“East Asian Art” that tended to emphasize certain artistic values in ways we would now
characterize as Orientalization and self-Orientalization.
3. Chia-Ling YANG (Lecturer in Chinese Art, University of Edinburgh)
Archaic Art and Translated Modernity in China
Within China, nationalistic sentiments notably inhibit objective analysis of Sino-Japanese and
Sino-Western cultural exchanges during the end of the Qing throughout the Republican period.
Despite the fact that China was occupied by external and internal powers, that China was not
governed or united by one political body; their contemporary concept of ‘China’ as ‘one nation’
and how ‘Chinese art’ is defined, translated and adopted by the Chinese and non-Chinese
readers are still in debate. Furthermore, the on-going archaic movement brought by influential
artists, whose advocacy of 'traditional' culture seemed be inspired by the Western discipline of
archaeology, yet antithetical to European-inspired modernist movements. Taking the cultural
production in foreign colonized cities of Chinese coast-boarders as example, this paper questions
how polarisation of ‘indigenous tradition versus translated modernity in visual production’ has
been promoted during the subsequent Republican era (1911-1949). Central to this is the position
of the artists and intellectuals in cultural history of early twentieth-century China, and in a wider
context, the transnational and translingual art and the cultural heritage in global East Asia.
4. Youngsook PAK (Reader in Korean Art, University of London (SOAS), Emeritus)
Chaekkori – a Chosŏn Conundrum
A screen depicting bookshelves (in Korean chaekkori 책거리, drives from chaekka 冊架) starts to
appear in the eighteenth century in Korea. In the shelves one finds not just books neatly stacked,
but all kinds of fine objects, ink stone and brush, seal and papers, flowers in pot in bonsai style,
antique bronze vessels, porcelains, fans, exquisitely arranged, almost like a still-life. The
intriguing fact is that although the genre is unmistakably Korean, the objects found in chaekkori
were all from China. The paper will analyze the iconography and function of such chaekkori and
the phenomenon of the sudden appearance of and preference for Chinese items in the
environment of Korean Confucian scholars in the latter period of the Chosŏn Dynasty (13921910).
5. Alain GEORGE (Lecturer in Islamic Art, University of Edinburgh)
China and the Islamic World: Early Encounters in Art and Culture (7th-10th century)
Between the 7th and 10th centuries, China and the Islamic world concurrently reached a peak in
their political and cultural power. The territorial expansion of the Tang and Abbasid empires gave
them a shared frontier in Central Asia. The stability and wealth which these two empires
mustered for much of the period also favoured the development of direct sea trade between Iraq
and the South China sea. For about two centuries, both ends of the Asian continent thus came to
be linked on an unprecedented scale, notably through extensive trade in luxury goods.
Underlying this pattern of exchange were human networks primarily driven by commerce, and
also by religion and politics, which enabled the transmission and translation of artistic forms,
technologies, and possibly written words, across Asia. In the present paper, I will outline the
parameters of this fascinating phase of cultural exchange that reached far beyond the level of
courtly circles, and engage in a reflection about the barriers, filters and facilitators involved.
6. Yuka KADOI (Curator of Department of Asian and Ancient Art, Art Institute of Chicago)
China in Islamic Art after the Mongol Invasions of Eurasia: Centuries of Translations
This paper looks at the cycle of translating and retranslating Chinese art traditions in the arts of
Islam from the 7th century to early modern times, especially the case of the Iranian world which
historically went into a close contact with East and Central Asian cultures through trades and
diplomatic exchanges. This serves to offer a unique insight into the pattern of translating an
apparently homogeneous art form, such as that of Chinese art, into other visual languages. The
paper also highlights the portability and translatability of the ‘object’ in the transmission of ideas
across different cultures.
7. Hsueh-Man SHEN (Assistant Professor, Institute of Fine Art, New York University)
Dragon’ or ‘Long’ in Chinese Art
For this conference I propose to do a case study on ‘long (dragon)’ images in Chinese art. I will
look at the ways in which the Chinese term ‘long’ is being applied to archaeologically excavated
objects (such as neolithic jades) that may not have been associated with the mythical creature
‘long’ in the first place. I will argue that our understanding or interpretation of such objects is very
much mediated by the terms we use to describe them. I will also use Lü Dalin’s Kao gu tu as an
example to see how (illustrated) texts could manipulate our knowledge of ancient bronzes and
jades. Moreover, when the Chinese term ‘long’ is translated into ‘dragon’ in English, it
immediately forms a visual image in our mind that pairs the two groups of mythical creatures,
East and West. I shall discuss the advantage and disadvantage of such translation in art
historical writings.